Picked up this book as I like to collect anything pizza. Michael Schwartz owns restaurants of different cooking styles and all use genuine as the first part of the particular restaurant. He owns a pizzeria or pizzerias named genuine pizza.
This book is his home version of his product.not sure how many changes were made to convert his restaurant pizza to home pizza. His pizza sauces,two recipes were good. His non tomato sauces look very interesting.
His pizza dough contains a percentage of whole wheat flour, beer, and honey to give it a different taste. The first batch of dough I made followed his recipe to the letter. It was not good,very bitter after taste.
The basic recipe called for a lager beer as well as water at 72 percent, bread flour whole wheat flour, honey, evoo and salt.
The amount of instant yeast was 7 grams for 455 grams of flour. I never use even close to that amount. The dough rose way to quick then refrigerated bulk. Pulled 24 hours later cut balled and rested.
This pizza was very very bad, bitter !
I needed to find out the bitterness component. Either the lager or the large amount of yeast.
So I reworked the recipe. I cut the yeast to 2 grams and adjusted the white flour to get the hydration down to 65 %. Since evoo and the honey was adding moisture the original dough was very hard to work.
I then followed a routine I like to use. I balked rose three hours,balled it and refrigerated it. After 24 hours I pulled the dough and gave it 6 hours room temperature.
The pizza was baked in my breville oven at 550 top and 625 floor. 4.5 minutes. I used their sauce and made a sauce topped margherita,Anthony Falco style. It was much better just a hint of bitter taste. the beer and the whole wheat adds to that. Not offensive,interesting play on sweet and bitter.
This is what I do not understand. Why don’t these authors let some pizza making.com members test recipes.you will not find a more capable group of people when analyzing home pizza recipes. Such large amounts of yeast go against methods that are popular today. If it was tested by a pizza specific group I guarantee this bitter flavor profile would have been figured out.
My bake using the modified formula
