Are you making pizza this weekend??
If so what is your plan? What kind of dough or prep? What style? How are you going to bake it? Any changes from last time you made pizza?
My neighbors keep bugging me to get back into the game and sling some pies for the neighbor hood, so I’m planning on prepping 4 400 gram dough balls this weekend. I’m still using the King Arthur high gluten (14%) flour in my standard recipe. Its been a bit cooler, but we’re still in the 60%+ humidity range (as usual).
I replaced the synthetic stone in my qstove a few weeks ago with a 3/8ths baking steel. That seems to have made the difference on getting a nicely bit of charring on the bottom, but I still have an issue with heat transfer from the inside to the outside. I want to try getting my stove up to around 900 degrees on the steel, then turn the heat way down and let the stone come down to maybe 750, with very little heat on the top. I’m going to try and get the heat on the steel extremly uniform, and hopefully have enough banked to fully cook the bottom with out having to rely on heat transfer. I really wish this thing had flame hitting the bottom of the stone/ steel directly.
I’ve been using King Arthur’s crispy cheesy pan pizza recipe for years. I just use all-purpose flour and a 10" cast iron pan, and the results have been great every time.
I started buying 25lb bags of restaurant bread flour, which is at around 13-14%. Significantly cheaper than King Arthur and essentially the same quality. I’ll have 5 lbs in my cupboard and store the rest in a freezer in 5LB bags until need for use. Works really well.
That sounds way too hot! My steel can get too hot and will burn my pizzas before the toppings cook through and the cheese melts, and that’s just heating it to 550°F for long enough.
Well I wasn’t planning on that before reading this post!
Maybe I’ll again use that vegan cheese (Miyoko’s Pourable Mozzarella). That worked out well the last few times.I haven’t decided which crust to use yet. I’ll be doing a ricotta base with spinach and smoked gouda.
Edit: I’ve decided to try king Arthur’s wholewheat crust.
I’ll be making pan pizza with Muenster cheese for that nice melty-buttery goodness with the caramelized edges all around. Not quite Detroit style but close enough. I don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to pizza dough, so I’ll be adding a couple tablespoons of vital wheat gluten flour to strengthen the dough, and let it rise in the same pan I bake it in.
Sauce is homemade, I just blend a can of San Marzano tomatoes with baked garlic, olive oil, and dried basil.
Probably gonna top it with sauteed mushrooms and red peppers and feta cheese.
I use one of these beautiful things
very interesting 🤔.
I saw this and was the fence compared to the q stove. The Qstove is bad ass if a bit expensive for a single use piece of equipment, but it’s biggest flaw is the heat source not (also) coming from below.
BUT it’s got the auto rotation. Now that I’ve swapped the stone for steel, I think I’ll get the bottom conditions I’ve been looking for.
Not to be to forward, but I’d love 💕 to see your bottom some time.
I’m going to make home made dough. Store bought spaghetti sauce and pepperonis. Flatten dough and ingredients, crimp closed like a dumpling and literally toss in the ashes next to a fire in the mountains. I’m calling them ash cake calzones. Did a test a month ago = delicious.
store bakery french bread, pan roasted cherry tomatoes mashed with whatever looks good on the spice rack, smush onto prebuttered french bread and sliced moz on top, toast in oven till melty and enjoy.
That is lunch tomorrow. Simple and pedestrian but tasty af
