Yum yum! The PIZZA thread!

[Jimbuna]

Are these actual photos of your own creations Sky?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Are these actual photos of your own creations Sky?

Yes.

Actually I currently put together an illustrated step-by-step guide of how to make the perfect pizza dough, with plenty of pictures for every step, which will be posted in some or several German cooking websites. Call it Skybird's Little Pizza-Almanach. Or think of it as the Steel Beasts Review of Pizza Recipees.

It is in German, of course. But everybody wanting it could get it. I need to re-do two more pizzas (Thuna, and Tre Stagioni), for the pictures, then it is finished and will be posted. The rest of the document is already done.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Yes.

Actually I currently put together an illustrated step-by-step guide of how to make the perfect pizza dough, with plenty of pictures for every step, which will be posted in some or several German cooking websites. Call it Skybird's Little Pizza-Almanach. Or think of it as the Steel Beasts Review of Pizza Recipees.

It is in German, of course. But everybody wanting it could get it. I need to re-do two more pizzas (Thuna, and Tre Stagioni), for the pictures, then it is finished and will be posted. The rest of the document is already done.

I am impressed sir

[Skybird]

Time for a little zombification.

After having become lazy the past years, i have not made pizza that much the past three or four years, only bought frozen ready-to-eat ones, some of which (if you know which ones to choose) have become surprisingly good, even using real yeast dough and being topped by hand. The sad truth is you cannot buy a good pizza in my hometown, the restaurants and delivery services all do exotic things and dysfunctional, disavory experiments, using no salt so "to make them healthy" (I could get mad when hearing this nonsense on salt), and clubbing the Gluten (no gluten and protein - no good dough behaviour, that simple the formula is, since the dough has a bad W-value - baking power - then and cannot hold sufficient moisture). German grade 405 and Itlaian grade tipo 00 flour IS NOT THE SAME, its worlds apart. I have checked pizza in so many places and restaurants. No herbals used. Lousy, really lousy doughs, bad toppings. Expensive. I do not go to any of them anymore. Although I LOVE pizza, still.

And so I went back to do two things myself again: I bake my own bread again, and I make pizza fully manual again.

The flour for baking bread I grind myself, but for pizza I use original Italian flour, by Caputo who probaly makes the best pizza flour in the world. Use it once yourself, and you believe it, promised. They have three flours, a red package for longer dough times 24-48 hours, a blue one for shorter dough times 2-3 hours minimum, and a relatively new lilac one I still must try, said to create an icrcredibly fluffy, "cloud-like" dough. I will try that soon, its ordered. I can only recommend with utmost seriousness to pay attention to use Italian tipo 00 flour of good quality. It beats EVERYTHING when you make pizza dough. I provide a link below. Germans: you cannot hope to get these results with German 405 or 550 fliur. The ingreidnet sin it are such that it just doe snto work as well. Thats no imagination - that is simple chemistry.



I also tested the new vogue of not using pizza stones, but pizza steel plates. My results with that are not impressive, however. The thing gets not hot enough in a normal household oven, no matter how I set it up, low or high, with or without grill on, and then when it is not hot enough, the moisture in the dough cannot escape through the plate, and so the dough gets cooked, yes, and it rises, but it builds no crust, stays soft, remains too moist. These plates are expensive and cost several times as much as a stone, your risk them to ruin the thermostate in your oven, and the theory behind them, that they store more heat than a stone and radiate it back into the dough faster, for me simply does not work. Instead of using a steel plate high in the oven, I return to my proven stone placed low in the oven. No air frying of course, just maximum upper and lower heat, passive. I reach 250° - 270° in my oven, and on a stone that works perfect for me, cooking time is around 4.5 minutes.

This is the best flour I know, I now use it for everything when I do not grind my own flour, I do not buy German flour anymore. Its different wheat, grown in different places (Italy...), with different mixtures of minerals, proteins and Gluten, and that makes all the difference. Wheat is not wheat, there have been hundreds of kinds of wheat. I pay a bit more, but via Amazon in packs of 6 or 10, I can reduce the price

https://www.gustini.de/molino-caputo.html

The red package has a w-value of 300-320 and a gluten content of 13-13.5%. The blue has a w-value of 200-230 and gluten 10-11%, the lilac coloured pack has a w-value of 250-290, and a gluten content of 12-12.5%. The more gluten, the higher the w-value, the more stable the dough rises, but the more time it takes. the softer doughs with less gluten are more "liquid" and a bit more tricky to handle. But you can work faster with them. If you use the blkue flour, you will need to vary your water aml8nt a bit while using the same amount of flour like with the red one. Both flous need slightly different amounts of water.

