Saturday 11032012... a nice pie! With recipe.

[pizzaneer]

I had simple objectives in this bake.  First, I wanted to make exactly enough dough for one large pizza, and skip the bulk ferment as opposed to balled ferment.  Secondly, I wanted to take advantage of a nice sale on cheese at ALDI. $1.50 per brick is a good price.


One Large Cheese Pizza...      Sat, Nov. 3rd 2012

100% KABF  200g
 63% H2O   126g
  5% salt   11g
  5% sugar  11g
  6% OO     12g
 .5% ADY    scant sprinkle

Mixed warm water, yeast and sugar, set aside 10 min - no activity observed
Mixed flour & salt, combined with water mix, then oil.  Used small mixing bowl and wooden spoon. Mixed until roughly incorporated.
Let rest an hour.
On a lightly floured cookie sheet, pressed out shaggy dough to a round using knuckles. Letterfolded and rolled up into a ball.
Repeated above step once more.
Back into lightly floured mixing bowl, bowl covered with plastic wrap.
Bowl on top of fridge (warm spot: house is 64, top of fridge is 70).  Rise for 24 hours.
Dough tripled in volume.

Sauce: ALDI's tradtional pasta sauce.  Room temp.
Cheese: ALDI's: 1/2 mozzarella brick, 1/2 Monterey Jack Brick. Both finely chopped into minicubes, mixed together, dusted with Parmesan and chilled.
Lightly brushed on rim- 1 tsp butter and pinch of garlic powder.

Preheated oven @ 530 one hour, then broiler turned on (low setting) until stone read 635.
Formed 14" skin, topped on peel. Turned broiler to high setting. Smooth launch, no calzone tonight!
Baked about 3.75, pulled after checking bottom, no rotation.  Should have either left broiler on low or pulled at 3 minutes, as you can tell.

"Very good" was said by all, even Kommandant Hur.

[TXCraig1]

In cases like this, the food critic is never wrong. Looks like you get highest marks!

[RobynB]

Looks good to me!  That crust looks so nicely charred and so light and airy!  Yum.

[jeffereynelson]

Somehow that last picture looks just like its 20 years old lol. Nice pizza

[norma427]

Brian,

Nice job!  Your sons face and thumbs up says it all.  I like your airy rim and nice bottom char.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

One Large Cheese Pizza...      Sat, Nov. 3rd 2012

100% KABF  200g
 63% H2O   126g
  5% salt   11g
  5% sugar  11g
  6% OO     12g
 .5% ADY    scant sprinkle

Mixed warm water, yeast and sugar, set aside 10 min - no activity observed

Brian,

Your pizza looks great but your dough formulation with 5% salt, 5% sugar and only 0.50% ADY puzzles me. For example, your salt content materially exceeds the salinity of ocean sea water, which is around 3.1-3.8% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater). I would think that 5% salt would have made the crust unpalatable (the recommended salt levels is around 1.5-2%). Also, both salt and sugar at high levels exert osmotic pressure on yeast and can leach liquids out of the yeast and impair yeast performance (see http://www.theartisan.net/The_Artisan_Yeast_Treatise_Section_One.htm#Osmotic Pressure). I suspect that you did not observe any activity when you rehydrated the yeast because of the 5% sugar. Normally, to speed up the rehydration of yeast, you only need a pinch of sugar. Apparently in your case, with a 24-hour fermentation at around 70 degrees F, the 0.5% ADY was enough to withstand the damage done to it by the high levels of salt and sugar.

The above said, I am unaware of any NY style dough that contains anything near 5% salt and 5% sugar. Likewise with oil at 6%. Can you tell me how you came to view your recipe as NY style?

Peter

[pizzaneer]

Thank you all so much for your kind words! 

Peter, I was going by time and temp in placing it in a NY category.  As you note, I don't really know what to call it.  Other than tasty.  Perhaps it is due to equal amounts salt and sugar, but it didn't taste strongly of either extreme, but somewhere in the middle.

I was actually pleased with the dough rising character. It rose well, but not too much, had a supple feeling when worked, extended without tearing and definitely had a great aroma.  If the amounts of salt and sugar I added had the effect of retarding yeast development within my 24-hour frame, then I will have to play with that again.   

[Chicago Bob]

Somehow that last picture looks just like its 20 years old lol. Nice pizza

That's really just a photo of Brian when he was a kid.....and he's now made the pizza from his youth!   

Actually, that pie looks awesome and the ALDI cheese performed amazingly. Nice work there pizzaneer...

[pizzaneer]

Haha, too funny, Bob.  Actually, I'm slowly introducing Darwin to everything I loved as a kid.  Legos, HotWheels, riding bikes, swimming, collecting animals and raising them in containers, Voltron... next year, I'm going to sign him up for karate so he can sock me in the nuts like I did to my dad.   

Gonna have to start a new thread that I can update.  Updating one that has a particular date on it just doesn't seem right.  Thanks for the good word!  Next one will be larger and 48 hours.  Making dough tonight.

[Chicago Bob]

OOOOOch!! 

[Boatman2]

That pizza is the NUTS.   

[mvd]

Looks good. What rack in the oven do you use? I've been experimenting with using the broiler after preheating the oven, but so far have yet to find the sweet spot between a nice bottom and a nice top.

[pizzaneer]

Thanks mvd.  I use the second-from-top position.  I find it gives me the best balance between the broiler and stone heat. And it's easy to launch onto.