Yum yum! The PIZZA thread!

[mapuc]

An online company I use to order things from have now this Caputo among their things you can buy. They have 3-4 type of this Caputo flour.

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

An online company I use to order things from have now this Caputo among their things you can buy. They have 3-4 type of this Caputo flour.

Markus

Good! Nuvola is most-recommended, Cuoco second-best recommended, from my side. I would place Classica Blu on three, and Pizzeria Rosso on four.

Caputo has many other flours, too , but these often are for special purposes and local speciality pizzas, like New York style, etc.

Nuvola probaly is a bit more expensive. But its worth it, one pack gives you around 6 pizzas. I save this flour for pizza exclusively.

[ET2SN]

I don't like SPAM on my pizza.

[Skybird]

Jim, swing the pan, if you please. Make it hot and glowing.

[Skybird]

The latest addition to the collection. Paprika powder and hot spices only, it was very hot. Intentionally no item toppings. Interesting experiment, but I must not repeat it. 't was, well... too hot.

The blackened parts of the crust, the granular ones, that is flour that was left on the dough in too thick layers, so it burnt. Clean your dough of all remaining flour, and it will stay much whiter and tidy.

The greater area of black is where the dough raised higher than elsewhere, so it reached closer to the heating element in the lid. Thats a bit tricky in these kind of stoves, you need to work carefull with the rim to make it evenly thick everywhere and have it having the right thickness for the dough consistency and hydration. I do not always get it right, then the pizza stays white at the rims, or turns too dark, is burnt. I assume in a big stone oven where you could also turn the disc every 30 seconds (that is what the smaller pizza shovels are for that pizzaiolas are using), to make it have its sides all equally exposed to the main direction of heat, you can regulate that better.

[Skybird]

Another one for the photo album.

[Jimbuna]

Looks like a pizza fit for a rabbit

[ET2SN]

Spinach is under rated as a topping.



Not really as a traditional topping, but layered under the cheese.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

Spinach is under rated as a topping.

Not really as a traditional topping, but layered under the cheese.

Not underrated by me, I swear it! Its my second-most liked topping. But:

Handling fresh spinach is not fun in the kitchen, you need a huge volume of it to get a tiny small amount once it has crumbled in the pan, pot, heat, whatever. You need to clean it, there is always two or three tablespoons of sand escaping the cleaning in water, it seems, and your teeth then let you know. Its voluminous. No, handling fresh spinach in the kitchen I find not entertaining. I hate it.

Here in Germany, I preferred to buy spinach as frozen blocks, but the last manufacturer selling frozen full leaves of spinach has stopped doing so: he still calls it "full leaves spinach" on the box, but in fact he now, like all producers, cuts it into a titsy-tiny mess so that it has the consistence of smashed potatoes. Its pesto that way, while the box shows photos of full and complete leaves. Its betrayal, when I think of it. I wonder if this is a Geman thing only, or if it is like this in other countries, too...? Anyway, its stupid.

It also has ruined a Chinese recipe I love to do where full leaves spinach is fried in a Wok-pan with oil, onion, ginger, chicken broth, soy sauce and sherry, but it does not work with "pesto spinacci", it worked fantastic with frozen full leaves spinach. With fresh leaves you initially do not need a wok, you need a bathing tub.

On pizza, I used to have spinachi in high quantity, together with feta cheese (lots), and after baking: garlic in oil (also lots of it, 3-4 claws per pizza). Its the only pizza where I use garlic. Thats a heavy and dense and wet topping, and the dough needs to be thicker to not stay with the consistency of a greasy soft cheese. Or you indeed put just a few single leaves on the pizza, and they burn into flakes of ashes in no time and they add neither arome nor taste nor anything else to the pizza - thats wat they serve me here in town as pizza spinacci then, and demand a higher price due to the "expensive" spinach and increased workload, and feta they have not on it, too. Its a rip off. Pizza with 6 or 7 flakes of ashes. Great. Generous.

So, I love pizza spinacci, but only in a special way, and topping as rich as the topping for Margerita is spartane, and with garlic and feta and olive oil. A storng dough is needed, due to the lots of topping on this one (usually I avoid overloading pizzas, but not here). Margerita and spinach pizza are the two tests by which I test every pizza restaurant I still dare to try out these days. Usually the experience is very sobering. Preparing that pizza myself I do not do often, the failure rate is significantly higher than with others if using frozen spinach (and pressing the water out after it thawed, my preferred way of preparing any spinach for any purpose). And that full leaf-spinacch frozen that I want, I do not get anymore, as explained.

Now you know why there are no photos of spinach pizza.

