It's Friday Wednesday night, time for our weekly pizza!
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Please join me below the orange croissant for more.
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OK, so my timing is off a little. This is actually the story of pizza we had at home last Friday night. The photos below were taken that evening, for a (then-) future diary. Circumstances being what they are, tonight is the online equivalent of a "results show".
At our house, pizza is kind of a Friday night tradition. We either go out for dinner, or I make pizza. Unless, of course, we do something completely different.
I make everything from scratch to the extent that it's practical. In most major cities you can buy the dough pre-made from the refrigerated section of a large supermarket, or other specialty stores, and of course you can always buy pre-made sauces for a wide variety of tastes. Presented below is my way; you may do things differently at your house. We begin with sauce.
A word about ingredients. I don't really measure anything, except for the dough itself, where proportions are critical. Making a sauce is the sort of thing that you just know how to do, with experience. But I'll try to give measurements here that are more or less accurate.
Pizza Sauce
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1/2 4-oz can tomato paste
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
1 tsp. salt
dried chilis
several cloves fresh garlic
What you see below are 2 kinds of dried chilis, both from an Asian supermarket. On the left, the small pods are called "hot pot chilis" on the package. On the right, a few dried Cayenne chilis. Both of these pack some heat. Before grinding them in a coffee grinder I use for spices, I break away any stem pieces still attached, and shake out some of the seeds. How much or how little heat you put into the sauce, is up to you. You could substitute a pre-ground chili product, or even plain black pepper, depending on your personal taste.
Here are before and after shots of the sauce ingredients. The chilis have been ground, and the garlic minced.
Also note, I only use about half of the can of tomato paste pictured. The rest can be set aside for other use. If you're up to it, you can use all of the paste, doubling everything else, and make a double batch of sauce for freezing. If you have no idea how to use the rest of the tomato paste, you could instead buy a squeeze tube of the stuff, available at Italian markets. It keeps for some time in the fridge.
Note: You can click on any of the photos to see a much larger and detailed version.
Sautee the tomato paste in the olive oil, over medium high heat, which brings out the sweetness in the paste as it partially caramelizes. Stir pretty much continuously with a rubber spatula, taking care not to burn it. Add in the garlic and chilis; flavor compounds in both will be enhanced by cooking with the oil.
Mix everything together until aromatic, then add the crushed tomatoes, salt, and seasonings. Cook for a few minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently. You want a fairly thick sauce for spreading on the pizza dough, so cooking time will vary depending on how much water is in the brand of crushed tomatoes you use.
When your cooked sauce cools, set aside enough for tonight's pizza. Divide the rest up into equal portions, and freeze in zipper-lock bags. Exactly how much sauce you need for each pizza is going to vary according to your tastes, the size of the pizza, and so on. This sauce also goes well with pasta. Lasagna is a good use for it.
Now on to the dough.
Pizza Dough
2 cups fine-grind whole wheat flour
2 cups bread flour
4 cloves fresh garlic
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. instant yeast
1 3/4 cup room-temperature water
You read that right, garlic is in the dough ingredients. I also use a 50/50 combination of whole wheat flour and bread flour. It gives a great boost to the pizza crust flavor. You can use all bread flour if you like. But going the other way, increasing the proportion of whole wheat, is risky. It changes the chemistry of the whole product, in particular the balance of water and yeast.
By the way, this is essentially the same ingredients for pizza dough from the book Baking Illustrated, by the fine people at Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen.
Mince the garlic, and gently sautee it in the olive oil. You want to "sweat" the garlic to soften it and release some of its moisture. Stop just before it starts to turn golden brown.
Put the dry ingredients into the bowl of a food processor. Use the plastic dough blade, and the machine's dough setting, if you have that. You can also mix the dough by hand.
Pulse a couple of times to blend the dry ingredients, then add the garlic/olive oil mixture. With the machine running, pour the water through the shute. The dough should come together into a ball. Stop adding water when it gets to that state, or add a little more if necessary. Whole wheat flour will want a little more water than all bread flour. Run the machine another 30 seconds or so.
Turn the dough out of the machine onto a lightly floured counter, and knead it for a minute or so. Place into a bowl sprayed with PAM (or other cooking spray), turn the dough around in the bowl to coat with the spray, and cover with plastic wrap.
Let the dough rise at room temperature for 45 minutes to one hour, until it doubles in bulk.
Divide the dough into pizza-size portions. I make 6 thin-crust 10" pizzas out of one batch. I use 2 portions that day, divide up, wrap, and freeze the other portions for future use. Today's portions will be loosely wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for later on. You can tightly wrap the freezer portions, but the refrigerator portions should be a little more loose, as the dough will continue to rise.
We are going to need some toppings for this pizza.
Here is one small-ish head of fresh garlic, broken down into individual peeled cloves. I like garlic on my pizza. Lots of it. There are many ways to prepare garlic, a popular one being roasting. For pizza, I like to do it this way.
Cut the garlic cloves lengthwise in halves or quarters depending on their size. Put in a small pan, and add a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil. Poach the garlic gently in the oil over medium heat. They will give up some moisture, and shrink somewhat. You can cook the garlic until it is just soft, or go further until they turn brown and crispy, or anywhere in between. I aim for somewhere in between. A little of the garlicky oil goes well on the pizza, and you can also save it for other uses such as salad dressings.
Here's tonight's collection of pizza toppings. Each week might have a different combination, depending on my mood and what's in the fridge.
Pizza Toppings
dried crispy shrimp
poached garlic from above
spicy tomato sauce from above
deli meats: chorizo, spicy capicollo, spicy genoa
goat cheese
pitted and halved kalmata olives
sliced tomato
fresh grated parmigiano
As it happens, my Partner does not eat cheese in any way, shape, or form. For this reason, I make two completely separate pizzas. Mine gets the full cheese treatment; his gets the sliced tomatoes, and the dried crispy shrimp (from an Asian market, these are not to my liking so I don't eat them). In other words, not all of this stuff is going on every pizza.
Here is one of the two 10" thin-crust pizza crusts, rolled out on the counter. These are very thin. If you like a thicker crust, you can make it less than 10". Or use more dough. Experiment.
A small drizzle of the garlic olive oil, spread around, goes down first, then a couple of spoonfuls of the sauce. The oil helps prevent the sauce from sogging through the dough, especially if one of your masterpieces has to wait for its turn in the oven. Then distribute your toppings, ending up with the parm as the top layer.
Pizzas are now assembled and ready to bake. I use parchment paper under each, making it easier to slide off the peel, onto the baking stone which has been pre-heating in a 500F oven for at least half an hour. The trick is to leave the parchment just long enough for the crust to start to set, then yank it out with tongs. The paper will burn if left too long, so you have to watch for (or get to know) just the right moment.
This is Partner's pizza, just out of the oven and ready to slice and serve.
Here's mine, in the oven on the hot stone, which is positioned on the second highest rack position. In this position, it bakes quickly on both top and bottom.
And finally, ready to eat!
When I'm cooking indoors, I bake one pizza at a time on the hot stone. At high temperature, it's literally only a few minutes, so it's not a long wait to get the second one in there. In better seasonal weather, I cook outdoors on the gas grill. Then, I use two perforated metal pans instead of the wooden peel; the pans go right on the hot pre-heated grill, cooking at the same time.
TOP PHOTOS
May 20, 2014
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