Learning Knowledge to Make Pizza: First Pizza made with Ischia Starter 8/21/10

Welcome...

There are so many variables that go into making a PIZZA. The hydration of the dough, flour, yeast and many more.. Amounts of any kind of yeast in a pizza can make a big difference. Most recipes posted on the web, use too much yeast in their recipes. What I have found out so far, is either bulk fermenting the dough or cold fermenting the dough will give a better flavor in the crust. I am still experimenting to find different flavors in the crust of pies. In my opinion pizza is all about the best flavor you can achieve in a crust. I still am on the journey about flavors in the crust. Even differences in temperatures in you home or times of the year can influence how much yeast to use. If you want a pizza to develop flavors in the crust, there are many ways to go about achieving this.

Adventure in Pizza Making

There are many ways to go about trying to make any kind of pizzas you want to create. PIZZA making is fun and also you get to eat your finished product. I learned to make all my pizza on http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php If you look on pizzamaking.com you can see all the beautiful creations of pizzas members make on this site. Members and moderators help members and guests achieve almost any kind of pizzas they want to create. Since joining this site, my pizza making skills have gone from non-existent to something much better. I invite you to take a look at this site.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

First Pizza made with Ischia Starter 8/21/10

This was the first pizza I made at home with the activated Ischia Starter. :)

I removed the sour dough ball from the refrigerator at 7:00 pm. It didn’t look like the dough ball rose anymore while in the refrigerator. First picture is of dough ball right after I removed it from the refrigerator. Second pictures is underneath dough ball after ½ hour warm up time. Third picture is right before I opened the dough ball. Time for warm up was 1 ½ hrs. This sourdough pizza was baked on my new soapstone. I also took temperatures every 15 minutes of how hot my soapstone was getting. I haven’t tested this soapstone out long enough, but the results I had today aren’t any different than my regular stone. The only difference I saw today was the pie was easier to load into the oven. As for the taste of the crust, I really enjoyed it. I turned my broiler on to try and get the soapstone higher in temperature before I did the bake of this pizza, but even after 20 minutes the temperature only went up 30 more degrees. I wasn’t going to fool around with the oven or soapstone more, because it was really getting hot in my kitchen.

This pie was dressed with my regular sauce from market, blends of Foremost Farms cheese, green small tomatoes, and grape tomatoes from my garden. After the pie was removed from the oven, it was dressed with opal basil and regular basil.

This is the formula I used for this sour dough pizza

Sour dough starter spit with KASL 14" PIE

Total Formula:
Flour (100%): 269.92 g | 9.52 oz | 0.6 lbs
Water (64%): 172.75 g | 6.09 oz | 0.38 lbs
Salt (1.75%): 4.72 g | 0.17 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.85 tsp | 0.28 tbsp
Total (165.75%): 447.39 g | 15.78 oz | 0.99 lbs | TF = 0.102515

Preferment:
Flour: 5.18 g | 0.18 oz | 0.01 lbs
Water: 3.45 g | 0.12 oz | 0.01 lbs some spit
Total: 8.64 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs

Final Dough:
Flour: 264.74 g | 9.34 oz | 0.58 lbs
Water: 169.29 g | 5.97 oz | 0.37 lbs
Salt: 4.72 g | 0.17 oz | 0.01 lbs | 0.85 tsp | 0.28 tbsp
Preferment: 8.64 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs
Total: 447.39 g | 15.78 oz | 0.99 lbs | TF = 0.102515

This was a formula Peter (Pete-zza) set-forth for me to try. I had made a spelling error and said spit, so this was my Stealth Formula with Spit. Really there wasn't any spit involved, but it sounded funny! lol

Norma