Cheezin’ Deep Dishin’

Not much to comment on here.  Even with a crude measuring process and improvisation, this pizza(s) tasted good.  Whenever I say the pizza was good that is quite the accomplishment.

This was a simple cheese pizza.  The one prior was a onion pizza.  Note the cheese oozing out.  I have had problems with that in the past.

If you so desire compare this pizza to the  one from the summer time.  Has it really been that long since I made deep dish pizza?

I might make it more often because the process is becoming much easier for me.

As AHK would say… “cheers”

*Photo Credit / Yoko Tsuchiya

Crustastrophy from a few weeks back

A few weeks ago we made quite visually appealing pizzas.  Yes, visually appealing.  Tasty?  Maybe not.

The oven I was using failed to cook how I wished and the crust came out soggy and lame (quite literally as in unable to support itself).  The pizza stone should have helped but I think I used the wrong setting on the oven.

We made five pizzas and they all looked nice but were disappointing for me in so many ways I have not had the courage to write about them, let alone post pictures.  That will serve as a bad reminder.  Instead the sequential post will remedy the situation by talking about what was made yesterday.

Thin Way to End the Month

The last time I made pizza was fairly long ago when I was left alone at home during the summer.  All I remember is that I made three thin crust pizzas that I ate on my own.  I didn’t write about these because they were more of an experiment than anything.

Well it is several months later and it’s almost October.  I have finally been motivated to start making pizza again.  This past weekend was quite fun and brought me even closer to super delicious thin crust pizza.

The following is one of the five pizzas that were made.  Consisting of sausage, pepperoni, red pepper, and onion.  I prefer the green pepper but we were making use of the refrigerator as to be thrifty.  Now that I think about it a pepper is maybe 89 cents…

I made four, 14 inch thin crust doughs and had enough leftover for a smaller misshapen crust.  One would be surprised to know that this dough is nothing more than flour and water.  I am sure I have said that in the past but it is always good to be reminded.  However, flour plus water makes for one tough, elastic dough that does not play kindly with the rolling pin.  I have had the pleasure of beating this dough in this recipe to death trying to get it stretched out to an appropriate diameter but this was not the case this weekend.

After doing some research on the problem of elasticity, I found that warm dough is much easier to work with.  I have experimented with warming my dough in the past and only had meager results at best.  This time the two dough balls I made went into the oven to a temperature somewhere around 130 degrees for about 1 and 1/2 hours.  The dough more than doubled in size and when I removed it, it was very workable and soft.  Some elasticity remained but rolling the dough was much easier than ever before.  It was a little on the wet side which I should have corrected when I made the dough balls.  I also should have put some oil in the pan and on top of the dough because it stuck to the glass and cling wrap which resulted in a minor loss of dough and ultimately thinner crust than I wanted.

I cooked this on the grill again with a pizza stone.  However, the heating was a bit uneven and cooked too fast in the middle which would lead someone to believe the pizza fell down a chimney.  Very crispy and tasty minus the carbon flavor coated on the bottom in several areas.  Next time I will just use the oven to bake.

The ingredients for these thin crusts is very simple and nothing fancy.  Yet a beautiful looking pizza comes out.  Next time should be even better as I continue to improve the process for making the thin crust.

- Thanks goes out to Nate for his continued allowance of his kitchen.

Grilled Pizza Anyone?

This will be a familiar update.  If not the same as many others.

Its about thin crust pizza.  I didn’t think I would be working on any of these but then I had a stroke of genius.  You see the oven at home doesn’t cut it with the proper level of heat.  Even using the pizza stone gives a less than desirable crispy crunch.  So what did we have lying around that can get over 500 degrees at least?  The gas grill.  That thing can go up to about 550 which is pretty good considering the oven is rated at 500 max for the most part (its old and probably doesn’t even go that hot).  Maybe mom will get a new oven if we move someday…  Anyway I put the pizza stone on the grill and heated it up for about 20 mins.  All I can say is that I was impressed with how the pizzas cooked up.  When dealing with thin crust I have noticed that being slightly too thick will make the pizza not very enjoyable to eat.  So one pizza was a tad on the thick side while the other was maybe a bit too thin.  Needless to say the thinner one was better though.

The bottom browned up and became really crispy with only about 6-7 mins of cook time.  The dough could use some work still.  I will double check on that aspect.  I bet if I gave this to some people they wouldn’t know I made it at home.  That’s how confident I am with this one.  I can tell that it faces some idiosyncrasies.  Such is life.  I am proud of the this one in many ways.  Too bad I was the only one eating the pizza that night…

Its Been Sometime Since

Well it has been a slow summer in the pizza making department.  Combined with excessive amounts of work, time has proved to be allusive.  I believe back in May I made pizza but it is now almost the end of June and yet to show for much.

