Sourdough Pizza
I worked in a lot of pizza kitchens before I got an engineering job. Pistol Pete's Pizza, Mama's Pizza, Sbarro, Pizza Inn, Pizza Hut, and some more I don't remember. What all those bad jobs gave me was a great pizza making skills. Now-a-days I still make pizza, but its a LOT better than what you get from those fast food joints.
Sourdough is the fine art of aged bread dough. You can start with an aged culture (the starter) or you can sour regular dough by aging it. The substance that makes sourdough sour is alcohol. As the yeast lives in your dough it eats the sugars in the dough and converts them (through biological action) to alcohol. When you cook the dough you kill the yeast and cook away the alcohol, and what is left is the sour taste. Fresh dough tastes "green" to me. I am a connoisseur. You can age the dough up to a couple of weeks in the fridge. I usually make a 2 pound batch of 4 ounce dough balls and store them in a hard container in the fridge. I usually let it age at least two days before making a pizza with it. Note here that if you use an aged culture to start the dough you dont have to age it before using it because it already has the aged yeast culture in it.
These recipes that I am attaching all use an aged starter culture. I have to write another recipe for regular pizza dough to be aged.
Bon Appe'tit
Sourdough Starter 09/24/2006
Michael Wriston CID+
Black Dog Engineering
The New Barbarian Cookbook
Ingredients:
2 cups of unbleached unbromated high gluten flour
2 cups of spring water
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon of granulated rapid rise yeast
Whisk all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Cover with a towel and let this sit on the counter for a few hours. It should bubble up and rise. This is why you want to use a large bowl. Stir up the mixture after 12 hours. Return to stir it every 12 hours after that. The longer this sits on the counter the more sour it will get. There are limits, however, if the mixture dries out or the yeast die the mixture will get taken over by mold. At this point it is considered bad, toss it. To prevent your sourdough starter from going bad put it into the refrigerator when you think the level of sour is right. This will lock in the moisture and put the yeast in suspended animation. To store the sourdough starter put it in a container with an airtight lid. Sourdough starter can be stored a long time but not forever. Always date your stored food. Sourdough starter is unique in the manner that it is a live culture and if you feed it, and treat it properly it will never die.
Maintaining your sourdough starter culture is relatively easy to do. Plus the advent of refrigeration makes that process a lot more forgiving. When ever you use some of the sourdough starter to make bread or pizza dough, you should replace what you took with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of spring water. Mix the starter together again. Allow it to sit on the counter for a day or more, depending on you taste preference. Finally put it back in the refrigerator to store it until the next time you make bread.
Thin Crust Pizza 10/01/2006
Michael Wriston CID+
Black Dog Engineering
The New Barbarian Style Cookbook
Dough Ingredients:
2/3 cup of sourdough starter
1 cup spring water
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cups unbleached, unbromated high gluten bread flour
2 teaspoons granulated rapid rise yeast
Pizza Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of New Barbarian Style Pizza Sauce
½ cup of shredded mozzarella cheese
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
20 slices of pepperoni
20 slices of pickled jalapeno
Making the dough (doh!):
You can make this dough by hand, but it is not recommended because the dough needs to be kneaded for at least 10 minutes to develop the gluten. That is fairly strenuous to do by hand. I recommend that you use a stand mixer or a bread machine to knead this dough. In the bowl of the stand mixer add the warm water, yeast, sugar, and salt. Whisk these ingredients together thoroughly. Then add the olive oil and sourdough starter, and whisk to combine. Add the flour on top of the liquid ingredients. Place the bowl on the stand mixer and secure. Use the dough hook attachment for kneading this pizza dough. Lower the hook into the bowl, and secure the head of the mixer. Turn the mixer on its lowest setting and knead the dough for 10 minutes. When the dough is ready it should form a single mass and pull away from the bowl. A properly kneaded dough ball will have cleaned all the flour mess out of the bowl and leave it sparkling clean. After the time has elapsed stop the mixer. Pull the dough hook out of the dough ball. Prepare a lidded cake pan or the equivalent to store the pizza dough by lining the pan with aluminum foil. Oil the foil with olive oil. Use your fingers to spread the oil around the foil evenly. This dough recipe produces 2 pounds of dough, so we want to divide the dough into 8 dough balls to yield ¼ pound dough ball. I use a kitchen scale to do this, that way I know I am getting uniform dough balls. After you make the dough ball place it in the oiled pan. When all the dough balls are formed place the lid on the pan and store the pan in the refrigerator until the dough is needed.
