Pizzeria Pizza Dough

  Many years ago I made my own pizza dough at home. I was trying to re-create the dough we used at the pizza shop I worked at as a student, but I never really found what I was looking for and consequently when I discovered I could buy pizza dough balls at the grocery store I had to try them. It turns out they were pretty good and a whole lot less trouble too. But, I can't really take the complete home pizza journey unless I make my own dough. So, after all these years I finally found what I was looking for and I got a little help from an unexpected source. I knew what ingredients I wanted to use and I knew some of the relative amounts, but we used to make 45 doughs at a time at the pizza shop and scaling that down to 1 pizza dough was the real challenge I was facing. Thats where the unexpected help comes in: introducing ..... the Lehmann Pizza Dough Calculator (insert angelic voices here). This tool allowed me to quantify and tweak those ingredients and ratios until I finally found the dough of my dreams. :-)

  Now, having said all that, I am fairly old school when it comes to cooking and baking. I learned to cook using volumetric ratios (ya know, measuring cups and the like), but when it comes to dough, I think a scale is the only way to go (at least for the flour and water). If you want that extra measure of success, you really need to use a scale when it comes to bread and pizza dough.

Pizzeria Pizza Dough
12.82 oz ap flour (100%) (approximately 2 3/4 c)
7.82 oz water (61%)
.03 oz/ 1/4 tsp instant dry yeast (.21%)
.17 oz/ 1 tsp sea salt (1.32%)
.28 oz/ 2 tsp sugar (2.19%)

  I throw all these ingredients into my Kitchenaid mixer and combine with a dough hook for about 5 minutes. I then dump it on to my floured counter top and let it rest for 5 minutes. You should end up with a dough ball around 1.3 lbs that is soft and slightly tacky. This is adequate for a 16 or 18 inch pizza. For a 14 inch pizza you may want to try 1 lb dough balls. You could triple this recipe and cut the resulting mass into 4 pieces or you could use the Lehmann Pizza Dough Calculator (LPDC) to back calculate a 1 lb dough ball from the ratios listed above. Below is a shot of the LPDC in action:

  Ok, so you have a hunk of dough ... now what. This next piece is fairly important if you want to make a round pizza without any holes in it when you stretch it. Hold the dough with both hands and curl your fingers in toward the center of the dough ball while stretching the other side of the dough ball with your palms. Turn the dough a quarter turn and do the same curling motion again. Do this 3 or 4 times. If done correctly you should have a dough ball that is nice and smooth and tight on one side and messy and ragged with a hole in the middle on the other side. Pinch and twist all the ragged parts together in the center closing the hole. This ragged side will be the bottom of your dough ball. Place the dough ball (bottom side down) in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with saran wrap for a few hours to proof at room temperature. You can tell when the dough is done proofing because the dough will have relaxed significantly and it will have a bit of a sheen to it (see pics below). If you want to freeze the dough, stick it in a lightly oiled quart freezer bag to proof for a few hours and then stick it in the freezer in such a way as to preserve the shape of the ball until it is frozen.

Before proofing. Dough is semi-tight with no sheen.

After proofing. Dough has relaxed and has a bit of a sheen to it.

  I am not a big fan of the 'faster is better' philosophy, but sometimes you need to get things done a little quicker than normal. I have proofed this dough in as little as 45 minutes and had good results. For the fast proof method, use warm water when you make the dough and proof the dough in your oven that has been pre-heated to 100 degrees F (turn the oven off after pre-heating). Place the saran covered bowl (and dough) in the oven for 45-60 minutes.

  If you need a little help on stretching the dough to make a round pizza, I discuss this technique here.
 Enjoy!

TTFN
B

Update

  Wow, it has been many months since I have written an entry. My last entry corresponds with the failure of my laptop which is the computer that I had setup to do all my blogging. I haven't replaced it yet, so entries may not be as regular as they have been in the past, but I think it is time for an update. I haven't been completely idle though. I still have several entries from last year to finish and several new items from this year as well. Planning for this year's bucket garden has commenced, and I am excited to see if any of the seeds I saved from last year will grow into nice plants this year.

