Another Attempt for a Sicilian Pizza (Toby, gave me his approval) :) 1/08/2010

I thought since I was trying to make a biga for my regular Lehmann dough to increase the flavor of the crust and had failed at my first attempt, so I thought I would try to make a biga at home to see what results the biga would add to a foccaccia-type Sfincione with a high hydration.
The whole idea of airy crust has always fascinated me since I see all this wonderful pictures of Sfincione and other pizzas on this forum with light and airy crusts.
I decided to try and make a biga with KASL bread flour, a small amount of Caputo tipo “00" flour, sea salt, IDY and to replace a small portion of the water with a wine my uncle made in 1968.  I usually reserve this wine only for making ham at Christmas, but since this whole idea of Gabrielle using a mother dough, I thought how could this contribute to the overall Sfincione.
I mixed the biga this morning and by the looks of it, maybe this time I got the biga right.  The biga will be left in the glass bowl to rest for around 8 to 10 hours.  Then it will be incorporated into final dough made with KAAP.

These are the steps taken so far.

This is how the biga and dough are proceeding.  The biga rose as you can see by the pictures.  The biga is incorporated into the dough.

The Sfincione style pizza is finished.  I did let the regular dough rise, did a rigenero 3 times and let the dough rise one final time, before I dressed the pie.  Although the Sicilian pizza was good, it doesn’t look like the Sfincione Gabrille makes.  Although traditional Sfincione isn’t  dressed as this pie was, this was dressed with part mozzarella, part grated Parmesan cheese, pizza sauce that Steve and I traded, fresh pesto, pepperoni, parsley, half with red onion, sliced Roma tomatoes, oregano, some fennel seeds, and Italian seasoning.
I will try again to make this kind of pie, but will go about it differently.
Our family enjoyed eating this new pie.   This was also a good experience using a biga and also using a high hydration dough.

Infoodel, (Toby, foolish poolish), commented that this pie looked really good.  He was my inspiration in helping me learn about “wild yeast” starters and then proceeded to help me along the way.  Matt was also my inspiration to try these kind of Sicilian pizza.  I will post what other kinds of Sicilian Pie, I made from this time forward.

A big thanks to Toby (Infoodel, foolish poolish) and Matt (Matthew) on pizzamaking.com for helping me learn about these kind of Sicilain pies.  The adventure of making these pies will continue...................................................

Norma