Breadhead Friday: Pizzas I Have Known

It's been another extremely busy week.  Here are the highlights:

• The novella is finished editing and has gone on to formatting.  Once again, I've used Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide, which is an excellent resource on formatting documents into ebooks.  It's a somewhat lengthy process, but the results are worth it.
• I trained myself to use GIMP to create a cover for the novella.  GIMP is powerful, easy to use, and free.  Luckily, I have some experience using Photoshop, so GIMP wasn't terribly difficult to learn.  The cover photo was taken by me at 4:30 AM in downtown Dunedin.
• Everyone says that unless you're a graphic artist, you shouldn't do your own book covers.  That's mostly true. However, I have done professional graphic art and have experience designing both book and video covers.  The cover for Dreadedin Chronicles: The Nameless City is good and captures the feel and look of what I'd imagined.
• I changed the look of this blog.
• I practiced baking bread in a dutch oven.  The results have been good, but I want them to be great, so I continue to work at it.

With all that in mind, here are some pizzas I have made over the last few months.  This does not represent all of the pizzas; only the ones I remembered to take photos of.

Turkey pepperoni and chicken parm pizza

Turkey pepperoni, grilled chicken, and bacon

Turkey pepperoni, chicken parm, and bacon

Turkey pepperoni and bacon

Sloppy joe pizza

A few notes:

• Obviously, my family is keeping the turkey pepperoni industry afloat.  It's a heavy task, but someone has to do it.
• A chicken and bacon pizza is about as good as it gets, especially if it's chicken parm.  
• For the sloppy joe pizza, things went in a different but delicious direction: I added some leftover sloppy joes I'd made to the sauce, which gave it some extra protein and diced peppers.  The crust is also different: I used leftover lean dough from a dutch oven boule I'd made earlier in the week.  It's an experiment that's well worth repeating.
• And just so we don't seem like pigs here, a green salad always precedes pizza,  I call it a "kitchen sink" salad because I add diced apples, strawberries, blueberries, jicama, and papaya to the typical greens, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, peapods, etc.  It's become such a habit that our three-year-old naturally expects a salad before pizza. Go figure.

Breadhead Friday: Focaccia

The only experience most of us will have with focaccia is a dry piece flatbread served at chain restaurants as an Italian-style appetizer or part of a more ambitious bread basket.  Which is a shame, because properly prepared, there are few things in the world more delicious than focaccia.  Moist with herb oil and a tender, almost creamy crumb, you won't believe how good it can be.

By properly prepared, I mean you need to have a high hydration dough to get this to work (75%-80%).  The recipe I use is very similar to this raisin bread recipe, though I obviously leave out the dried fruit for more savory ingredients.

Before baking. Sliced tomatoes and plenty of herb oil

After baking: note the char. The herb oil cooks the tomatoes a little, too

A word of explanation about percentages: a 75-80% hydration dough means that if the weight of flour equals 100%, you need to have 75-80% of that weight in water, also.  So if you add a pound of flour, you have to add .75 or .85 lbs of water.  A more detailed explanation of baker's percentage can be found here.

Pepperoni pizza focaccia

Typically, I treat it like a pizza, and put various toppings on it.  We'd have it more often, but it's a bit time-consuming to make: lots of time and care.  But it's worth it.  Every delicious bite.  Make some.  You won't regret it.

Left: tomatoes and cheese. Right: tomatoes, sauteed onions and cheese

Breadhead Friday: Pizza Sauce Recipe

Pursuant to the post on making pizza at home, I want to give out my recipe for pizza sauce.  It's easy, quick, and tasty.  There's a brightness to it from the red wine vinegar, a little heat from the red pepper flake, and enough spices to give it great flavor, but not overwhelm the toppings and crust.

And the best part is that you don't have to cook it.  The sauce cooks on the pizza itself.

This recipe is the product of trial and error across dozens of pizzas, and will make enough sauce to cover five (5) average-sized pies.

Ingredients
1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
1 28 oz. can of tomato puree
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 and 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp basil
1 and 1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
A few shakes of red pepper flake
Salt to taste

Mise en place

All you have to do is put the ingredients into a bowl and mix them with a whisk.  Couldn't be easier.

In the bowl, ready to be whisked

Once you've got it mixed together, give it a little taste.  I know it's not cooked, but it'll be okay, I promise.  The tomatoes have been steamed as part of the canning process.  If it needs salt, add salt.

All mixed up

If you use the pizza recipe linked at the top of this post, you'll see that the pizza is baked at a pretty high heat (500 degrees F or higher).  So you don't need to cook the sauce: it's a thin layer on the dough that will get cooked as part of the baking process.

The sauce is on the pizza - REPEAT: the sauce is on the pizza

Portion out the sauce into five containers and freeze or refrigerate them as you see fit.  You may want to make this sauce a couple hours before making the pizza to allow the flavors to meld.

The distribution of pepperoni here is reminiscent of the Tunguska Explosion of 1908

There you go.  Now you've got one less excuse to go to Pizza Hut.  Not that there's anything wrong with Pizza Hut.

