Milk Kefir Pizza on Slice 1/10/2010

A picture of my pizza was on Slice for “My Pie Monday” posted by Maggie Hoffman.

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/01/my-pie-monday-20110110-homemade-pizza-slideshow.html#show-132412


This is what I emailed to Slice about the pizza I made.

Norma's Dried Tomato Pizza: "I started this pie by making a milk kefir poolish to leaven the dough. I mixed the final dough using different techniques for the higher hydration dough of 80%. Some of this methods came from the Tartine Bread Book for making Chad Robertson’s bread. The dough was stretched and folded at different intervals. The flour mix was 85% Caputo Pizzeria flour and 15% KASL. The star of this pie wasn’t the look of the finished pizza, it was the irregular crumb. This pizza was more of a focaccia, like they offer in different regions of Italy. Usually when using higher hydrations for making bread and different techniques, there are irregular holes in the crumb. Pizza making and bread making can almost go hand in hand in my opinion. The dough for this pizza was room temperature ferment for almost a day, after the final mix. I think because the milk kefir poolish was used, that is why this dough could be room temperature fermented for so long. From the experiments I have done with milk kefir poolishes in a dough, milk kefir takes longer to leaven a dough, than regular a regular IDY poolish, or a poolish using other natural starters. From the long ferment time, there was a better taste in the crust. The higher olive oil, in the formula (3%), also might have given this pizza a lighter texture. This pizza was dressed with herb and garlic infused olive oil, 2 types of mozzarella, hand grated Parmesan, Red Cow Parmesan, asiago cheese, fresh rosemary, and Turkish dried tomatoes. I should have added the moist Turkish dried tomatoes near the end of the bake, because as can be seen, the dried tomatoes did darken too much."—Norma427

I want to thank Slice again for thinking my pizza was worthy of posting on “My Pie Monday!” :)

This pizza was one I posted before and I used milk kefir to leaven this dough.  I am still on the trail of trying to make this style of pizza.  This style of pizza is harder to make than others, in my opinion.

Norma