Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I made pizza last night for my sweetie. I have been messing around with sourdough crust for a long time, and not having great success. It is usually too thick and too chewy. She doesn't like sourdough, so I dusted off the pizza crust recipe in BBA. It was exquisite! Light, flavorful (I made some breadsticks for appetizers, so I got to taste the crust alone), easy to work, and really really simple. I may play with the recipe to see if I can sub sourdough starter for the leavening, but I may just leave this one alone. It was really good.

For some reason I thought y'all should know.

TLC,
I'll have to go down to the dungeon(basement) and retrieve this. Thanks!

You've encouraged me to try it (Sunday for friends); I've been buying dough from a local Italian grocerey store, but would love to have a good recipe in my back pocket. Let me know if the sourdough works, my starter sits idle too long.
ilene

Is it this recipe? http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001199.html

Congrats on your success Tim. Somehow it does not surprise me that your v-day dinner featured a home done flour and yeast product!

That is the one. I didn't bother chilling the flour (I used KA bread flour) and the water out of my tap right now is almost as cold as ice water. I did use the oil and think it is important in pizza. I made bread sticks by just crushing some garlic into EVOO and brushing it on with a little salt. It is a great way to really taste the flavor of the crust.

ETA: I think I picked the right girl. She specifically asked for homemade pizza. We made pesto pizza with artichoke hearts and roasted tomatoes, and red sauce pizza with onions and mushrooms. Turned out great.

This is my "go-to" recipe for pizza crust, with one very, very notable exception. I use "00" flour.

It's a wonderfully thin (my absolute preference) and crisp crust. Andy would have this every night if I let him. I almost always have dough in the freezer for nights where I'm just too tired to cook, or not feeling inspired.

My one piece of advice...less is more. Don't overload this puppy with sauce or a lot of toppings.

Amy

Oh, how bleak is my brain, WTF is 00 flour it begs (Hey, Let Me Just Google That For You . . .) yields the following (for those equally unenlightened) http://www.ochef.com/830.htm.

I LOVE THIS STUFF! THANX

Jethro says double aught, I think.

ellie

Tim,

Interesting long rising bit. Of course, in my next of the woods, that would turn the dough into sourdough whether you intended it to or not.

How was it to roll out? I usually add some "short" flour to my pizza dough (semolina, corn flour, chickpea flour, etc.) to make it roll out easier and more tender after baking.

I don't generally roll it out, as I find the rolling pin squishes all the big air bubbles out. I form mini-rounds (like you would to make a miche or dinner roll), then let them relax for a while on the countertop. Then I flour them up well and gently stretch them out into shape. With the relaxing stage, this is reasonably easy. I haven't perfected the showy toss up into the air, but I stretch it across my fingers, then hold the edge and turn it, allowing the crust to hang so it gets stretched by gravity. This results in a very thin crust in the middle, and a little bit thicker at the edge, with nice big air bubbles in the edge bit. I find that if I am patient, it works out nicely. If I try to rush it, it doesn't cooperate and I end up with crust too thick in the middle.

When it is close to the size I want (my pizzas are usually pretty small), I put it on parchment paper and do a final stretch, brush with EVOO (sometimes with crushed garlic in it), and top it.