Working with yeast dough can be a little intimidating. You have seen a pizza chef stretching out pizza dough and throwing it around as if it is no big deal, but you may have thought, "I could never do that!" Well, I am here to tell you that you can make a great pizza. It is not difficult and my Passionate About Pizza Cookbook describes just how to do it.
The book describes:
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Mixing & Kneading Dough
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Letting Dough Rise & Making a Dough Ball
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Stretching, Rolling, and Pressing Pizza into Shape
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Assembling Pizza & Pizza Peel Technique
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Baking, Serving, Storing, & Reheating Pizza
Here is an exchange PizzaMan had with a friend:
Scott
January 26 at 12:29pm
when you have time. I’ve been working on my pizza for a while now but its still lacking.
Scott
January 26 at 4:34pm
Hi, Scott!
What about your pizza needs improvement?
May your dough rise,
PizzaMan
Pizza on the High Seas
My father has been one of my pizza-making students for many years. He is on a cruise and sent me this note. That’s the way to spread your passion for pizza, Dad!
Hi PizzaMan,
You can add a great footnote to your pizza fame; pizza from your book prepared aboard the Holland America ship ms Prinsendam on location at 62 deg. 36.09 min. South Lattitude and 95 deg. 44.84 min. West Longitude off Livingston Island, Antarctica. Our party of six enjoyed it immensely as we looked out at the frozen landscape of this amazing place. It was special in several ways, including the food.
The “pizza chef” did a pretty good job of making the peppers and feta recipe which I had jotted down on a note card. He didn’t have the garlic in the right form, but what he had came through in the taste.
The whole idea came from a table discussion after the couple from South Africa introduced me to smoked eel. Very mild taste and quite nice. We then decided that we each would introduce something from our home countries. The pizza was my contribution.
These two couples are the ones that we gave your books too. They all profess to try making some of the recipes when they get home.
Here is a picture from the ship on the day this pizza was made:
Pizza Ingredients
The most important thing you can know about the ingredients for making pizza is that you should use the highest quality ingredients you can. Higher quality usually does not cost much more, and you will notice the difference in taste. Beyond that tip, I want to pass on to you some of the things I have learned about various ingredients.
Yeast is amazing stuff. It is a single-cell organism. It gives off carbon dioxide gas and alcohol as it multiplies. When allowed to grow inside dough that has gluten in it (as most pizza dough does), the gas is trapped in the gluten and the dough "rises." Yeast exists in many different strains. Some are wild and others are cultivated for specific purposes and sold commercially. Brewer’s yeast and baker’s yeast are two such strains. Sourdough starters capture and cultivate wild yeast. Both baker’s yeast and sourdough starter are excellent sources of yeast for making pizza.
Spiedies are cubes of marinated meat that are cooked over a grill on skewers. Spiedies originated in the "Southern Tier" of New York near Binghamton. For those individuals who grew up in that area, Spiedies are food of the Gods. The marinade gives the meat a flavorful moistness that is unique and wonderful.
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Pizza Pans
Pizza Screens
Baking Stone
Your home oven is all you need to make great pizza. Using pizza pans, pizza screens, or a baking stone will turn your oven into a fine pizza-baking machine!
Pizza Making Equipment
You can make great pizza using minimal equipment. Having said that, there are some pizza-specific tools and gadgets that will aid in you pizza-making experience.
You might think that flour is just flour; however, not all flours are created equal. You can use almost any type of flour to make a pizza, but the type of flour you use can make a difference.
Different flours have different amounts of gluten. This is the protein in wheat that helps hold in the bubbles of gas produced by the yeast. It also allows the dough to stretch as you shape the pizza. Different flours with varying amounts of gluten will behave differently; you can see and feel the difference in the dough as you mix it.
My favorite flour to use for making pizza is a mix of half All Purpose Unbleached Flour and Bread Flour. This mix provides a good balance between the extra strength of the Bread Flour with the ease of use that comes from All Purpose Unbleached Flour.
Kamodo style barbecue grills have become popular over the last decade. One of the most commonly known versions is the Big Green Egg. Kamodo cookers are made of thick ceramic material and can cook at low, medium, or very high temperatures.
Kamodos can be used to make pizza if you prepare it properly. Here are some tips:
Remember that pizza cooks from both the top and bottom at the same time. Therefore, to bake pizza properly in a Kamodo, you need to move the pizza up toward the top of the cooker so that radiated heat from the Kamodo’s top cooks the top of the pizza. Most people do this using the "plate setter" accessory that comes with the grill (or is purchased separately). The plate setter has three legs and a flat surface. Place the plate setter on the grill’s cooking grate and then put a round pizza stone on top of the plate setter. You can adjust the height of the pizza stone by putting plates, fire bricks, or other spacers under the stone until you get even cooking on the top and bottom of the pizza.
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- Cherry Tomato & Shallot Focaccia
Focaccia Flatbread is a great accompaniment to any meal. You can suit the toppings to your taste or menu plan and have fresh bread with your meal with almost no fuss. The sky and your imagination are the limits as far as what you put on top.
Cracker Crust Sausage Pizza
Cracker Crust Pizza is very thin and crispy with little tiny air bubbles throughout the crust just like saltine crackers.
Family Pizza Nights
Ward writes:
Apparently engineers make great chefs! The author has an engineering background that comes through clearly in this book. It is clear that the author has systematically examined what makes good pizza in every aspect and from every angle, and has assembled that knowledge in a clear and organized manner in this book. It’s easy to read, too!
The result is that not only does the book provide fantastic recipes to follow, but it provides you with the principles and techniques that you can use to customize the recipes to produce pizzas that are ideal for your personal taste. The ideas are presented in such an orderly and logical manner that it is easy to do.
The pizzas are so good and the process of designing them and making them is so fun that making pizzas using the book is a fun family event that occurs about once a week in our household. The pizzas we make using the recipes and principles in Passionate About Pizza are so much better than any other pizzas we have ever bought or made that it doesn’t even seem right to use the same word to refer to the bland, circular chewy things that we used to eat before we bought Passionate About Pizza.