Learning Knowledge to Make Pizza: 7/12/15

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.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

NY style dough pizzas leavened with only milk kefir

I made some attempts on using heavy cream milk kefir to make some NY style, or "Tomato Pie" pizzas. These photos show the results. The milk kefir grains looked like I might have killed them but they came back to life to leaven pizzas.

Norma

Milk Kefir Pizzas baked in Steve's WFO I thought the milk kefir grains might be dead

I was invited to Steve's and Sue's home for a pizza party last night. Steve made Ischia pizzas and I used the kefir doughs to make pizzas. I love to watch the fire in a WFO and also other fires. I didn't know but Steve's is growing a few Aleppo peppers. A wonderful time was had by everyone at the pizza party. Anyone that wanted to make pizzas could.

The milk/heavy cream sourdough dough did fermented enough until last evening to make pizzas. I used 1.7% of the kefir in the preferment dough calculation tool and used 60% hydration for the Pizzeria flour. Steve used one of my doughs to make the first kefir pizza. Since I haven't baked in a WFO for awhile I was a little rusty in handling the peel, opening the dough and baking.

I don't know why in natural light some of the whole pizzas rim crusts look lighter than in other photos. The rim crust weren't as light as some of the photos. The milk/cream kefir pizzas tasted very similar to Steve's Ischia pizzas in the crusts, and really I don't think anyone but Steve and I knew the differences in how the crusts tasted when using different starters. Both are mild tasting starters in the final pizza crusts.

Sue suggested maybe using the Almond Toppings for one of my kefir pizzas. That was a good choice. Steve's and Sue's dogs really like pizza too. Steve showed me his setup to CT ferment his doughs. I didn't know he used that setup before but it was cool! I still admire Steve's modded BBQ grill. There also was a lot of other great foods and drinks.

The last photo is one of Steve's Ischia pies.

This is how the milk kefir grains looked when I left them sit out for a long time in milk. At least they could be revived to make these milk kefir pizzas.

Norma