  The majority of my efforts since the beginning of the year have been spent on bread baking and the pursuit of the perfect (to me) home pizza. I have learned a great deal and have been rewarded with some personal successes. I can't wait to share my findings. Along this same line of discussion I have purchased two books that I highly recommend to anyone interested in artisan bread baking. The first book is the The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens  by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott. This book is of great interest to myself for the detailed discussion on building bread ovens and for the stories of real artisan bakers around the country who make great life sacrifices to create real bread for people who appreciate such things. The second book should be a staple reference for any bread baker: The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. The Bread Bible is a good solid reference for all things bread related.
  As soon as I can get myself back in the habit of blogging on a regular basis there should be a small flurry of entries to get things caught up. :-)

TTFN

B

Traditional Brown Irish Soda Bread

  We recently returned from Ireland and one of my favorite things from Ireland is soda bread. I want to set the record straight on this subject. Many people think Irish Soda Bread is some sort of fruit cake like bread with nuts and dried fruit. It doesn't help when you can go to tourist type places in Ireland and buy something that resembles the description above. Understand one thing, soda bread is peasant food, damn good peasant food, but peasant food none-the-less. The traditional version is very simple. The people who subsisted on this bread didn't have an abundance of sugar, nuts and dried fruit.

  I looked around on the internet for a traditional recipe and got a wide veriety of results. I picked what I thought was the closest version and adapted as necessary. The traditional recipe contains only whole wheat flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. Here is the recipe I used:

Traditional Brown Irish Soda Bread (2 loaves or 4 rounds)

4 c whole wheat flour

1 c flour
1/3 c rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 c buttermilk

  Preheat oven to 425 degrees farenheit. I didn't have buttermilk so I used the common substitute of 1 tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice for every cup of milk. Combine all ingedients in an appropriate bowl. Only work the dough as much as is needed to thoroughly combine ingedients, no more. I put my dough in a Pyrex loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes.
  For a more traditional result, use irish oat meal instead of rolled oats and form the loaves into rounds and score the top of the loaf into quarters.
 
  Of course, the final results makes a great vehicle for butter and our homemade peach jam. Enjoy!

TTFN
B

Grilled Sourdough and Eggplant Sandwich

  I saw a great recipe on another blog that I like to read and it inspired me to make this sandwich. I wanted to put a link on this entry to that recipe, but after searching through the contents I couldn't find it. However, the blog has a lot of good stuff on it and here is a link to it, http://www.eatdrink onewoman.com/.

  This was a natural evolution for me. I really like all the components to this sandwich, so it was inevitable. I prepared it the same way I would a grilled cheese sandwich. Butter two slices of sourdough bread. Put them butter side down in a pan on medium heat, pile a little shredded mozzarell cheese on each slice, put a slice of grilled eggplant on each slice of bread and put a little red sauce on one side. When the cheese has melted a little, invert one slice on to the other and brown each side until done. Enjoy!

TTFN

B

Sourdough Bread

  I have embarked upon another journey, only, this one has me a little more excited than pasta and canning. I feel like Tom Hanks' character on the beach in Cast Away when he has his arms extended to the heavens shouting, "I HAVE MADE FIRE." Only, I would shout, "I HAVE MADE BREAD." Bread you say? Anyone can make bread .... Well, as it turns out this last statement is true, but there is a little twist ... you are only allowed to use three ingredients; flour, water and salt. No store bought yeast, no oil or butter, no fancy dough conditioners or vital gluten, no store bought pre-mixed dough in a bag ... just flour, water and salt. What do you say now ...?

  If you are not already familiar with this process then you will be amazed at how easy it is to do, how nice it looks out of the oven and how supremely awesome it tastes. This was made with only three ingredients, some time to prepare and read about the process and some common kitchen items. I am not going to describe the step by step detailed process to you or shoot a video because many people before me have already done this and they are much better at it than I am. I will give you a road map though and provide you with my lessons learned. I started this journey about a week and a half ago and had some failures in the beginning, but now I know what to do and maybe I can save you a little time if you care to try this. First of all this is what my first success looked like out of the oven this morning:

