Friday Night SD YW Pretty Plain Pizza

This time we went back our favorite crust; Sourdough Focaccia Romano.  The SD levain used 10 g of rye starter, we added 45 g yeast water for the liquid and 45g of white whole wheat.  The 100 g of levain made up 20% of the total 500 g dough flour and water weight.

The dough included fresh rosemary, garlic and sun dried tomato to live up to the Focaccia Romano name.  To make the dough come out to 70% hydration,  246 g of AP flour and 164 g of water were mixed with the levain, 12 g of olive oil and 6 g of salt at 2% of the total flour weight.

After 3 sets of slap and folds of 8, 2 and 1 minute that were spread 12 minutes apart and 3 sets of S&F’s from the cardinal compass points where the rosemary, garlic and sun dried tomato were added in on the first set, the dough came together into a satin smooth ball.

After 2 hours of being undisturbed on the counter, the dough was retarded for 48 hours where it rose well in the fridge.  The dough was allowed to warm up on the counter for 3 hours before being shaped into (2) pizza crusts of 250 g each.  The dough was very extensible yet plenty strong.  There was no tearing even though the dough was shaped into very thin rounds.

As per our usual, we brushed the crust with Mojo de Ajo and docked it with a fork before sliding it into the 550 F oven on the bottom stone for a 2 minute par bake before removing it from the oven to be loaded up with the toppings.  It took about 6 minutes more baking to finish the pizza off heat wise. 

We really cut down on the toppings this time; chicken Italian sausage, red bell pepper, red onion and crimini mushrooms with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese for my wife’s pizza and added green manzanilla olives, pepperoni and fresh basil for my pizza

The sauce was unique and extra spicy this time.  Lucy added her extra hot and spicy, home made, left over, red Mexican sauce (that also had tomatillos and green chilies in it too) to our usual spicy Italian pizza sauce in a 50/50 blend.  We like it very much and may be our go to fusion pizza and Italian sauce from now on

The crust browned up well, was very crisp and thin - just the way we like it ….and it blistered too!  The 48 hours in the fridge helped the flavor even though the YW did mask the SD tang somewhat.  It turned out to be fine pizza dough in the end and we like it as much as our go to SD version.  Those who don’t like SD will prefer this one.

Now we just have the Chocolate Rye Salted cookies that breadsong posted for Christmas and a panettone for New Year’s  left to bake this year - maybe a white SD too next week between the two. 

When you have a slow, long build of white levain for a panettone bake, you end up with a lot of SD levain / starter waste.... so might as well make some pancakes with the toss.  Served with sausage, an egg. Maple syrup dm balck grapes.

 Yes.... it is chopped prickly pear tuna - I see some combo jam and margarita mix in the making.

And have a salad with that pizza..... to make it healthy and more filling:-)