Healthier are longer dough times, the yeast then processes more of the critical encymes your digestion can negatively react to. Thats why so many people have so many problems with industrial bread, these are packed full with up to two hundred chemical agents allowed in the EU that make ingredients better to store, to handle, and reduce the processing times of doughs. That is good for the industry, and bad for your health! All the chemical toxins wheat has build in defence to its eating enemies - us - do not get neutralised that way and end live in our digestion system - and there they cause more and more problems. Its better to have doughs given longer times, even days. True for bread. True for pizza. True for anything related to cereals and corn, wheat etc. etc. Taking your time is healthier!

It sounds unbelievable, but many restaurants over here serve their pizza without dough or topping salted. No salt, NONE. Despicable, it has become an obsession. Also, vegan eating. No animal fats. Not that much interesting with pizza, yes, but with other kinds of food preparations. It just does not taste, it is lame on your tongue. I do not save on fats and salts. I just look at good quality of both and avoid certain types. See my health thread.

My dinner tonight was this. Salami I use rarely on pizza, but I was in the mood for it. Pickeld paprika, the onyl tpopping I really use often on pizza beside spinacci or champignons, I mostly use only several cheese, do variations of Margeritha.











My last try with the pizza steel plate, I will now sell it. As you can see in the thir doicture, almost no crust on the bottom outside, the dough had baked up, it was done, but not crispy, no crust. On a chamotte stone this would not have happened, not in my oven at least! The dough in the centre of the disc stays too soft, and no crust on the centre bottom. Maybe it works as they say in much, much hotter ovens, but not in mine. Porose chamotte stone it must be. Crust gets perfect in no time with that.

[mapuc]

Forgot we had this Pizza thread.

Some weeks ago I got my new gas grill with it I bought a Pizza stone and other pizza equipment.

Now should a make my own pizza dough or buy a couple prepared pizza dough round in shape. I decided to buy two of these pizza dough.

And of course things to put on the pizza.

Started the Gas grill waited until it had reached 250 degrees-Could not get it up to 300 degrees as recommended.

Placed my pizza on the metal Pizza spade, added what I liked and went out to my grill. The dough had to say it simple glued itself to the metal surface-so trying to let the pizza slide of was a real mess.

So what I'm going to do next, is to buy one of the pizza spade made of wood and make my own pizza dough.

Markus

[vienna]

A tip on the pizza peel (or, as you call it, the spade): before you add the dough to the peel, give the peel a light coat of olive oil, either by applying a thin coat using a paper towel dipped in the oil, or by using a spray-on olive oil product; the dough will slide off rather easily and the oil won't negatively affect the taste of the pizza; you could also try dusting the peel lightly with flour before adding the dough, but I find that to tend to be a bit messy sometimes...





<O>.

[Skybird]

Mapuc,

some tips. As Vienna said, the peel, if it is metal, you can use flour on it to slide the dough better off, but sometimes it does not work, namely when the dough has gotten too wet. Easier is to use these special leafs of teflon paper for baking. You prepare the dough on these, and when baking, you put it onto the stone with the paper - but take it out again after 30-50 seconds,you will see that the dough has becomne crusty enough already that it slide soff the apper all by itseklf. You lift the dough, remove the paper, and then put the dough back in for the remaining time. Not elegant, but VERY effective. Else, if you do not worry the dust and dirt, use flour, and plenty of it. In the garden, that is okay. In the kitchen i do not want this kind of mess. Guess who the poor guy is who needs to clean...?!


If you bake longer than 5 minutes, your oven does not get hot enough. Change that.


Always make your own dough. Nothing gets close to that, the ready-to-go doughs from the supermarket are simply - well, I tested some of them over the years, and I still wait for the first acceptable one, they all were a mess so far. All of them, no exception. This mostly is because they are chemically enriched with agents that should help the dough going faster, or use the wrong flour with not enough protein and gluten, or save yeats and repalce it with baking powder. In what damn lab do they smart out things like this...? Yeast, or sourdough. The rest is bull.