Delicious and Easy Saturday Night Pizza

A casual trip down the frozen food aisle of any American supermarket or a few minutes of watching network television will show you that we love pizza in the U.S.  My family's no different.  However, we're no longer fetched by TV commercials, Domino's blandishments, or chichi artisan pizzas that cost fifteen dollars for a burnt flatbread with goat cheese and arugula, because I make delicious pizzas to our taste about once a week.  And it's very easy to do.

The recipe I use is taken, in part, from this Quick Rustic Ciabatta Pizza recipe.  I have just altered it a little.

Required Special Equipment

A stand mixer

A kitchen scale

Required Materials

Parchment paper

Spray oil

Olive oil

Equipment That Is Good to Have but Not Necessary

A pizza stone (if not this, a cookie sheet)

A pizza peel (if not this, a second cookie sheet)

Ingredients

250 grams of bread flour (8.8 oz) - King Arthur brand flour provides the best results

7 grams salt (.25 oz)

1 tsp quick-rising yeast

1 cup water

Your favorite pizza cheese

Your favorite pizza sauce

Your favorite toppings

Directions:

Mise en place

Put the flour in the mixer bowl.  On one side of the bowl, put your yeast.  On the other side, your salt.  Cover them up with the flour a little: this keeps the salt from killing the yeast early in the mixing process.  Add the water, and with the paddle attachment, start mixing on slow speed.

It will look like this after twenty seconds or so

Once the ingredients are incorporated, turn the mixer on as fast as it will go.  This will not burn out the motor.  Keep it on the highest speed until it cleans the sides of the bowl: about five minutes or so, depending.  It will come together, trust me.  As it mixes, get a non-reactive, transparent vessel like a plastic pitcher and put spray oil on the inside.

Dough coming together

As it begins to transform from a batter to a dough, don't leave the mixer alone.  The mixer has a tendency to move a little, and you don't want it to hop off the counter.  Once it cleans the sides of the bowl, turn off the mixer and put the extremely wet, sticky dough into your prepared vessel.

It will look a lot like this

Cover the vessel with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place to rise.  You want it to triple in size.  Depending on the warmth of your rising/proofing place and the warmth of the water you put into the dough, this can take 90 minutes to two hours or more.  

Before the rise

If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit 45 minutes before you plan to bake.  If you don't have a pizza stone, put a cookie sheet into the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit 30 minutes before you plan to bake.  If your oven's temperature goes higher, take it to 550 or as high as it will go.  You want that oven very hot.

Tripled in size

Once the dough has tripled, tear off a sheet of parchment paper large enough to cover your pizza peel or the back of another cookie sheet and pour a tablespoon of olive oil onto it.  Spread the olive oil over the parchment paper at around the size you want the pizza to be and dump the risen pizza dough onto the oiled paper.

The dough on the oiled paper on the peel

Rub your hands on the oiled paper to get them slick and press the dough out into a rough pizza shape with your fingertips.  It doesn't have to be perfectly round.  I occasionally get them into that perfect circle shape, but it's not a big deal when I don't.  This is a homemade pizza, not a professional one.  The imperfection makes it yours.  Once the dough starts to really resist shaping, leave it alone for ten minutes to let the gluten in the dough relax.

Right after the first pressing/dimpling - note the air bubbles

After ten minutes, re-oil your hands and press the pizza out into its final shape.  Then spread the sauce onto it.  I have a delicious pizza sauce recipe that I'll post at a different time.

Saucy dough - yes, it's coming off the paper a little at the bottom there

Slide the sauced dough, along with the parchment paper, onto your pizza stone or cookie sheet in the oven and bake it for about 6 or 7 minutes.  If you put the cheese and toppings on now, the cheese will get very brown and crackly.  Which isn't bad if you like it that way.

Two minutes into the oven, and the bubbles are getting bigger

Get your cheese and toppings ready, and after that 6 or 7 minutes, open the oven and top the pizza.  There will be a good bit of steam that escapes from both the baking pizza dough and the sauce, and it'll be very hot, but if you top the pizza quickly, it's not a bad experience.  Just don't burn yourself.

Nascent pizza ready to be topped

I use a prepackaged cheese blend and turkey pepperoni typically, but we've also made some really delicious pizzas by putting on leftovers like burger pieces, grilled chicken, meatballs, sauteed peppers and onions, etc.  The dough's the canvas and you're the artist, so go wild.

Topped and ready for final baking

Bake for another 7 or 8 minutes, or until the crust gets golden brown and the cheese is melted.  The parchment paper will darken but not ignite.  Probably.  It never has with me, and I've done this in several different kitchens.  Still, be careful.

Done and out of the oven - note the char

A slice - the air bubbles in the crust give it flavor

You'll note that I don't add extra flour or water to the dough: just a little oil in the preparation process.  Despite that the dough is made of only four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, and water, it's really, really tasty.  Crunchy, chewy, and holds up to sauces and toppings.  It's a pizza you can look forward to.  

Is it as easy to prepare as a frozen Freschetta from a box?  No.  But it's vastly better, and you know exactly what's inside it.  It came out of your kitchen and you made it to your personal tastes.  With rising and shaping times, it can take between 2 and 2.5 hours to make, but it's worth it.