Yum yum! The PIZZA thread!

[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!

[Skybird]

Yes, I indeed can talk pizza from sunrise to sunset. I love it.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Not a big fan of pizza because of pepperoni and garlic mainly

Then dont put pepperoni and garlic onto it, and you're done, or not...?!

[Sean C]

One of my favorite pizzas is a thin-crust with Alfredo sauce, feta, mozzarella, banana peppers, black olives, diced tomatoes, spinach and chicken.

[Skybird]

https://thepizzaheaven.com/caputo-nuvola/


A tipo 0 flour, I did not know that. (Not a tipo 00) Not to sa ythat is bad, it isn't, both tipo 00 and 0 work great for pizza. But this new flour is apparently for longer dough working times.

The main benefit of Caputo Nuvola is that it makes an airy, puffy pizza crust. The reason is why it gets a better crust than most other flours, is that it’s designed for higher hydration dough.
Pizza dough hydration is simply the amount of water in comparison to flour. And higher hydration gives the dough a lighter, crust with larger air bubbles. The reason is that the higher water content will soften the gluten network in the dough, and make it more flexible. This increased flexibility will create larger pockets inside the dough, that will be inflated by CO2 from the fermentation process.
To be able to make a hydration dough the flour needs to be stronger because the softening of the gluten network will also weaken it. If the flour isn’t strong enough, the air-bubbles will puncture, and the dough will deflate.

Its a science, I tell you!

It can’t go wrong with any Caputo flour. They are all really high quality and always make delicious pizza, but I think Caputo Nuvola is my new favorite flour for baking pizza in my home oven. I therefore strongly recommend Caputo Nuvola to anyone who’s serious about making Neapolitan-style pizza at home.

Okay, I heard the man. I am already waiting for my delivery.

[Skybird]

And more science!

https://thepizzaheaven.com/double-ze...-pizza-baking/

https://thepizzaheaven.com/the-best-...politan-pizza/

Well, I told you so: flour is of the essence. You simpoly cnanot overestimate the flour quality. And Caputo is the best I foudn so far, afetr severly ears of experimenting.

The flour is also what provides most of the flavor of the crust.A good flour will therefore create a more flavorful pizza crust. Part of the reason you let Neapolitan pizza dough rise slowly is to develop a stronger, more complex flavor in the crust. The choice of flour is therefore essential since this is where the flavor mainly is coming from. If it’s one ingredient in the dough you shouldn’t skip on, it’s flour. Use quality flour, you’ll thank me later. You’ll be amazed at how much of a difference the type of flour can make!

I made a big jump forward ten years ago when replacing German flour with Italian double zero flour, it was a revelation, a revolution. Not that I ran around crying and telling foreign people how happy I were, but I felt like wanting to. I then had two or three different Italian brands for tipo 00 flours, before I was seated on the horse bringing me to Caputo. And that was the second revolution I experienced, again the difference was immense. Since then, no other flours in my kitchen anymore (except self-grinded for bread baking). I use them for EVERYTHING now. This brand rules. Tipo 00 and tipo 0 rules.

[Skybird]

https://thepizzaheaven.com/never-use...a-pizza-stone/

Here he writes on parchment paper, I just learned that word, I called it baking paper before. He is right in what he says, in specialised ovens with temps of 300, 400 degrees, you cannot use that because it simply goes off in flames, can stand heat only to 220-230°. It can even be dangerous, creating open fire setting your home ablaze.

But if you have a household oven only and do as I wrote - getting rid of the paper after 30-40 seconds, then the handling is safe and comfortable. Not elegant, but very effective. And it allows you to get a crust on the bottom of the dough when using a stone. The apper is nsuch that it doe snot allow mpooisture to escape, so gettign the apper doen with after said 40 seconds +/10, frees you of that problem.

As I said, I prefer stone over steel. I just do not get the steel thing deliver satisfying results. Must be my oven, I think, the steel remains too "cold".


Edit:
That is a good site for pizza making, btw. Check the top menu bar, plent yof good links and good articles, also recipes. I just discovered this site this morning. Plenty of help for the newcomers to baking pizza.