I cannot stress this often enough: the flour is of utmost importance. Get one of these from german Amazon, they deliver to Denmark, I think, or maybe you have a food import store in denmark that you know. Really, get one of these, they are enriched with protein and gluten, ordinary flour of the kind that is called in Germany type 405 or 550 (refers to the grinding grade) is not like this, it does not compare, it has not even half of the baking power like mnthe red Caputo flour! . Also, note that the German system of nubmer sis for hard wheat - while the Italians base their grades on soft wheat...!! That is lightyears apart.

https://www.amazon.de/s?k=caputo+meh...s_ts-doa-p_4_6


Keep these on mind if you want to do your own Ciabatta or Baguette as well.Ciabatta uses the wettest dough I ever heard of, exceeding 70%, its almost as fluid as dough for pancake or crepes (well, aölmpost... ), you need as much protein and gluten in your dough as you can get to create this bread. With German flour type 405, 550, 1025, it is impossible , Thats why you cannot buy a really good baguette or Ciabatte in german bakeries. They sell marshmallows in bar format, bars of foamed material. Has NOTHING to do with Ciabatta what they sell there, or real Baguette. I avoid them. Terrible stuff.


Caputo Cuolo (red), Caputo Pizzeria (blue), or Caputo Nuvola (lilac). Note there is a test package including all three, plus a dose of dry yeast. Red for longer dough workign times, blue for shorter, lilac I have no experience with. For heavens sake, get one of these. Its the Mount Olympus of pizza flours.

You said you use a gas grill, I assume it has a lid, enabling to form a "cave", an oven, and that is what you should use indeed. And kepe the heta in that, do not flip it open, use a small window on the side to put things in and out. Real pizza ovens, stone ovens, use temperates in excess of 550°C, on the plate, thats why the pizza is ready so quickly, within 2 minutes, even less than 90 seconds. You want to get heat into that stone, the stone must be hot as hellfire, as hot as you get it. Give it time, its not enough that just the air temperature is high, the stone must have enough time to store heat and load up. An electric household oven therefore can need 45-60 minutes. Handle the gas grill as much as an enclosed oven as possible with the construction. Cheese melts easily, the dough gets done not by the air so much, but the stone. And it gets done in the first seconds, then some more seconds for the crispy crust.

Avoid wet toppings, get moisture out and away as much as possible. Thats especially true for the tomatoes cream you probaby use. If you make it fresh, cut the tomatoes open, and get rid of the liquid inside, only use the meat in the wall of the fruit. For tomatoe cans, again the itlaians do thers ebest. Muti is my brand of choice. And yes, I even oprefer canned tomatoes to fresh tomatiues. Because they taste better, fi the brand is the right one. Ypou heard that right, canned tomatoes taste better when form Muti, than most of the fresh tomatoes I cna buy intb he supermarket. Only during maybe 3 months in summer I buy them in the supermarket, the rest of the year canned ones are superior. Its about the tomatoe "models". What use is a fresh tomatoes, if it has no taste and no arome?

Garlic does not belong on a pizza during baking! Its too hot for garlic. It only gets bitter and brown and ruins the taste. Prepare garlic (for spinacci for example, there is not garlic used on every pizza, but when I use it then aplenty) separately, smash it, and put it into a small amount of good olive oil. Then spill this alltogether onto the ready pizza once you take it out of the oven.

For the topping, first goes the tomatoe sauce and herbs you use, salt and all that. Then goes any cheese you use. Last goes any topping like paprica, mushroom, onions. Often I do nskip step threekl use only tomatoe and mozarella: pizza Margerita, with Basil, salt, pepper. Best pizza in the world.

Pizza dough, as well as baguette and ciabatta btw, is a relatively wet dough, it contains 60-65% of water, depending on the flour you use. That means you dose it correctly if you add 60-65ml of water per 100gr of flour. For one pizza, calculate with around 170gr of flour, and water accordingly. Salt, according to taste 5-12 gr. Yeast. As little yeast as possible, you do want the taste of yeast put out of the done pizza as much as possible because yeast is not what makes a pizza taste yummy, right the opposite! Yeast tastes foul. Thats why longer working times for the dough are good, it reduces the taste of the yeast, and more killer encymes from the wheat get fermented, making them harmless, and also you can take less yeast. For a longer working time of 24+ hours, per pizza count 2 gr of fresh yeast (a cube of fresh yeast is 42, so we talk about very little yeast for sure!) and in Napoli they use 2 gr for even a full 1 kg of flour , but they prepare their doughs 24-48 hours in advance. Dried yeast works as good as fresh yeast, although some people make a religious war of dry versus fresh yeast, it makes no difference to me if correctly dosed. I baked my bread myself, too, for almost 30 years, if there is a differrenceb etween fresh and dried yeast, I think by now I should have learned about it. Only that the doses are different, and that fresh yeats can benefit from adding siome sugar, but that cna be overestimated, too. A small package of dried yeast usually has 7 gr of it, that compares to around half a cube of fresh yeast.

