Nice looking effort. if you allow me, most of them must have quite a bitter taste, am I right?
i was going to ask the same, because of the yellow tone on the pizza, usually that happens wen excess flour burns.... in the lower hydration pizzas, the pizzas did not have this yellow tone under them...
Thank you for the compliment! The referenced pizzas, according to my sense of taste, were actually devoid of bitter taste. I characterize the flavor of the crusts as somewhat more than moderately lactic, accompanied with a gentle, but steady, whisper of sweetness. Notwithstanding, my $99 home gas-oven has its inherent physical and gastronomical limitations as a matter of course.
In respect to the bitter flavor that is attributed to the use of excessive flour, I utilized an inconsequential amount of bench flour in dexterously forming the dough discs. When I used to live in the Middle East, I worked at a sangak bakery where I acquired some practical skills in handling 85%-hydrated dough. On the first day at the job (which was mandated by my junior high), the master baker pointed out that learning how to work with wet dough is initially like learning how to swim: once the [impulse of] "fear" is overcome, you'll know how to keep yourself afloat! In another occasion, he connoted that if an astray dog (of which there were many in Tehran as in Naples) senses "fear" in you, it will likely pester you (i.e., stick to you like a wet dough, figuratively speaking)! I assume his point was
fundamental: the psychological commitment—besides which, as you know, it is all in the hands, i.e., how virtuosically they can touch and inspire the dough. I esteem that hands such as those of Polydorus' or Michelangelo's is an ideal apotheosis of
what deeds human hands are capable of. Dough is just another medium like paint or marble!
By the way, because of the light reflected onto the referenced pizzas from the colored table-covering, the pictures do not accurately portray the color composition of the under-skirts.
I have attached hereunder some photos of the "sangak" bread (one of the attractions that often allures Italian tourists in Tehran). Sangak is a traditional Persian sourdough flat-bread (about 85% hydration) baked inside a specialized brick oven whose floor is covered with a layer of naturally polished river pebbles. Good day!
Respectfully,
Omid
