Pizza made with Pat's baguette dough
Last night, I refreshed a liquid levain with the intension of baking a batch of Pat's (proth5) baguettes today. I made a slightly higher hydration dough with Giusto's Baker's Choice flour and 10% KAF White Whole Wheat.
This morning, I mixed the dough, did the autolyse, stretched and folded, and put the dough in a bowl to bulk ferment. After the first folding, my wife and I dashed out to run a couple errands. As we drove, we discussed dinner and decided we felt like pizza.
Sooo ... Pat's baguettes turned into the best pizza crust I've yet made. It was so good! It stretched beautifully thin without tearing and baked up crisp with a chewy crumb. The bottom was cracker-thin and crisp. The slight sourdough tang in the very flavorful crust was lovely.
I finally mastered "more is not better" with the toppings: a very thin film of the sauce in Floyd's "Pizza Primer" with a little fresh mozzarella and quite a lot of mushrooms. A sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan. The photos were taken before I added some leaves from our basel plant.
I also made one pie without mushrooms. It was also yummy.
Pat's formula can be found here:
http://tfl.thefreshloaf.com/node/10852/baguette-crumb-65-hydration-dough
David
Comments
Geez, David, that's exactly how I make my pizza dough (except for the flour brands, of course - I always use homemilled for the whole wheat) I often add about 5% of olive oil.
I've always enjoyed the crust on my pizza and am glad to hear that someone else does also.
(As an aside, I have worked hard to be able to do some tossing - not the stuff of pizza tossing competitions, but hand tossing - because "my teacher" once told me that tossing a pizza was something he/she couldn't do...Gotta be me)
Glad you enjoyed the pizza - try it with the 5% olive oil sometime...
Pat
I will try the olive oil.
Yesterday, the decision to make pizza was made at the point the dough was about ready to divide and preshape. However, after dividing into 3 7 oz pieces and rounding up, I did roll each piece in olive oil and refrigerated while preparing the toppings.
Have you ever used your dough to make foccacia?
David
Olive oil makes a big difference no matter how it is applied.
I'm not a big foccacia eater, nor are my bread eating friends, so I don't often make it.
If I were, this is one case where I would up the hydration a bit - maybe as high as 70-75% because the dough would not need to hold a shape and is delivered to the oven on a pan,so why not get the big holes by upping hydration?
As an aside on the whole hydration discussion, I just decided to shorten fermentation times and lower hydration on my high extraction bread - and the crumb is now a more open, pleasing thing. And the bread holds its shape better. And tastes nice. Talk about counter intuitive. It's getting the numbers right - not high or low or long or short. So much to learn...
Also, during my whirlwind romance with commercial yeast, any loaf I took out of the oven "sang." My levain loaves have nicer crumb and taste, but they never sing. Have you ever noticed that?
Hi, Pat.
Actually, I've never made focaccia, but your dough made such good pizza, it got me thinking. I suppose I should make a "real" foccacia recipe as my first attempt.
I mentioned I mixed the dough at slightly higher hydration. I'd guesstimate it ended up at about 72% (7.5-8 oz water/11 oz flour). This was partly to compensate for the higher water absorbtion of the WWW flour, but it still ended up slacker than your original 65% hydration dough.
In the past few months, my loaves, almost all of which are sourdoughs, are singing more often, louder and longer. I think I may be drying the crust better before removing loaves from the oven. Or it may be global warming. I'm not sure which.
David
"Real" focaccia is just a normal dough at about 75% hydration (wouldn't use bread flour, though) with perhaps 3% olive oil. So I think taking the pizza dough and further upping the hydration would be as real as it gets. I'd push the hydration on focaccia - like I say, if it is in a pan, there is no reason not to. You aren't really shaping the thing, just patting it out.
Funny about the singing. My technique is pretty darned consistent so I don't know why one bunch of loaves would sing and others not. I wonder if it's just that for my "normal" baking, I have so much else on my schedule that I don't stop to listen, whereas when I was baking with commercial yeast I was trying to observe every detail. Singing is not the measure of bread, but if I am actually getting a better result with my levain breads they should be doing something. I'll try to pay closer attention. On baking day I tend to unload the loaves and then rush off to something else. I might need to slow down a bit.