Better late than never I suppose.  I have a few short thoughts on the last pizzas I made.

deep dish may 09

This pizza was so good.  It was even better the next day after sitting in the refrigerator over night.  Maybe it is better to cook the pizza sauce beforehand or something like that.  I suppose I might try that because I am used to making sauce without cooking it or heating it up.  It might give the pizza a different taste and a delicious one at that.

I discovered a few key things about doing the deep dish stuffed pizza this time around.  The dough came out really nicely after lefting it proof in the refrigerator over night.  I think I will try to do that from now on.  It is possible to do rapid rise yeast but there is less yeast flavor doing a cold rise.  Maybe its my imagination, who knows.  I corrected the dough slippage on the sides.  I have been trying to keep the crust up on the side of the pan but I noticed this is not how most pizzas of this genre are made.  The top layer of crust goes on top and is pinched around the top edge.  But then this is folded over into the pan to form a lip around the inside edge of the pan.  That is where the big crust comes from on a stuffed pizza.  This leads to a much better looking pizza and I won’t be burning anymore crust around the edge like that one time Nate.

One of the better things to do was to cook this pizza on a lower temperature and I covered the top with foil to retard the surface from burning.  This gave a very stringy quality to the cheese that one might ideally imagine.  You can see that in the picture.  I work with a terrible oven so the foil trick is an interesting one.

Finally, I made a pan variation using the stuffed pizza dough.  Here is a picture of that.  Very similar to a monicals pan pizza I must say.  Not surprising since I like to see how close I can replicate what I made there long ago.  Just a change of pizza but good nonetheless.

Now if only Nate would get my pan back to me……

Back at the counter, weighing up the results

Nate convinced me that I should come over to make pizza for him on Saturday.  This was after a falling out we supposedly had, over trivial silly things.  It was simply overstated that there was a conflict and I maintain my capslock button was just stuck in place like it sometimes does.  With that out of the way here is what went down with the latest thick crust attempt.

This picture doesn’t really help to show what was made.  We ate everything up too quick and I was lazy to get a picture before we ate.  At least we have this for historical value to look at.  I mentioned that I tried to fold the oil into the flour last time and that didn’t produce results I was hoping for.  Well, I did this again but made sure the oil/flour clumps were mashed out and mixed finer than before.  I also used my kitchen scale to weigh everything out and that made the process even better because its more precise.  The dough was a little sticky after adding water and I thought more flour could be added.  I’m glad no extra was added however.  It had a nice stretchy quality that made it pretty workable without tearing too much.

The one mistake I made on this was the crust edge and the oven being too hot.  A lot of the top edge turned black and the entire crust was mildly underdone.  It will be useful to bake it at a lower temperature for about 30 mins for ideal cooking time perhaps.  I still haven’t figured out how to make a nice edge on the top of my crust that stays up and doesn’t fall down.  That’s only a cosmetic issue that doesn’t haunt me so much as the crust itself.

The crust came out really delicious much to my surprise.  It was not bready but more biscuit in quality.  Think what a bread roll is like and then think of a nice soft crispy buiscuit.  While it wasn’t exactly like a biscuit it was really good.  It ended up having a restuarant flavor to it that my other pizzas have not quite reached.  The pizza had its flaws but the curst was rather good that I didn’t mind.  I have a good idea for what I want to try to make next time around.  The next one should approach a new level of quality and deliciousness.

Update to March 28th

This is long over due.  Several weeks ago I set out to make two pizzas that I thought may bring me closer to my desire.  The reason I never completed an update is because I became dismayed at the thought of my pizza making efforts.  You see, for the past weeks since that time I last made pizza I just didn’t want to take the time to make another pie that didn’t meet my expectations.

I thought perhaps I might abandon pizza making to the inner sanctums of the earth where such dreams and physical embodyments vaporize in amazing ways.

Lets take a look at what happened on March 28th to get a better understanding why I had such drastic thoughts running through my mind (which I did not let anyone know).

This thin crust was really good.  Much like the one I made during spring break in fact.  The sauce could use some work and the crust may need to be thinner but overall this pizza comes out nicely.  Similar to a Monicals pizza but the cheese and some ingredients give it a different feel.  I will continue my work on this for the people who can’t handle my thicker and heavier creations.

I tried folding my oils into this dough mixture.  That means I combined flour and oil first.  Then I added the water hoping that this would give me a different crust texture.  The end result was less than what I had hoped for.  I got the typical bready crust that is not really ideal.  You might like that style (home made feel) but I don’t make these pizzas for that.  Looks kind of scary even.  I don’t like how it cooked on the top and edges.  I think you can tell when your dough isnt how you want it to be.   One other observation is that I don’t like how it cooks when a pizza stone is put underneath.  I have heard many say this works better.  I’m starting to think not so much for my thick crust pizzas.

These realizations set me back and made me feel like the pizzas weren’t developing.  Things are moving forward again and it will always be a love hate relationship with all the tasks I undertake because sometimes I fail and sometimes I do well.  I find this common in many things I do but I come back for more failure and success.  It’s worth it.