If you use the blue (fast working) flour, try around 4 gr of dried yeast and a working time where start and finish lies within the same day. I prepare the dough in the morning, and eat it in the very early evening, but I have also prepared it all within 4 hours, it works, but you ma yneed a bit adaptation of ingredients amounts with different times. Fresh yeast likes sugar, it gets some from the flour, but you can help it with adding a small teaspoon of sugar. Do not mix yeast externally with salt or oil, both can "kill" the yeast.



A long going dough cna be with the red flur, less yeast, you storr the dough, let it rest for 30m minutes, work it again, then seal it in a huge box and out it ionto the refrigerator (important, to slow down the yeast), then out it out and let ot work and come to temeopertaure for naother 12 hours, then you form the pizzas and again giove it some time of trest, 2-4 hours. Cover with a wet textile. Not dripping wet.


In Napoli, many pro bakers do the dough not with yeast but sourdough (although it still is wheat flour, not rye flour).

Do not use a rolling pin! You press all air and small air bubbles out of the flattened dough, and "flat" will become the motto of the remaning evening then. Form a small ball, put some flour on it, then press it in the middle and gently flatten it (not too much), while never touching the rims. The rims then can rise higher than the ceintre during baking, you also do not pot much topping on them. If the dough has the correct consistency, you can lift it with the outsides of your fists and hands, not the fingertips, that will rip it, and let it stretch by its own weight. Don'T try some aerial acrobatics like to be seen in movies, its difficult and needs plenty of practice, its also not needed. Also, it can make a dirty mess in the kitchen with all the flour flying around.

One can make a pre-dough when using fresh yeast, personally I see this as a relatively irrelevant complication. Predoughs to me are a thing for sourdough-baking, here it really can make differences. But with yeast? Never noticed one.

Cheese, that is a question of taste, I prefer a mix of dry and fresh mozarella for consistency, parmesan or comparable to add it actually some taste, and Edamer or Tilsiter, mixed into it all for typical pizza arome and taste. If it is a spinacci pizza, I also add plenty of feta cheese. Some cheese like Gouda easily gratinize, others cheese smear and produce long, wanted "filaments" of cheese. Again, that is taste, one should know about the cheese'S behaviour when getting heated up.

I do not put oil on the pizza for baking, to prevent the topping becoming wetter than unavoidable, I add it, like garlic, afterwards only. Good olive poil, of course. Jordan is my brand of choice, a mild, fruity one with almost no bitterness (many like that, its a sign for high phenole content , which is healthy, but I do not like these bitter, burning olive oils). Mushrooms , for reasons of their content in moisture, I fry in a pan, to get the water out, and then put them on the pizza.

Main herb is Oregano, salt, black course pepper a bit, sometimes mild traces of thyme and rosemary, and when I use a Margherita-style of pizza setup : Basil, lots of it, not just two or three lkeaves for the optics. I cover the pizza with it until it looks like a meadow, but not before after baking. Fresh Basil is to be added after baking, else you get flakes of ashes. Dried herbs usually taste lame and sometimes even foul, but I have a Germnan brand and product line doing a special series with some special production methd that lets dried Basil taste almost as great as fresh Basil. I know that sounds unbelievable, but thats how it is. I have it always in the house, while fresh herbs I almost always would need to buy freshly, so guess what gets used most over here... But it must be excellent quality when using dried herbs, not just any supermarket no-name nonsense. The same brand I talk of has also excellent wild garlic (Bärlauch), Oregano, Thyme and all that. They cost more, but you taste the difference to other dried herbs, while you taste almost no difference to fresh herbs. Unbelievable.

Less is more, when it comes to toppings. The heavier the topping, the more difficult for the dough to rise. The wetter the topping, the more difficult it is for the dough to become crusty. Keep things simple, dont overload it. Thats also true for the tomatoe soup/cream. Less often is more. Salt, Oregano, Basil - that is all they put on Margerita in Naples. And get that water out of those red water bags. As long as you have no original pizza oven with 550+°C.

We want pictures once you harvest the fruits of your labour!