Yesterday it was experiment time. Now I know enough about pizza-making to not panic when things go wrong. (Famous last words).
One thing I've learned about an extensive pizza session is to prepare the day before. Do all the prep of the meats and vegetables and cheese. That means, cook the Italian sausage, shred the prosciutto, slice the olives, onions, peppers, mushrooms, garlic or whatever it is you're using, make the tomato sauce you'll be using, and stash it all in the refrigerator. Then actually assembling and making the pizzas should be fairly brief.
So the next day all you have to do is preheat the oven (I suggest for at least an hour at 550 degrees, with your pizza stone in), bring the dough to room temperature, bring out the mozza di bufala and let it drain, assemble your dough board, corn meal, olive oil and brush (if you use olive oil) and you're set.
I had a to-and-from with Blork as I was doing the prep and I asked if he thought my following theory might hold water: I figured that if you kept all the ingredients as cold as possible, they wouldn't cook as quickly and the crust would have more time to develop a char and a crispy underside.
He figured that it would probably delay the cooking for less than a minute, and maybe possibly cool the stone down as well. Good reasoning!
Then, I wondered if the layering made a difference. He pretty much described his layering the same way I do it; stuff like green peppers, slivered onions, mushrooms (if any are being used) on the bottom, followed by possibly some cheese, then the meats/olives and then the top layer of cheese.
I agreed with him, but since I was making four pizzas I decided to experiment.
One thing I found out right away is that the first pizza will be the best. The stone will be ultra-hot and the oven won't have been opened for an hour and a half.
Then it goes downhill with all the opening of the oven and the repeated cooling of the stone, but it's unavoidable, unless you have all four pizzas dressed and sitting on their peels and you just shove them in one after the other. Which can't be done in my kitchen.
What I also found is that the cheese on the bottom is a very bad idea. I did two identically topped goat-cheese pizzas but just reversed the layering, and the one with the toppings on the top burned badly. The one with the cheese on top was pretty damn good.
I found that I could get a pizza done in 7-8 minutes, which is pretty good, considering some home recipes call for 15-20 minutes on 425! Ouch, don't be giving me a slice of that.
So, the pizza saga goes on. I will not rest until the dough does! (Hey, I'm getting pretty good at spinning! They're actually looking non-rhomboid!)
Regarding the cheese on top/bottom, I don't have a hard rule on that. It depends on the thickness of the crust, the kind of cheese, and the kind of toppings.
ReplyDeleteBTW, don't necessarily knock the 425° pizzas. Thick crust pizzas are typically baked at a lower temperature to allow the dough to bake all the way through. Think Chicago style, (American) Sicilian style (not to be confused with authentic Sicilian pizza), etc. They can be mighty tasty, but they use a different method.
What you're shooting for is essentially the Neapolitan style, using very high heat and thinish crust. However, you are Americanizing it by putting on lots of toppings, so you're really making a hybrid style. That might be at the root of your troubles; you're trying for something that is neither here nor there. Because you're making a hybrid, you need to think differently, and to not base your expectations on that which is fully this or that.
Does that make any sense? ;-)
Yes, that makes total sense. It makes sense that a thin-crust pizza won't tolerate a million toppings . . . I'll have to take your advice and simplify. Next project!
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right about the 425 pizzas. But I haven't heard about anyone rave about the awesome thick-crust pizza method they've just come up with! =+)
Dat's for chumps, bub. Viva Napoli!