New Experiment using Commercial Stretch-Out Product 5/17/2011

The Lehmann dough using the Stretch-Out product was an interesting experiment for Steve and me.  I cut the Stretch-Out product into the flour (with a fork) and used hot water to hand mix the dough with a spatula.  Steve suggested to let the dough sit for about 10 minutes , to fully hydrated the flour and other ingredients, and then it was mixed with a rubber spatula again. balled, then covered with olive oil.  The dough ball looked like a normal dough ball.  Since I didn’t have another bigger plastic container, along at market, we decided to use a red container I had at market. We couldn’t watch how the dough was fermenting on the sides or bottom of the container, but felt the dough and looked at it, and decided to use it in less than 1 ½ hrs. after it was mixed.

The dough using the Stretch-Out product was easy to open, with no stretch back in the dough.  It looked like normal dough.  After the bake, Steve and I were both surprised how moist the crumb was of this pizza.  It was light and also tasty. The Stretch-Out pizza even had oven spring.  That is quite a feat for such a short time mix and fermentation.  Steve and I talked about how easy the dough was to mix and also how it was possible to get such a good tasting pie, in such a short while.

I gave Steve some of the Stretch-Out product to take to his home to try.

Norma

Tomatoes starting to grow from seed, oregano, chives, and other Spring flowers blooming now 5/16/2011

These are how my tomato plants are starting to spout, how my one part of my garden in doing, the fence I fixed and put up yesterday (to keep the critters away) and some of the spring flowers that are blooming at my place now.

Gardening is fun, gets you outside, and gives me exercise.  I love all kinds of plants and flowers and like to play in the dirt and watch how they grow.  We had storms in our area last evening, so the plants are wet.

Some of my garden plants and herbs will be used to make pizzas.

Norma

My Pie Monday: Cinco de Mayo Pizza, Pea and Pancetta Pizza, and More! 5/09/2011

By: Maggie Hoffman

Hey, Slicer's! Nice pizzas this week! We've got a fun Cinco de Mayo nacho pizza from Amusebouche1, a pea and pancetta pizza from Jimmyg, a cherry tomato pizza from Chunk A Change, a spring-appropriate asparagus pie from Prncs79, a pizza with braised chicken thighs from Bill Graney, an experimental pie from Norma427, and a classic Margherita from Olsonmatt.
Plus, a perfect mushroom pie from James S., an awesome "micro-thin crust" sausage pizza from Gregg, and a gorgeous pepperoni pie from Ev.

Slideshow: http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/05/my-pie-monday-20110509-slideshow.html

Congrats Ev (Steve), for your delicious looking pie being the cover shot!

Ev's Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza: "Sausage and pepperoni on a Peter Reinhart formula, 64%hy., N.Y. style dough. Cooked on a stone in my electric kitchen oven at 550"—Ev

My MPM:
 http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/05/my-pie-monday-20110509-slideshow.html#show-158878

Norma's Bisquick Pizza Experiment: "This pizza was made with Bisquick’s buttermilk biscuit mix, in combination with a “goody bag” Pete-zza figured out. Peter can figure out almost everything when it comes to making pizza. This was an offshoot of the Betty Crocker pizza mix pizza, I had submitted last week. The crust, crumb, and taste of this pizza was fantastic and it was only mixed and left to ferment for 4 hours. This pizza was called a “Sukie Pizza” because of the story of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. This pizza was something that would seem impossible, but turned out.

Norma

More Gardening Adventures 5/12/2011

Part of my garden was worked on for awhile.  I planted Paris Island Cos lettuce, cucumbers, Mrs. Howard’s Rosemary, Stevia, Greek Oregano, Valencia peppers, Dill, Lime thyme, Little sun yellow tomatoes, Yellow pear tomatoes, sweet baby girl tomatoes, Super Marzano tomatoes, Black Krim tomatoes, Amish Paste tomatoes, Margherita tomatoes, La Roma II tomatoes and 2 kinds of basil. The seeds I had planted for tomatoes are just starting to shoot.  It will probably be about 3 weeks or more until I can plant some of them.

I ready like fresh tomatoes and other vegetables from my small garden.  I will plant other vegetables and herbs, among my other flowers.  I really like to use fresh herbs and other things from the garden on my pizzas.  This year I planted Stevia for the first time.  I don’t know how that will be when it is used for a sweetner.  I have to get some other plants for my garden and also some other tomato plants.

I also sanded the whole bottom and sides of my BBQ grill, and painted them, because they were starting to rust.  I am getting it ready to maybe try another pizza in the BBQ grill set-up.  I got two 20 lb. tanks of propane filled for my BBQ grill.  I was surprised that the cost was only 10.00 to fill each tank.  With the gas prices rising so much, I would have thought propane would have been higher.


http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,10535.msg137302.html#msg137302

Norma

Almost Dead preferement Lehmann dough ball made into bread 5/14/2011 :)

I know I try the craziest stuff sometimes, but when I went to market Friday, to make my poolish for the preferment Lehmann dough and also do some cleaning, I found a leftover dough ball that must have been pushed back in my pizza prep refrigerator, from Tuesday. The dough ball really smelled like alcohol. I always turn the pizza prep refrigerator off before I go home from market to save on the electric bill.  I also always open the door on the bottom and the lid on top of the pizza prep refrigerator so it doesn’t get moldy.  When I went to clean in the inside of the bottom of the fridge, I found this sad looking dough ball.  It looked like it had really overfermented.  At first, I was going to throw it out, but thought I would do an experiment on it.

I opened the plastic bag and put some IDY on the flattened dough ball, then did reballing with a little flour.  I then took the dough ball along into Lancaster.  It sat out for about 2 hrs.  I then reballed again after I returned home with a little more flour.  Saturday morning, I did another reball, and the dough looked like it was okay. I floured the outside of the dough ball.  After I finished making another pizza Saturday, I thought I might as well use this dough ball and see if it could be baked into bread. I don’t have any useful things to score bread with so I just used a little Exacto knife.  I also got my steam cleaner out to try and steam the dough.  I don’t have any regular bread making equipment, but just used a Pyrex mixing bowl to place over the dough on the heated pizza stone.  I lifted the glass Pyrex bowl about 5 times and really steamed the dough ball.  That was about in a 15 minute time frame.  I then let the dough ball keep baking on the pizza stone, until the middle of the bread measured about 210 degrees F on my thermometer.  I was surprised that the old sad looking overfermented preferment Lehmann dough ball did turn into bread. What really surprised me is how good this bread tasted and there wasn’t even any sour taste in the bread.

Norma

Bread made out of leftover dough that was frozen (part of Bisquick dough) 5/14/2011

I did use the extra dough that I had leftover from Reply 117 http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13686.msg138168.html#msg138168 I had frozen that part of the dough and took it out of the freezer Friday evening (and put it into the refrigerator until after I baked the pizza).  I thought I would be baking a pizza yesterday, so I thought I would try to make bread out of the rest of that dough.  Well the bread didn’t come out really airy, but it really turned into great bread.  I had a slice with butter and I really liked it.  I would have thought that the dough sitting in the refrigerator from last evening until later today, would have risen more, but it didn’t.  I also wonder why the extra piece of dough that I made into bread didn’t rise after being defrosted.

Norma