A New Day

While I am trying to think about ways to help other people understand pizza better, I must admit I really don't understand pizza either.  I have learned many things along my short-time journey, but so many things having to do with making pizza, are still mysterious to me.  I will try at some time to explain all what I have learned so far and try to explain what still is mysterious to me.  I think pizza making and the bread world have a lot in common.  I still have a lot to learn about just how much they are related.  There are two great men that have studied bread in depth and from their teaching and things I could find out about them on the web, this has helped my journey.  I will blog about these men later.


Right now I am playing around with the milk kefir grains and seeing if somehow the milk kefir can be used to make a decent pizza, that has a lot of flavor in the crust.  Since this milk kefir isn't fed like regular starters (with flour and water), I don't know is there is a certain time or specific acidity to know when the milk kefir is ready.  I have achieved a decent looking pizza with the milk kefir starter and the taste of the crust is good, I want to be able to take this crust up to the next level.  I have now upped the amount of starter (poolish), that is going to be incorporated into the final dough.  Who knows if the added amount of milk kefir in the poolish will develop a better flavor in the crust.  That is one reason that I think pizza making is interesting.  You never know how your final pizza will turn out. 


When I first started making pizza in April of 2009, I really didn't understand how complex pizza making was.  My local pizzaman said he would help me learn to make dough, but he became ill and needed to go into the hospital, so it was left up to me to try and figure this all out.  I was even dumb enough to start a small pizza stand at our local farmers market, (Root's Market, in Manheim, Pa.), with out even knowing basically what all goes into making pizza.  I had already been in business for myself and my husband and I had various market stands, but we had made Caramel Popcorn, Cotton Candy, Clear Toy Candy, Brittles, Kettle Corn and other food items.  All the years in that business with my husband didn't help with trying to make pizza.  At first I had dough that was over fermented, dough that sprung back, wrong mixing times and temperatures, wrong cross stacking, and so many other things I did wrong.  Luckily I found pizzamaking.com and PMQ think tank. Both places members there helped me though the process of learning how to make a decent pizza.  I will biog. more about my experiences in learning in the future.  If I only can help one person understand pizza more, I will be glad to share the knowledge I have learned so far. 

Norma