Oh My! 3 Pies and a Green Crocodile!

We haven’t made any pizza for a while around her for some reason.  It isn’t like we don’t like pizza but it is pretty messy when it comes right down to it – at least it is when Lucy and I make it at any rate!  Flour, semolina, corn meal everywhere, frying the Sausage, chopping all the toppings…..Yep I’m guilty and Lucy looks guilty.

This pizza was different than our normal in may ways.  First the dough was a plain KA bread flour, water, salt and instant yeast made as a polish the night before.  No rosemary, garlic and sun dried tomato in the dough either.

It rose well in the fridge after 48 hours and when gently deflated made 2 pizza crusts that rose 3 hours on the counter in the bowl before forming.

Instead of retarding the dough for 12 hours we retarded it for 48 hours.  Instead of coating the formed pes in Mojo de Ajo before the sauce goes on ( a mistake in hindsight), we just sprinkled some dried garlic on it and no sauce either.  We put a thin layer of Monterrey jack cheese down first and no mozzarella to be found anywhere either.

The highly secret green crocodile Teflon coated, mini pizza roller.  Once you stretch out the dough and make the rim, this baby works great to get the middle paper thin without messing with the rim  but watch tyour fingers:-).

Instead of sauce we put some thin slices of salted and peppered of Roma tomato on top of the cheese.  No caramelized onions this time - just sliced red and green ones.  The normal sliced red and Poblano peppers, cremini and button mushrooms, thin pepperoni, grilled chicken and hot Italian sausage were still there.

The grated cheese on top were a bit different too.  Instead of Parmesan and Romano, we had a salty, sharp, hard, grating, goats milk cheese from Greece.   For the finishing touch after baking instead of just fresh Thai basil and arugula we had Thai Basil and dandelion instead.

The polish was 100 g of 100% hydration KA bread flour and water with a pinch of yeast that was left on the counter for 8 hours before mixing in 300 more g of KA bread flour and 200 g of water with 8 g of salt.  After developing the gluten with slap and folds we let the dough rest for an hour, folded it and then placed it in the fridge in a plastic covered, oiled bowl for 2 days.

This dough was not as extensible as an AP one, out favorite, but it also too manhandling better and was stronger so it didn’t tear either.  I liked it for stretching.  My wife didn’t like the taste of this dough and thought it was chewy. She is always right of course.  Compared to our favorite, flavored dough, this one is pretty boring and it is chewier than our usual AP dough and it didn’t get as crisp too – but I think that was due to the new oven and not getting the stone hot enough long enough first.

Without our usual zippy, zesty sauce, this pizza wasn’t as ‘hot’ or spicy.  I fixed mine with some red chili flakes on top – no problem.  I liked the pizza a lot and it was very good the next day when toasted for 5 minutes in the toaster mini oven.  Not having to cook so much stuff and not making a sauce sure makes the process much easier and time consuming…… but not that much cleaner!

And a different kind of pie - a strawberry, blueberry, banana and ginger galette.  Yum!