My Jim Lahey’s Pizza Attempt on Slice

Slice added my attempt at another Jim Lahey style pizza on their website for "Mondays pies."  This is what Slice had to say about my pizza.  Norma's Sweet Potato Pizza: "This was my next attempt on Tuesday at a pizza something like Jim Lahey makes at Sullivan Street Bakery, with a higher hydration and also a higher thickness factor. The pie was dressed with herb-infused olive oil, a little tomato sauce, mozzarella, and freshly grated Parmesan cheese, sweet potatoes (that I had sliced thin and left in some salt water before draining), onions, green and red peppers."

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/12/my-pie-monday-blue-cheese-truffle-salt-detroit-style-pizza-and-more-slideshow.html#show-130173

The link to all the pizzas on Monday’s pies on Slice.

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/12/my-pie-monday-blue-cheese-truffle-salt-detroit-style-pizza-and-more.html


Thanks Adam Kuban for adding my pie on Slice! :)

Norma

Rose Levy Beranbaum Focaccia made 12/26/2010

The Rose Beranbaum focaccia with milk keifr used as the leavening agent was baked after room temperature fermenting for 19 hours.  Although this focaccia didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it to, the taste of the crust was good, with a nice moistness in the crumb.  I don’t know what I didn’t manage right, but I think it might have been I did a parbake, then added oil to the top of the crust before the top was set  enough.  I have no way of knowing really what I did wrong, but this did give me a good experience in working with a really sticky high hydration dough. It could have also been the crust wasn’t set enough, when I took the focaccia out of the oven to dress it. As can be seen on the pictures the focaccia dough did rise, but must have fallen after I took this pie out of the oven after 10 minutes to add the dressings.

I had some extra onions, so this focaccia recipe was calling their names.  I have a definite weakness for onions in bread or bagels.  I caramelized the onions and added the fresh grated garlic later in the slow fry, because garlic can burn easily.  The focaccia pizza was dressed with Rosemary while in the oven, before the other dressings.  I did add different types of mozzarella cheese after the 10 minute parbake along with the caramelized onions and Panko Bread Crumbs.

My kitchen was filled with the deliciousness of Rosemary, garlic and cheesy Caramelized Onion smell.

In this discussion on chowhound, Rose Levy Beranbaum, said if you go down in the discussion-here's the story and fix i promised: the owner/baker of sullivan street bakery wouldn't give me the recipe when i asked for it saying it was very tricky and depended on the type of flour used which at the time he thought the home baker could not obtain. but a few years later i saw his recipe in someone else's book and the flour was king arthur which is generally available. it worked perfectly for me the first few times but as i travelled around the country on book tour i was aghast at how horribly it turned out even in the hands of some incredibly competent bakers! since i loved it so much and became really curious about what was going on i started retesting it on my return. to my surprise i discovered that the flour was not that significant as for one of my tests i used gold medal unbleached all purpose flour and it was still perfect. here's how i make it now: i double the yeast and the final rise in the pan takes about 2 hours. i let it DOUBLE not just 1 1/2 times. here's the most important part to get the big holes and light texture: just before baking i wet my fingertips with water and deeply dimple the dough throughout. this has worked for me consistently. i will post it on my website as soon as i get the chance to update it. the sullivan street baker was right: this is an exceptionally challenging bread--simple though it is. but i think worth it.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/278156

Norma

Pizza Protips: Pre-Ferments posted on Slice

Pre-fermenting a dough—that is, letting it sit around for a while before it becomes a finished dough—amps up the flavor of your bread.

If anyone wants to learn more about Pre-Ferments, this is what Slice has to add, by Donna Currie.

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/12/pizza-protips-pre-ferments-breadmaking-tips.html

Norma

Christmas Day and new beginnings for a Pizza Dough with milk kefir

I was fortunate enough to spend Christmas Day with my family.  I had cooked different foods, salads and a cake the day before Christmas.  My daughter and family came from Brooklyn, NY and we went to my granddaughters apartment for Christmas dinner and to spend time with the family.  My daughter was preparing Spanish food at my granddaughters apartment.  My granddaughter always had to have a live tree for Christmas and this year was no different.  :)

I think Christmas really is a time for children and the children that are still in us.  It is also in my opinion about new beginnings.  I thoroughly enjoyed the children and them playing with toys.  They are so innocent and don't know what they will have to go though in this world.  I also had a chance to be with my lovely mother, which in itself, was a blessing.

After I arrived home last evening I mixed a Rose Beranbaum dough.  It is a very high hydration dough and I will see what happens, when trying to make focaccia.

Norma

Picture of my new dough for Christmas Night

Jim Lahey Interview from the Leonard Lopate Show

Another interview with Jim Lahey from the Leonard Lopate Show on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVGjbncQJxI

Norma

Podcast interview with Jim Lahey!!!!!

This is a podcast with Jim Lahey and him talking about his starter, how he started the no-knead bread and what his ideas are about how bread has evolved and made.

I found this podcast interesting.  The podcast interview is long, if anyone is interested in listening to it.

http://www.fieldworkny.com/stirthepots/web/lahey.mp3

Norma

My Search and Quest to make a Pizza Bianca like Jim Lahey makes

I was searching more on the web about Sullivan St. Bakery and Jim Lahey’s pizza bianca.

I think the relevant parts of this article are:

Sullivan St became the name to look and ask for, and the bakery’s one retail outlet, in SoHo, became the place to go for the incredibly airy, oil-brushed, lightly salted pizza bianca, which is even better than that of the bakery in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori, Lahey’s model and mentor.

The location, at 72nd Street and Broadway, was convenient to my brother’s apartment, where I stay, and perfect for buying and packing a loaf of the incomparable sesame bread—not just scattered with but rolled in a dense bed of sesame seeds—just before going to the airport. The name was unfamiliar: Grandaisy, with a pretty pale-blue daisy logo on the bags. The clerks reassured me that indeed, the bread was the same.
The explanation, I learned when I went to see Lahey at his new Sullivan St Bakery headquarters in the far-west reaches of Hell’s Kitchen, was a romantic breakup that devolved into a rocky professional partnership that ended in a complete business split. Now there were two bakeries with two different names selling breads and cookies identically named and to all appearances utterly identical, one owned by Lahey and the other by his former partner, Monica Von Thun Calderón.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/10/half-a-loaf/6974/

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/10/half-a-loaf/6974/2/


The no-knead method was born at the request of an Italian cook who wanted to serve a Roman-era bread at a Roman-themed dinner, and was Lahey’s attempt to reproduce the most ancient way of making bread.

Monica Von Thun Calderón, a longtime partner in Sullivan Street Bakery, acquired sole ownership of the original space and renamed it after her grandmother.

Grandaisy Bakery Facebook page with pictures of Roman style pizza

http://www.facebook.com/GrandaisyBakery?sk=app_7146470109 

Another article about Jim Lahey’s breads, Stecca - stick or small baguette, About My Bread, and Pane all'Olive - olive bread.

http://www.projectfoodie.com/spotlights/cookbooks/making-great-bread-with-my-bread.html

More posts on  pizza bianca on egullet:

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/125201-no-knead-pizza-new-york-magazine/page__st__30

I will do some more searching to see what I can find out about Jim Lahey’s Pizza Bianca or maybe about his use of starters.

Norma