I think it looks pretty sexy. :-)  Anyone can do this. It might even be fun to do with kids because it is that easy. First, learn about sourdough starters and how to make them by visiting this link. Sourdough Baking by John Ross will explain most of what you need to know about making a sourdough starter and he will even give you a recipe for making the bread, but I suggest you read on and follow a different bread recipe which will unfold as we go. Don't add commercial yeast either. If you follow John's direction (minus the commercial yeast) it will work. I will mention a few things here while we are on the subject of sourdough starters. If you have city water, don't use the water straight out of the tap for the dough or the starter. It may kill your local wild yeasts that have setup camp in your sourdough starter container. This was the cause of all of my failures. As soon as I stopped using my city water out of the tap, things started coming together. Hopefully I can help someone avoid this frustration because it almost stopped me from continuing. Feel free to use well water from the tap or city water from a Brita filter or I read you can leave a container of city water out on your counter for 8 to 10 hours and the chlorine will go away.

Next, watch the video below. It will explain a technique that somehow attracted a cult following. Very similar techniques are used in other place around the world, but somehow in all our wisdom and gadgetry we lost this process and Mark Bittman and Jim Leahy are here to remind us.

Ok, the important parts to take away from the first video is the container Jim Leahy used to bake the bread and how simple his technique is. The next video will tie this technique together with sourdough baking and provide an easy to use and remember recipe for the bread. I want to warn you, the video is a little freaky, but it has all the info you need to get where we are going.

That's it! It couldn't be any easier. Here is the bread recipe if you missed it:

No Knead Sourdough Bread (1,2,3 method or 1,1,2,3 method for you detailists)

1 c sourdough starter

1 c warm water

2 tsp salt

3 c flour

There may be some differences due to oven type, choice of baking vessel or sourdough starter characteristics, but this is the general process which can be tweaked for your set of variables. Mix the ingredients together in a bowl. This step shouldn't take more than a minute. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or equivalent covering. Let the dough rise for 6 to 12 hours. Many factors contribute to this time. Ambient temperature, water temperature, sourdough starter yeast population .. etc. When the dough has doubled, put your baking vessel in the oven and turn the oven temperature to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is at the set temperature, carefully (so you don't deflate it) dump the dough on to a floured surface. Fold all four sides toward the center of the dough. Sprinkle corn meal in your baking vessel or all over the outside of your dough. Put the dough in the baking vessel and cover for 25 minutes. Remove the lid from the baking vessel and bake for 10 minutes more.

A few things I noticed ...

I used a $10 Granite Ware Roaster to make the loaf this morning. I also purchased an unglazed clay vessel from Romertopf for the same purpose. I noticed they definitely have different baking characteristics and I am guessing it has to do with the thickness of the vessel material. My loaves darken much quicker on the thinner Granite Ware roaster than with the Romertopf. I am guessing the you could also use the glazed ceramic insert from a CrockPot. For the crock lid just used some tin foil because most CrockPot lids have some sort of plastic handle that won't survive the high oven temperatures. It is important that the vessel have a lid, preferably the vessel should be bigger than your loaf so you can get it out and use some sort of edible grit on the bottom of the vessel to keep the dough from sticking. You can use corn meal, multi-grain cereal like Uncle Bob's, wheat bran or anything like those things already mentioned. Also, the instructions for the sourdough starter tell you to throw half of it away when you feed it. It also instructs to add 1/2 c water and 1/2 c of flour. You don't have to throw it out. You can use it to make all kinds of things like pancakes or biscuits. If you know you are making several loaves then add more than 1/2 c of water and flour. Just make sure there is enough starter left to continue the colony.

My intent here was not to re-invent sourdough bread. People have been making this bread for thousands of years. It doesn't need to be re-invented, but somehow it seems out of reach for most people which seems completely wrong. Maybe it just needs to be re-introduced. Something that was a common everyday process has been replaced with a loaf of Wonder bread form the grocery store. I feel sorrow for those people who will never experience what I felt and tasted this morning. Experiment with it. Try making rye, whole wheat, multi-grain, pumpernickle, ciabatta, english muffins, buscuits, sweet breads ...... the list is endless, but use the process explained above to do it. 

If you give this a try, you won't be sorry and maybe we'll get a chance to break bread together sometime. :-)

TTFN

B