[Skybird]

https://www.mulinocaputo.it/en/flour


Holy moly, did not know it were that many!

[mapuc]

Thank you vienna and Skybird. Your suggestion to my next homemade pizza.
Using olive oil on my pizza peel is something I never had been thinking off.

Following in Skybirds explanation to me about home made pizza and use of gas grill was this:

"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."


Here is a link to a Danish online shop where I bought this gas grill some weeks ago.

https://www.xl-byg.dk/shop/grillgril...-staal-1223489
And the Pizza peel
https://www.xl-byg.dk/shop/weber-piz...0-5-cm-1722519

Markus

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Using olive oil on my pizza peel is something I never had been thinking off.

And with all friendly respect to vienna - maybe you shouldn'T do it at all. The problem is moisture, a wet dough on a metal or wooden plate will not glide, slide, but will stick. You want the surfaces where the friction occurs to be dry, therefore. The dough wanst to suck itself to the peel. Be generous with using flour as a sledge, or semolina/farina. Its like slippery sand, you see. If you step on tarmac that is sandy, you risk to slip, right, no matter whether you are sweaty barefoot or have rubber on.

Flour on the bottom side of the pizza. Best cahce you have. Or the paper trick.

Here is a link to a Danish online shop where I bought this gas grill some weeks ago.

https://www.xl-byg.dk/shop/grillgril...-staal-1223489
And the Pizza peel
https://www.xl-byg.dk/shop/weber-piz...0-5-cm-1722519

Markus

I have no experience with these kinds of gas grills, and if I woudl have a grill, it would be classic charcoal and wood, for the arome. I can only imagine that you want to open and close the lid as quickly as possible, to have the heat up fast again inside . Pump up the gas. Maximum fire, all flames. Pizza means, always: as hot as even possible. No fooling around with dosing it well. Maximum possible, period. And no crowded oven inside, let the air inside move freely, no layers of food stuff blicking it, so that some parts of the boven are colder or hotter than others. The toppings may take it not well.

[mapuc]

Got an idea..not exactly a new one, been thinking about this idea first time after my mishap with my pizza, pizza peel and pizza stone.

Not so far from our Marina we have our own local pizzeria. The idea is that the owner makes the round pizza dough and nothing more, maybe adding tomato-stuff.

Then it's up to the buyer to add what he likes on this premade round pizza. and then bake it in the oven or on their grill(using a pizza stone)

Markus

[Skybird]

Why so afraid of the dough? It really is not that difficult. I made it more complicated ten years ago, but learned over the years to simplify it more and more - without loosing anything there.

For starters:

1. Take one of the flours I recommended, or any tipo 00. Just an italian pizza flour it really should be. Its about the content of gluten and proteine, it is radically different, really. And that is decisive, it interacts with the ammount fo moisture the dough can hold, and that effects the consistency. So: Italian pizza flour, tipo 00 at best.



2. You need for one pizza of around 30-33 cm, 150 - 170 gr of flour.

3. Next, water, handwarm. 90 - 105 ml, depending on how much flour you took, and the flour itself. It can vary. Do not be dogmatic. Love the dough, and the dough loves you!

4. a tame teaspoon of salt, into the flour, mixing it in.

5. You can add half a teaspoon of sugar, food for the yeast. Not a must, just a safety. Easier is to not worry about it.

6. Dried yeast, easier to handle. For fast dough processing, half of the package of 7 mg, making that 3.5 mg. Thats already quite a lot, but as I said: you want a faster dough processing, eating in a few hours already. Thats my assumption. Dissolve the yeast in the water.

7. Mixer with dough hooks, slowly increase its speed while adding the water to the flour. Mix for around 10 minutes.

8. Put a mildy moist cloth on the pot, and let it rest for 30-45 minutes. Clean the dough hooks with water, roughly.

9. Give it another stirring with the mixer and dough hooks, this time just half to one minute, not more. check consistency. If it is very liquid, add some flour, but be careful. Better is to let it rest 1-2 hours and have an eye on it, occasionally, see if the conssitency changes for the better. If after 1 hour it still is very liquid, if the volume ofm nit does not win, add the flour. If the dough has risen, is comfortably soft, a bit sticky to your skin, but does not rip, leave it as it is, let it rest, with a wet cloth on the pot, away from light and cold. If you must win time and want to delay over the day, keep it in the fridge. If you want to speed things up, expose it to mild warmth.

