The Pizza Thread

[Mr. Dazzle]

Pineapple!

Burn the heathen.

[weeksy]

Pineapple!

Burn the heathen.

He's 12, it's allowed

[Mr. Dazzle]

Mrs. D likes double pineapple on hers and nothing else.

I do it for her, but I wouldn't do it for anyone else.

[mangocrazy]

Been doing homemade pizza for several years now, using various types of flour and with mixed results. Never got the hang of pizza stretching so just rolled it out with a rolling pin, which I know is as wrong as wrong can be...

But I've been saved by the power of the Lord and have repented. No more shall a rolling pin come near my dough. I've also bought a 3kg bag of 'Pizza and Ciabatta' flour from Gilchester Organics and will give that a proper crack. Anyone else used that? Anyway, I've got 3kg of it to burn through so it's immaterial...

Lastly, is it OK to freeze dough for use at a future time? Much as I love pizza I can't face it for 3 or 4 nights on the trot. Would it be OK to freeze the unused dough balls after they've risen for a couple of hours and after you've chopped them up into individual portions? That would seem the obvious time for such a move.

And pineapple on pizza is cool. So sue me.

[weeksy]

I'll let you know tomorrow. We froze sone about 10 says ago. It's pizza night tomorrow

[KungFooBob]

I'll be 43 in April. I've never eaten pizza.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I used to have left over dough when I made it in the mixer with a kneading attachment. Said attachment works better when the bowl is fuller, hence the left over dough.

Nowadays though I do a sourdough recipe with no kneading. It takes about 48 hours all in (more like 60 if you've not done it for a while) but there's no kneading. Thus it's easy just to make the quantity you require.

[Silly Car]

I often use frozen dough balls from my local Italian wholesalers, not as refined as home made but great for same day pizzas. At around 30p each (IIRC), they are a good compromise and make lovely bread

[Mr. Dazzle]

If you're struggling to throw them BTW it's likely because you've not balled the dough the right way. You can't really just grab a handfull of dough and throw it into a Pizza...well you can, but it will be really hard to do! Once you've cracked it throwing them is generally pretty straightforward, both because the dough is much stronger but also much less sticky.

You need to ball the dough up well in advance, with sourdough you're talking 24hr in advance. The acid test for me is poking the dough. If jts worked properly you should be able to poke the dough ball with your finger almost all the way through and it should still spring back to its original shape immediately.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I used our oven for the first time this year last night. Over the winter it tends to get a bit soggy cause all the insulation materials are quote porous, so I usually have a few fires in spring before actually using it in anger.

Its clearly nice and dry now though cause it got to "crazy hot" in no time. I singed the hair off the back of my hand taking this photo. The key test is whether the walls of the oven are white, when you first fire it up they get all blackned with soot, when they're hot enough the soot will burn off and reveal the white surface again. Soot won't burn below about 500 centigrade, which tells you how toasty it is in there.



When it's really hot the wood burns down to very little ash in no time, at which point you just brush it to the back (with a long handle brush!) and away you go....



That photo is about 30s into the cook with about a minute left to go.

[Asian Boss]

Stop being so tight and get a proper stuffed crust one from Pizza Hut, cooked in a proper oven. Not that thin crap covered in ash.