I've been making homemade for years but can never get the crust to be consistent. This weekend I was playing around some more and had a bag of King Arthur's Pizza Perfect Blend and it worked out well. The real test was that the crust was still crisp when I snacked on it for breakfast Sunday morning. Basically I followed their recipe, but added some sourdough starter that I have and balanced out the liquid. I proofed it for a couple of hours at 85F. The other thing that has helped me greatly is a silicone rolling pin with the rubber band spacers. I use the thinnest spacers, took my time and then used a fork to prick the crust so that it wouldn't bubble. Next time I may use slightly less King Arthur and add in all-purpose flour to soften it a bit.

Great. It's contra-intuitive so that's why people are reticent to try and to use more water to get crispness - but as you've discovered it works as long as you have the temperature. This will f=give both crisp outer and soft inner exactly as you would want. With a slower cooker ie a domestic cooker it'll still crisp but the whole mix will become a solid crust rather than soft inside.

I know this "extra water" trick from two grand masters! Some time ago some people made a pilgrimage to the Caputo flour mill and the head was constantly receiving calls from people and all he seemed to bellow into the phone was "more water, more water" and they reported back to a pizza nerd forum about their visit. And seperately I heard the same story from a sour-dough master.

Great result.

The downside of using a rolling pin is that you will lose the elongated air bubbles and many feel that the taste and character of sourdough is in the bubbles .......:D

If you are a little more patient and use my stretch and rest on polenta approach, this will have several advantages. Firstly you'll get the elongated bubbles. Secondly the sour dough will continue to develop whilst your patiently working it. Finally it will eventually be thin but a natural thin rather than a compressed thin. Finally the edges will develop that chewiness that some of us like.

If you can source Caputo then a nice combination is "very hard Canadian" flour mixed with Caputo. This is nice and gets you closer to the soft crispness I certainly seek.

Thank you for the advice, especially regarding the rolling pin. While my last attempt looked really good and was very crisp, in reality it seemed like a commercially made crust in texture. I will definitely search out Caputo in the Chicago area and add to my inventory.

Earlier this year my toaster oven burned out a filament. Shopping around I found a good deal on a Cuisinart convection oven. The box said big enough for a 12 inch pizza, so the wheels start turning...

The dough recipe in the book that came with it seemed to imply that the only way to get good results was to use a Cuisinart machine to knead it. :rolleyes: So I went looking on the interwebs and this is the one I've been using the past couple of times. I like the addition of whole wheat flour for a kind rustic flavor. One time I took a third of the batch and added some garlic powder for breadsticks. Turned out well, so I also tried it with a pie. Mmm, garlic. http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...m/dd6f62b6.gif

My next step is to go beyond the canned sauce I'm using. It's "gourmet", but there's nothing like fresh tomatoes from a farmer's market. This recipe sounds good, but it calls for romas. Probably for the lower amount of seeds? I don't think I've seen those for sale outside of a grocery store, so regular tomatoes will have to do.

Yes, I probably put too many topping on. :eek::D Red onion, green/red/yellow peppers, olives, mushrooms, jalapeno slices or hot peppers (from a jar I blot these with a paper towel to remove excess moisture), anchovies or sausage. I've not really had an issue with it getting soggy, probably from using convection heat. The last time I was able to get the edges of the peppers and onions just slightly charred without making the crust edges to crispy.



:D

I just bought a bag of Pillsbury bread flour, but I'm going to order some Caputo when I use it up. Question though, I really don't bake much, so pizza dough is the only thing I use flour for. One time I found mites in the flour, so I started keeping the flour in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Is this a good way to store it?

Storing Caputo flour. Suggest you get a suitable size icecream box or sealed box and line it with cling film alllowing enough to cover. Put the flour in and cover the top with the film and press out as much air as possible. Put the lid on and store it somewhere cool and dark like a garage. A fridge will be too damp.

Cuisinart ovens. If it's the same type - I've had a couple of work-top convection Cuisinart convection ovens and although I loved them - they didn't last long and I picked up a couple of identical ones by Gordon Ramsay on ebay.

I should have also mentioned ..............

If you are in the market for a new microwave / all purpose oven then I cannot recomend the Whirlpool Jet Chef 31 Litre 1000 watt Microwave Oven with Grill and Crisp Function, Satina Mist for pizza. It has a feature called a "crisper" and it is taylor made for pizza. I have one and it's great.

Thanks for tips on storing flour! ;)

Here's the oven. Costco had a very good instant rebate on it a few months ago, and they also have an unbeatable return policy.