10. Heat up the oven, whatever it is. All weapons, open fire. Hot, hotter, pizza!

11. Have good-tasting tomatoes, get the liquid inner jelly out and throw it away, smash the rest. You do not need more than a small teacup of smashed tomatoe . Put it into a fine metal sieve, if you think it still has too much water, let it drip off. Then mix in a mild dose of salt, black pepper, a little bit - a LITTLE BIT ! - Oregano. Oregano on this pizza is only for the background, its not the main theme - that is Basil on Margheritas. Mix, put aside.

12. Have a ball of fresh mozarella, dry it with a tissue, and smash it with your hands, as finy as you can, you a fork later on, it glues together. Grind parmesan, 1-2 Tablespoons of powder you want. Mix it with the Mozarella. The Mozarella is for consistency. The Parmesan is for taste. Cow-milk mozarella tastes of nothing. (I do not like buffalo mozarella, I find it awful).

13. Have either some leaves of fresh Basil or good quality dried Basil as I described earlier.

14. Action time! Take the dough and have it placed on a working surface with flour covering it. Also on your hands, flour. Lets get your hands dirty! Form a ball, covering it mildly with flour, then press it in its centre, until the centre flattens out. Lift it with your hands, use your fists, not your finger, use the outside of your hands not the inside, let the dough spread and stretch by its own weight and make sure it does not rip, do not puncture it with your fingertips. Be careful. Turn it severla times on the table, so that flour covers it from both sides, gently pull it apart, GENTLY. Always gently. Do not get too thin in the middle, it needs some volume there, 2-3 mm, so that there actually is some dough that in the oven then can rise. If it is too flat, it just gets dry in seconds, and remains thin. Do not do much with the rims, these are higher than the centre. With thebright flour and mixtures, they will become very fluffy.

15. Put the paper on the spade, and the dough on the paper.

16. Cover the dough disc with your tomatoe soup/cream. Less is more! Do not drown it! It must not all be red. The more tomatoe you want to use, the thicker your dough must be, else it gets ruined.

17. Shake the cheese on top of it. You are done! And away and into the oven with it, hotter than hellfire, as hot as it gets!

18. After 40-45 seconds, get the whole thing out again with the spade, and remove the paper. It blocks the moisture leavbign the dough, do not leave it on all the time! Should go easy. then put the pizza back into the oven, bare dough on stone now.

19. At minimum 250°C, baking time is around 4:30 to 5 minutes at max. If you have 100° more, its shorter. Ideally, youre pizza is done after 60-90 minutes. But not with our ovens.

20 Get the ready pizza out, and finally get the Basil onto it.

Munch time!

I'm sorry if I sounded intimidating to you so that you got the idea with that pizza baker. But its not needed, really, you do not need the man. With the procedure here you already get a base pizza, a Magherita it is, that you can vary in later turns to add the stuff you like. Just do not overload it, and keep wet things off it. Wetness and weight prevent the dough from rising.

The other things I said all improve on this base experience, but with this simple, recipe here you already will get a hell of good result. Its a good way to get started: Fast, simple, and reasonably well in result. And note how few ingredients you only need! Not even olive oil! Not even garlic!


P.Sl. Good allrounder for shorter processing times:


https://www.amazon.de/Farina-Molino-...3858992&sr=8-2

Not to be mistaken with their other blue flour. "Pizzeria Blue", that wants a longer processing time they say. But excellent they all are, you cannot really err with any of these.

[Jimbuna]

Eating pizza semi-regularly atm (about twice a month).

10" thin and crispy with a tomato base, four toppings (usually two chilli beef and two spicy chicken) topped off with cheese obviously.

I take it home and add my own sliced mushrooms and an extra sprinkling of cheese.

£3.50 at my local ASDA supermarket.