Forming the dough:
Thin crust pizza is meant to be cooked without a pan. To do this we need a pizza stone and a peel. The pizza stone is a round flat stone which is made of a ceramic material. The ceramic nature of the stone will allow it to store a lot of heat. It will literally cook the pizza from the bottom of the crust up. With this cooking method we don’t want a pan to get in the way of the heat so special considerations must be made to accommodate the dough with no pan. You will need some bench flour, a work surface, and a rolling pin. Flour the work surface. Retrieve one of the refrigerated dough balls and dust it with flour. Use your hands to flatten the dough ball into a disk. Continue to work the dough with your hands until the dough is about ¼ inch thick. Dust the dough with flour again and place it on the work surface. Using the rolling pin, start to flatten the dough adding extra flour if the dough sticks to the rolling pin. Rotate the dough and flatten it some more. Turn over the dough, add a little more flour and continue to flatten the dough using the rolling pin. Continue this process until the dough is stretched to a 12 inch disk and is very thin (0.050 inch). Sprinkle some flour or cornmeal on the pizza peel and then place the thin crust dough on the peel.
Making the Pizza:
This part of the recipe goes really fast. This pizza is cooked in an extremely hot oven and is done in five minutes. Preheat the oven to 500°F with the pizza stone on the middle rack. Roll out a dough ball. Sprinkle a little cornmeal on the pizza peel. Place the dough on the peel. Apply the New Barbarian Style Pizza Sauce to the dough and spread it around evenly to coat the dough taking care not to get it over the edge of the dough. Sprinkle the parmesan on top of the sauce. Evenly sprinkle the mozzarella on the pizza. Next add the pepperoni and jalapeno slices in a uniform arrangement. Now you are ready to cook the Thin Crust Pizza. You have to slide the pizza off the peel and onto the pizza stone. It will take some practice to be able to do this correctly. DO NOT leave the kitchen while this pizza is in the oven, it can go from done to charcoal in a minute. Once the pizza is in the oven set a timer for 5 minutes. At the 4 minute mark check the pizza. It is at this point that I rotate the pizza 180° to ensure even browning. Let the pizza cook for 1 more minute. To remove the pizza from the pizza stone take the pizza peel and slide it under the pizza, pick the pizza up, and take it out of the oven. I let the pizza sit on the peel for 30 seconds and then make 4 cuts with a pizza wheel. Slide the pizza off the peel onto a plate and serve.
Red Chile Pizza Dough 10/01/2006
Michael Wriston CID+
Black Dog Engineering
The New Barbarian Style Cookbook
Dough Ingredients:
2/3 cup of sourdough starter
1 cup spring water
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ancho chile ground fine
4 cups unbleached, unbromated high gluten bread flour
2 teaspoons granulated rapid rise yeast
Making the dough (doh!):
You can make this dough by hand, but it is not recommended because the dough needs to be kneaded for at least 10 minutes to develop the gluten. That is fairly strenuous to do by hand. I recommend that you use a stand mixer or a bread machine to knead this dough. In the bowl of the stand mixer add the warm water, yeast, sugar, and salt. Whisk these ingredients together thoroughly. Then add the olive oil and sourdough starter, and whisk to combine. Add the flour on top of the liquid ingredients. Place the bowl on the stand mixer and secure. Use the dough hook attachment for kneading this pizza dough. Lower the hook into the bowl, and secure the head of the mixer. Turn the mixer on its lowest setting and knead the dough for 10 minutes. When the dough is ready it should form a single mass and pull away from the bowl. A properly kneaded dough ball will have cleaned all the flour mess out of the bowl and leave it sparkling clean. After the time has elapsed stop the mixer. Pull the dough hook out of the dough ball. Prepare a lidded cake pan or the equivalent to store the pizza dough by lining the pan with aluminum foil. Oil the foil with olive oil. Use your fingers to spread the oil around the foil evenly. This dough recipe produces 2 pounds of dough, so we want to divide the dough into 8 dough balls to yield ¼ pound dough ball. I use a kitchen scale to do this, that way I know I am getting uniform dough balls. After you make the dough ball place it in the oiled pan. When all the dough balls are formed place the lid on the pan and store the pan in the refrigerator until the dough is needed.
Forming the dough:
Thin crust pizza is meant to be cooked without a pan. To do this we need a pizza stone and a peel. The pizza stone is a round flat stone which is made of a ceramic material. The ceramic nature of the stone will allow it to store a lot of heat. It will literally cook the pizza from the bottom of the crust up. With this cooking method we don’t want a pan to get in the way of the heat so special considerations must be made to accommodate the dough with no pan. You will need some bench flour, a work surface, and a rolling pin. Flour the work surface. Retrieve one of the refrigerated dough balls and dust it with flour. Use your hands to flatten the dough ball into a disk. Continue to work the dough with your hands until the dough is about ¼ inch thick. Dust the dough with flour again and place it on the work surface. Using the rolling pin, start to flatten the dough adding extra flour if the dough sticks to the rolling pin. Rotate the dough and flatten it some more. Turn over the dough, add a little more flour and continue to flatten the dough using the rolling pin. continue this process until the dough is stretched to a 12 inch disk and is very thin (0.050 inch). Sprinkle some flour or cornmeal on the pizza peel and then place the thin crust dough on the peel.
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