The other night we tried out a new pizza recipe from Good Eat’s guru, Alton Brown.
I really liked that the dough is made the night before and allowed to set-up in the fridge – this way, when I’m in a hurry to make dinner the next night, I can quickly take out the dough, stick the pizza stone in the oven, and quickly whip up some homemade pizza.
Overall, I was pretty happy with how the pizzas turned out (one recipe makes two medium pizzas) –
2 chief issues – my husband didn’t love the texture of the dough, and Alton called for flour on the pizza peel – I went against my instinct and trusted him on this. Big mistake.  Using flour made the dough stick to the peel horribly, and, as you can see from the wonky shape of the pizzas, it was a real pain to slide the pizza off onto the 500F stone without destroying the pizza and losing all the toppings. Always ALWAYS use cornmeal on the pizza peel, and you won’t have dough stick to it.
The kids had simply mozarella, parmesan and ham on their pizza, and we added red peppers on ours. I’m looking forward to having enough basil from the garden soon to add that, and in retrospect, I should have added some kale as well, which crisps up nicely on a pizza. But, I used what I had on hand and was in a hurry.
We are hoping to build an outdoor wood-fired bread and pizza oven this summer (not sure yet if it’ll be cob or brick), so that we can continue to bake in the heat (if it ever arrives), and would like to start our own version of Barbara Kingsolver’s tradition of homemade pizza on Fridays – using whatever fresh ingredients the garden or market provide.
Eventually, we hope that the bread/pizza oven would be a place to foster community in Parkrose – folks in our neighborhood could gather and bake bread once a week (just like an article I read in Sunset magazine about the Cully neighborhood’s bread oven). I’d let people know that I’m going to fire up the oven every Friday at a certain time, and anyone who wants to bake can come with their dough and we can have tea and chit-chat while it bakes.
In the meantime, we’re still in search of the perfect pizza dough recipe – if you have a favorite, please share it with me! Thanks!
Anyway, best get out to the yard for a bit while the sun shines!
we have a couple of experienced natural builders and a couple of children who love mud who love to help build a COB oven!
We would LOVE LOVE LOVE help in building an oven!! We’ve never tried building with cob before, but I loved the one at TLC Farms (w/ a build in bench through which a pipe is directed, so you have a warm seat in the winter!!).
We’ve used Alton’s dough recipe in the past and loved it but recently have tried two other recipes just to see what else it out there. The first was Peter Reinhart’s recipe from ‘The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.’ It turned out ok but was a little bland for us. The second one on the other hand is now our go-to pizza dough recipe and it is from Jim Lahey’s book, ‘My Bread.’ In his method the dough is actually spread inside a half sheet pan, which is something that is nice for us because we don’t have a pizza stone (or its ceramic tile counterpart). Also it can be made the day before and refrigerated overnight just like Alton’s. We even enjoy his topping suggestions, he has recipes for tomato pizza, cauliflower pizza, potato pizza, zucchini pizza, onion pizza, white pizza and fennel pizza. I know these flavors might not appeal to the kids but the adult types might enjoy 😉
I have been reading this pizza thread for quite some time, and have been VERY happy with the pizza results.
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1707124&highlight=pizza
ingredients,..
1tbl sugar
1tbl salt
honey
one packet dry active yeast
2.5 cups warm water
about 6 cups or so of flour (if you can find bread flour that is better,..)
2tbl of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1. in large bowl mix sugar, salt, yeast, 2 cups flour, oil, and a good squeeeeze of honey…
2. add in 2.5 cups of 110 degree hot / warm water and stir until soupy!
3. this should sit for about 20 minutes until the yeast starts to bubble
4. then add the remaining flour and kneed for about 6-8 minutes, or until dough becomes firm ( this is one of the hardest parts,..knowing when to start and when to stop,…but it is better to over kneed then to under kneed)
TURN OVEN OFF!
5. cut ball into three equal pieces and roll them into balls,…coat the outside of them with a little EVOO
6. store two away for later use,…place one ball in large bowl and cover with damp kitchen towel and place in the OFF OVEN for about 30-40 minutes,…
7. at this point it should have doubled in size and is ready to use,….DO ONT ROLL OUT DOUGH,..this will smash all the air pockets you just went through all that trouble for,..
8. PRE HEAT oven to 550 degrees and also preheat pizza stone ON BOTTOM SHELF,..
9. remove stone, toss dough, place dough on stone and top with whatever comes to your imagination,…
bake for about 15 minutes on bottom shelf and ENJOY!