Hello all, just wanted to say thanks to this forum (especially The Dough Doctor and Pete-zza!) for having my first two pizzas be a success! I used a slightly modified Lehmann dough using numbers out of the Dough Calculator:
Two 12-inch pizzas:
100% AP Flour (Target brand) (396g)
63% water (250g)
0.5% IDY (0.67 tsp)
2% salt (1.67 tsp)
3% sugar (3 tsp)
2% canola oil (1.75 tsp)
Making the dough was mostly challenge free. I added the flour to a glass bowl, added the yeast to the flour and mixed it a little bit. Then I put water, salt, and sugar into a separate mixing bowl and stirred for a minute or two. I put the dough hook on the stand mixer and started that up on the Stir setting. Gradually, I added in the flour mixture and let that stir until it formed one cohesive blob. That took about 2 minutes, and then I added the oil and continued to stir for 8 minutes. This is where it went a bit wrong.
At this point, the dough ball was seemingly good enough to work with, so I tried to get it out of the bowl. It was still pretty wet and sticky though, and there was a good amount of dough that was just
stuck to my hands. Eventually, I got the dough ball separated into two roughly equal sized balls, and I added the excess dough that was stuck to my hands onto the dough balls.
After that was done, I used some olive oil spray and lightly sprayed the inside of two glass bowls. I sprayed my hands as well, coated the dough balls with oil using my hands, and placed each ball in a glass bowl. They were placed into the refrigerator for 24 hours for the
cold ferment. Today, I got the dough balls out after 27 hours in the fridge. I put a pizza stone in the oven and heated it to 550F, making sure the stone was in the oven for about an hour. After the dough balls were room temperature (2ish hours), I got all of the toppings out and laid out some parchment paper with flour on it on the counter.
Stretching the dough went pretty well, much to my surprise. I was able to get it into a mostly circular 12-inch shape, keeping the outer crust a bit thicker than the middle. I got it onto a flour/cornmeal coated wooden peel and I added:
* 4 oz sauce (Dei Fratelli canned pizza sauce -
not great)
* 6 oz pre-shredded Kraft whole milk low moisture mozzarella (didn't have a block on hand)
* 1 oz crumbled fresh mozzarella (didn't have a cheesecloth to try to get the moisture out so I just kinda squeezed it?)
* Brushed olive oil on the crush
The first launch didn't go too poorly, but it did morph into more of an ellipse instead of a circle. This stayed in the oven (just a home, gas oven with the convection fan on) for 6 minutes and 45 seconds. Got the pizza out with the wooden peel and started preparations for the next one.
It was at this point that I realized that cornmeal burns and smokes. I tried to get the cornmeal ashes off the pizza stone using a brush but
that didn't go well. I decided the rest of the cornmeal would stay.
The second pizza ended up better than the first. I added sugar, salt, minced garlic, oregano, and Italian seasoning to the sauce so it didn't taste as much like a canned pizza sauce. I did have one issue in that I put sauce on the pizza before putting it on the peel - managed to salvage it though. I had the following toppings this time:
* 4 oz sauce
* 5-6 oz shredded mozzarella, 1 oz shredded cheddar, 1-2 oz shredded gouda
* Hot pepper slices
* 26 pepperoni slices (it started at 28 but two were sacrificed to the pizza gods in the launch
)
This was in the oven for 5.5 minutes, then I turned the broiler on for the last minute and a half. The pizza stuck to the stone in one spot - not sure if that was caused by a hole in the dough or the leftover cornmeal/flour from the first pizza.
The first pic is of the first pizza, second one is the second pizza. The third shows how thick it is, and the fourth shows
the bottom. I think the crust was the best part of the pizza ultimately. The sauce in the second one was much tastier but still wasn't as good as a sauce from a pizza place. The cheese blend could also use some work (and it would help if I didn't use pre-shredded).
I do have some questions though:
1: How do I prevent the dough from sticking to my hands next time - do I need to let it mix longer?
2: Is it necessary to oil the bowls before putting the dough balls in?
3: How do you brush off the stone after the first pizza if you're making multiple?
4: I had a bunch of flour on the bottom of my second crust - this was probably due to the problem of getting it onto the peel. How do you prevent that from happening while also preventing the pizza from sticking to the peel?
5: Do you have a favorite sauce recipe for a sweeter pizza sauce?
Any other suggestions or tips are appreciated. Thanks again!
