Monday, January 14, 2008

It seems to have worked

The recipe from last week worked very well. The dough was very workable, though a little wet, and it turned out to be fairly crisp. Next time, I will increase the cook time on the lower rack to 11 minutes.

I think I will also reduce the amount of water to 1 cup. The dough was a little wet and sticky, and I ended up adding more flour that I wanted.

I also ran out of pizza cheese and had to use mexican cheese on one pie. It worked really well, with some green peppers on there. Tasty.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Inaugural Post

So, this blog is really just a convenient way for me to record my pizza (and other cooking) thoughts and ideas. It's not really intended to be read, but if you're interested feel free.

My first pizza story is one of a slight setback. I was making pizza dough last night, after a long period of inactivity in the kitchen. I had previously made dough with a mix of white and whole wheat flour, but last night I forgot to add the white flour. I was also talking to someone when I was measuring out the flour, and lost track of how much I put in. I suspect I used too much, and subsequently had to add water and oil to make the dough workable. Also, the whole wheat is not as workable as the white flour.

Another unrelated note is that I can never get the crust as crispy as I want it. For next week, I am going to make the following modifications to my procedure:

Recipe:
2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cups warm water
1 packet yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

1 1/2 cups grated cheese per pie

preheat oven to 425 F

one rack low, one rack high in the oven

cook for 10 minutes on low rack, then 5 on high rack

This will produce less dough, that should be more workable. Also, the temperature is slightly higher than I normally use. We'll find out in a week if that helps.