I buy a pizza shell at an Italian Import store in Santa Monica
www.guidimarcello.com
The pizza has a very light tomato sauce. While at Guidi Marcello, I buy Tomino Cheese, which is absolutely delicious and so great on pizza.It is a "melting" cheese and it also great on vegetables.
To Guidi's pizza, I add some Tomino Cheese (unfortunately, very difficult to find), fresh tomatoes (this is the time for heirlooms), a few strips of Speck and whatever else captures my fancy. When I remove the pizza from the 450 degree oven, I add a little fresh basil and a light layer of olive oil. The Tomino Cheese is the key. Try to find it. So worth it.

It looks like the sort of oven I'd buy (although perhaps not for pizza) - I'm a great fan of several small ovens that do specific things. Unluckilly our main range is no longer made so I have a twitch because I couldn't cope without it.

Hope you find some Caputo and also that you find it was worthwhile.

Interesting. I'll need to look for a store carrying in in Northern California. What else do you use it on?

Tomino cheese, as I said, is really a melting cheese, not one you would eat on a cracker. I love it on roast vegetables, of any kind. It is pretty fabulous on asparagus. Just put small cubes of cheese on the vegetables after they are done, but still hot and the Tomino will melt beautifully. Good luck. I hope you find it.

Well, I have felt the semi-annual pangs for making pizza once again, and have ordered Caputo flour today. Should arrive within ten days. I'll start the biga ahead of time with regular flour.

One thing I cannot seem to get online anywhere is the Ferrari counter-top pizza oven. They have distributors all over the world, but not, seemingly, in the US. Google is of no help in the matter. Has anyone in the US had any luck in getting these shipped over here?

I suppose that in true FT fashion, I could do an MR to Italy to buy one, but that might be a little insane. Or at the very least, hard to explain to the GF. :D

Yes to both. Pizza dough is ridiculously easy to make and calzones freeze beautifully uncooked, so they make great go to meals.
Fave pizza - corn meal crust (add cornmeal to dough), roasted green chile, goat cheese, roasted corn and mozzarella. Sausage optional.

Living in Chicago I used to make homemade pizza but eventually realized it is so much easier to go out for something that is better than what I was making. I have a Giordano's and about ten other Little Italy restaurants that have pizza all within a mile.

Good lord, I'm hungry reading this thread.

Which American shredded cheese of the low-fat/healthier variety would you guys recommend for homemade pizza?

If you absolutely must use pre-shredded cheese, go for skim or part-skim mozzarella. Get a good quality one (Sargento, for example).

DO NOT use any yellow cheese (cheddar, etc.) that would be blasphemy! :mad: ;)

I'm only asking about the pre-shredded ones because there is quite a large selection of those (mainly from Australia and the US) available here in Singapore.

I can't remember off-hand which brands are available, but I'll keep a lookout for Sargento. Thanks for the tip. :)

If Sargento isn't available (i don't know if they export - they're rather small, in the great scheme of things), just go for the nicest cheese you can find. If you want super-healthy, skim mozz will do the trick, although a little extra fat makes it "meltier". Good luck!

Turns out my local store has Sargento Mozzarella, both the "Original" and "Natural" ones - many thanks for the tip. ^

The Voltage in Italy is 220. You would need to get one from a country that has 110. When I go to Colombia later this year I plan to pick one up.

Voltage isn't an issue.
Either get a transformer or have a 220 plug run :P

You'd need a transformer, but that is not an issue, as you said. Apparently, finding one of these babies in North America is impossible.

lovely

For a transformer make sure to get one that can handle the 1000 or 1200 watts these things pull. As to a 220 plug 220 plugs in the US residential are two legs of 110 not a true 220.

Here is a pic of one I made recently.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/4072652...in/photostream

The new baby has arrived from Rimini!

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...33755313C0.jpg

UK1, how big is the oven? How hot does it go? Tell!

I have worked out a method of making pizza that is ideal for my household. Always room for improvement but here's what we have so far.

Be warned, I am not the perfectionist that some of you are, nor do I strive for such heights. But when my pizza has reached the point that there are no "bones" (crusts) left for the dog and people beg me to make it, well I'm happy.

First off I use KA bread flour and a recipe for French bread rather than pizza dough (the main difference being 1 tsp of Crisco as opposed to olive oil...if you're going to cry blasphemy stop right here but it makes a divine crust).

Dough gets mixed in the kitchen aid and placed on the counter over the dishwasher (running) to rise. For some reason this combo allows the dough to rise beautifully even in winter and gives me a gorgeous, stretchy dough that can be pulled as thin as paper.

And speaking of paper...parchment paper can be your best friend. I make my pizzas up on parchment, use a peel to transfer them to the stones in the oven. Oven coming up...

