The Easy-Peasy Pizza

I was working outside on and off most of the day getting ready for colder weather and chopping down a lot of flowers and generally weeding.


I gathered some Italian tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and some basil from my garden. I decided to use them to make a pizza. The dough was easy to roll out and I used a fork to prick the skin. Then I spread some pesto over the skin that I had made last week (it was defrosted from the freezer). A three blend of Grande cheeses was added (given to me by Bob1) then tomatoes, sprinkled with sea salt and cracked black pepper, then more of the 3 blend cheese was added. Next I used a sprinkling of EVOO over the top and brushed the rim skin with milk. After the pie was baked I used some fresh basil to dress the pizza.

The crumb was the lightest flakiest crumb I have ever tasted. I enjoyed this easy-peasy pizza.

Of course, some Renaissance Faire Sangria went well with this pizza. :)

In my opinion this would be a great snack.

I cheated and didn't make my own dough.  I used frozen puff pastry dough..lol!

Norma

Animated Pizza Gifs by Clint Ecker

These are some animated pizza gifs by Clint Ecker. Wait until they loaded to watch if interested. The one with the little girl eating pizza is cute.


http://animatedpizzagifs.com/

Norma

A gum line in the Sicilian pizza, guess from not proofing long enough :(

I tried an experiment with not letting the dough proof in the pan as long to see what would happen when trying to make a Sicilian pizza. After the dough ball was opened and placed in the steel pan with the metal lid on, I placed the tray on the top of my oven for ½ hr. I usually let the dough proof in the pan for an hour or more on the top of my oven.


The resulting pizza had a gum line. I am not sure if the gum line came from not proofing the dough long enough, but it appeared to me that is what caused the gum line. The slices still tasted the same, but I sure don’t want a gum line. :(

Norma

Mystery Dough

I told Steve yesterday that I had a mystery dough to try out yesterday. Steve knows some of the crazy things I have tried out in pizza doughs and was trying to guess what I might have put in it. I let him guess, but wouldn’t tell him much, unless he guessed something really extreme. Then I told him no, that isn’t in this pizza dough. Steve did guess some really crazy things and made me laugh..lol


Steve didn’t even know if he wanted to try out the baked pizza, but I told him I would add some Burrata I had purchased at the 9th st. Italian Market, and then it made him want to try the pizza. Steve even had the nerve to call me a chicken in another thread, but at least he tried out the mystery pizza.

Norma

Used Pete-zza's Dough formulation with KABF and VWG for next Mack's attempt

The Mack’s attempt yesterday using Peter’s formulation, turned out well. The taste of the cheese was a little too strong and the Great Value tomato sauce could have either used a little more oregano, or should have been left to sit longer to develop a more oregano taste, but the crust turned out well with KABF and VWG. Steve and I couldn’t taste there was any VWG added in the crust. Steve even said that he thought the crust was better than when I used Kyrol flour in that it had a more wheaty taste. I thought the crust was good.


I couldn’t tell any difference in the handling the dough ball (from the time I went to open it) from Peter’s formulation (using KABF and VWG) from when using Kyrol flour. The dough ball opened the same, could be tossed and twirled and baked almost the same in my deck oven. The only difference Steve and I could tell was the bottom crust at the rim was a little crisper. The little bit of crisper rim crust could have even been from a different place I had it in the oven, or the amount of time it took to bake.

The overall weight of the fresh baked pizza after 4 minutes was 2.126 lb. The weigh did dropped after that though. It also weighed more right out of the oven (2.136 lb.). I used 10 oz. of grated cheese and 8.5 oz. of the one year old aged Nasonville cheddar (the same as my last attempt). The cheese and sauce were weighed on my regular scale, not my digital pizza scale. I don’t know why I used 8.5 oz. of sauce this time and only used 8 oz. in my last attempt.

Steve used the 12 oz. of Great Value tomato paste and it can be seen how much paste was left in the container. He added 9 oz. of water to the tomato paste. These weren’t measured on my digital scale, but on my scale that I used for weighing cheeses that are used on my pizza. Steve used my measuring spoons and measured ½ teaspoon of Morton’s Kosher salt, ¼ teaspoon of black pepper and 2 teaspoons of oregano to the paste and water. These were measured level in the stainless steel measuring spoons. We used the paste sauce within 15 minutes, so there wasn’t much time for the oregano to give the paste more flavor.

I got a bill from Nasonville for the 4 cheeses I had purchased yesterday and will post more about that in the next day, or so, after I call Nasonville. I think I was way overcharged for the shipping on the cheese. I will post about that on the Mack’s cheese thread.

Overall this was a very good pizza. Steve and I didn’t share any slices with our taste testers, because we want some slices to take home.

Norma