---------------


BTW, if somebody wonders on how I gte the slightly blackened crust on the pizza's rim, when I put the dough disc on the hot stone, before closing the oven I use a thick, soft brush with just water to wet the outer rim, and then, between fingerstips like you do with salt, I have some flour or semola distributed on that rim, just a tiny bit. The heat then burns it to ashes, and thats the visual effect you see. I work faster than a lightning strikes when doing that, so that I do not loose all the heat in the open oven. The water-on-the-dough-trick also is done with bread baking, if a certain type of crust is wanted. Sometimes egg white is put on a bread, too, to make the crust shiny. The same effect can be acchieved by using open fire on the rim after baking, like they do with creme brulée to get the surface caramelised, but it takes time to work your round around the pizza after baking with a lighter. I do the first because of the characteristics of the oven I use, its construction reminds a bit of a waffle iron. A real pizza oven with its typical temperatures and open fire of course would not need that, but when the cover in mine is closed, it depends on the dough'S type and thickness whether or not it rises to the exact height it needs so that the heating elements in the top can really darken it, or stays low enough to escape that fate, then it is still kind of crispy, but pale, white. The dough in this kind of oven should be not fully covering the round stone, because then it touches the closed lid, and the lid burns a pitchblack ring into it then. The hot air must circulate around the disc from the sides, and so when the stone has a diameter of 30cm, typical for these kind of ovens, make the disc not bigger than 27 cm - and center it right! - As I said, this all is owed to the oven construction, and if you have a better oven, you can completely ignore it. You then would instead turn the disc once or twice during the baking time, so that the fire in the oven covers not just one part of the rim, but all. Thats what the pizza shovels with these very small blades are for: turning the pizza in the oven.

[mapuc]

Skybird how many minutes is your homemade pizza in the pizza oven ?

Markus

[Skybird]

3 minutes, 3.5 minutes at max. Stone temperature 400-420 degrees celsius.

Not longer, else the bottom becomes too burnt, black, bitter.



An original pizza oven has around 450 degree, original neopolitan pizza in that is baked for 1.5 minutes.


Forgot another trick, especially if tbe oven does not get that hot. Add some sugar to the flour, 5gr per 100gr flour. It caramelises, so to speak, adding to the darkening, browning of the crust.

[Skybird]

The oven works good to do turkish pita bread as well. Had my first attempt at it, must correct it a bit, it was too much dough and so it rose too high and burnt a black ring into the top, but taste and consistency was already almost like one does want it.

Go with 240gr of Nuvola flour, 165 gr water, 8.5 gr salt, and 2.5 gr instant yeast. Mix with a hand mixer for ten minutes, like a pizza dough, add salt not before 5 minutes after you started to mix the other things, so that it does no harm to the yeast anymore. This pita dough has roughly 70% hydration, so it is a bit tricky to handle. Have plenty of flour or oil on your hands.



I avoid oil and butter in doughs with yeast now. Too often the fat hinders the yeast and the dough stays too flat.


When done, form a nice bowl of the dough dough and put it on a resting plate, on a bed of plenty of flour, not too cold, not hot), and make it wet with your hands, or a sprayer, then cover it with a big bowl or anything serving as a lid. I let it rest for around two hours. It should not become dry.

Prepare a small cup of flour and water, and stirr it, so that you get kind of a greasy, creamy fluid. Enough for around 4-5 tablespoons, so we talk of a small amount only. I added some drops of roasted sesam oil, but not much. You also need black cumin/black onion seed (Schwarzkümmel), and some roasted seasom seeds. Maybe 1-2 teaspoons of each.

Heat the device up to medium setting, aim at a stone temperature around 300-330°C. Or use your regular household oven, and put a bowl with water into it, too. With that oven: as hot as you can, probably in the range of 250-275°C.

The pita dough probaly has flattened and widend significantly, because it is so fluid. Now here is the difficulty, you do not want to squeeze it and press it too much when moving it onto the shovel as it is, while at the same time you need to get some semola on the bottom, else it will not slide off, due to the plenty of moisture. Its a bit difficult, this dough sticks like hell. Immediately before you put it into the oven, gently distribute that greasy creamy water-flour onto its surface, it helps to form a crust a bit, thats why you do that (its not a mst). With our without that, you finally spread some of the sesam seeds and black curmin on it, not too much. Take the looks of these breads in the supermarket for orientation.

I read that some people also spread some egg yoke on the surface, to help it forming a shiny crust. Have not doen itk, but will try it later.


At the very last moment, use a long sharp edge of something and put some ridges/grates into the disc. You do not want to cut the bread into pieces, but the "cuts" must be deep, else the dough simply will form a disc again and the pita will lack the typical grates pattern (that also help to rip it into pieces when it is done). Not sure whether "grates" is the right word here.


I baked mine for around ten minutes, and it was quite okay, not perfect, but a functional first try that was okay. But, I had used more dough than in this recipe above, and so the dough rose and touched the round heating element, and it stamped a black ring into it and burnt it, the burnt arome made itself a bit felt. But one could still eat it, but when you do it with this pizza oven thing, this is what you want to avoid: make the pita small enough that it will not raise as high as that it will make contact with the heating element in the lid.

Maybe I will need to correct the recipe a second time, I will see, but the charm lies in that with this oven it really is no big business and does not make a mess in the kitchen, its fast and easy to make fresh turkish pita. Originally, I took orientation from my pizza recipe and multiplied it with 2.5, the pita dough recipe I gave above now is reduced to a factor around just 1.5.

Its pleasant to eat bread without all those functional encymes and chemical agents most bakers put into it these days. It helps to avoid digestion problems.


The photo is not by me, I just give it for illustration so that everbyody knows what kind of pita I am talking of.

[Skybird]

One can of course also bake a pita like a pizza dough without spreading, and using the recipe for pizza dough. I mean my pizza dough is delicous. Hot, and short. I would still recommend to increase the amount of flour and water, means: use more dough, a pizza is not wanted to rise in the centre but stay thin, a pita should rise, however, you want some volume.

[Skybird]

Nicht zu fassen - I forgot my latest creation! Yum yum!

[Skybird]

Not for me! Dico no a questa volgarità!



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