I have a gas oven. It gets heated to 450. I place the oven racks on every other setting, starting from the top, and place a pizza stone on each rack. The stones get heated along with the oven and when everybody is screaming hot the pizzas on parchment get placed on the stones. Since the stones themselves are hot they're radiating heat down onto the pizza underneath them as well...kind of like the slots in a commercial pizza oven.

Two weeks ago I needed to make 4 pizzas at once as opposed to the usual 3 (3 oven racks) so I grabbed one of those thin, aluminum pizza pans and cooked the 4th pie on the bottom of the oven. I watched everything and had to shuffle some pies from the bottom to the top and vice versa but what a revelation! Thanks to spending time on the bottom of the oven, right over the fires of Hell, the crusts charred up beautifully.

Mine is a process that I've been tweaking over the years. I grew up making pizza and it wasn't until I was hanging out on assorted cooking forums that I realized all purpose flour wasn't really all purpose.

It is suitable for Neapolitan pizza which requires very high temperatures. It reaches 500c ie around 950f'ish ie over twice as hot as a domestic oven.

Dimensions:
Ext Dimensions: 555 x 460 x 290mm.
Cooking Area: 405 x 405 x H110mm.

... it is also a great bagel oven ..... although at a much lower temp!

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...4E7149CB02.jpg

Just had a homemade almond crust pizza. May like it more than regular

I really need to get into the pizza making game again.

I'm getting some for my birthday and I think that may be the last I buy for a bit :)

Some pizza porn to encourage you to get started ...... ;)


Some unexpected guests led to a production line. They may be ugly (the pizza not the guests) but they are light top Neapolitan pizza, except for the German salami which I prefer ... :eek:

Lucky I always keep dough balls maturing in the fridge ...... :D

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...8C00805109.jpg



http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...AF45C98658.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...EE44DCAFD3.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...B90F5A38F2.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...2914997F32.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...BBF5D1D9_1.jpg

Pizza lovers might be interested in a letter to the Editor of the THE SOUTH BUCKS FREE PRESS, SOUTH OXFORDSHIRE GAZETTE, in December 1860 about the correspondents discovery of Pizza in Naples.

Pdf>text not corrected but you'll get the drift.

That looks utterly delicious...

Except for that!

pizza is never ugly ;)

what recipe do you use for the dough? looking for something i wont screw up and can do without a mixer (we dont have one). gf is coming and I convinced her to try a arugula-prosciutto ;) one of my favorites :D and a plain cheese too but thats expected

Make it easy. My way is a little different but this will be good enough.

It's about the ratio of water to flour you keep in mind. Allow 200gms or so for a medium pizza ball. A big one is say 250gm. If you are making enough for 4 it will be 1000 gms for 4 big pizza. You want the ratio of water to flour as 64%'ish. So .. simple. For your 1kgm of finished dough you want say 600 gms of bread flour, 400 gms/mltr of water 12 to 15 gms of salt and 6 or 7 gms of instant yeast. Put it all in a bowl keeping the yeast away from the salt and mix. Put one of those hotel shower caps over the top and let it rise for a few hours. Don't put oil in the mix. You can make all this the previous day, leave it in a cold room and let the taste mature. A few hours before you are going to eat, then portion the balls and use some easy envelope folds ie pull the portions out and fold into the middle and make a ball. There is lot's of google youtube help if you want to see someone else doing this.

When you have the balls formed leave with an oiled cling film on top or a bin liner. I use lightly oiled lidded bowls and keep a few in the fridge all the time. When ready to make the pizza flatten the ball and pull it into the circle on a floured board. When it is roughly the right size sprinkle on top some semolina and then turn it over so the semolina is now the base flour. This will help make it not stick and give crispness from a domestic oven. The pizza base always seems to stick but as long as you have enough semolina or flour on the base you keep shaking it until it comes loose. It near enough always does ... lift the edges if it becomes belligerent.

Show us pictures of what you do or report back. :)

Thank you, uk1, for takimng the time to share the details of your dough prep routine with us. The dough is the big stumbling block for me and, I'm sure, for many others.

Thanks.

Just to be clear, that wasn't the way I do it, but I was asked specifically for something simple. I make every Wednesday or so for the weekends pizza ie 200gms of flour with 200ml of water and a few grams of yeast. This matures for a day or so and this becomes the starter for the mix the following day, This adds depth of flavour. It will end up as aroun 1200gm of dough to 64% hydration.

I use a simple spreadsheet to maintain the hydration of around 64%. I then only use the dough balls after they have been in the fridge for a few days. In Naples they prefer to eat the pizza from yesterday's dough and also use what is effectively a sourdough starter. My method is to my taste at least just as good. The approach above is a compromise to make it easier,

Happy to help any further if asked.

Duplicate