Thursday, September 25, 2008

Mmmmm, pizza!

I've been making the "Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day" boule dough in order to have fresh bread every couple of days. It has been awesome!! Although with one more blast of hot weather, I won't be putting the oven on at 450 or higher for a while.
One of the things that the book suggests (it was a gift for my birthday) is to use the dough for pizza, so I gave it a try. The oven needs to be preheated to at least 500, but preferably 550 - happily my oven does go that high! So, windows open, fans on, battery out of the smoke detector.. here goes.
I rolled the dough out as thinly as I could while the oven preheated, and just added a simple plain tomato sauce, some Italian herbs and crushed red pepper, and some shredded mozzarella cheese.

Then, into the hot oven for about 10 minutes or so. The dough puffed up a little bit more that I prefer, and didn't get quite as browned on the bottom, but it was still very very good.

I will definitely be doing this again. I think the key for next time will be to wait until the very last minute to work with the dough to get it thin & crisp.
One thing I do is use parchment paper instead of cornmeal on a peel - no worries about the dough sticking too much to the peel.
We also have a spare pizza stone for the BBQ, so that might be something to try also if we can get the grill hot enough.

2 comments:

Jeff Hertzberg said...

I'm Jeff Hertzberg, one of the co-authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I'm so glad our recipes are working well for you. Come visit us anytime at http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com, where you can post questions into any "Comments" field, or click on "Bread Questions" on the left side of the homepage and choose among the options.

Jeff Hertzberg
www.artisanbreadinfive.com

Chicago tribune video: http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312362911&m_type=2&m_contentid=119255#video

capngroovy said...

Yum. I baked two loaves of bread last weekend and have another one due tonight.

My swiss braid has passed every test. I'd do it again, though the instructions didn't make it easy to braid. Finally, I just "did it myself."

Second was a tomato/onion bread. The dough was WAY too wet and required too much kneading to get right. It's what Kate calls "Bagel Bread." Tasty, but chewy.

Tonight I finish a honey rye. The starter has been sitting on the counter since Sunday.