New Year’s Eve Pizza Tradition
New Year’s Eve Pizza Tradition
Here it is…another year gone by so fast Lucy nearly missed it entirely. It was good one to remember though with our daughter getting married and her and her new husband here for the end of year pizza tradition…and this time he got to form the pies while she got to top them!
My SIL get me the instant pot for x-mas and my daughter got me the induction cooktop that I used to make the pizza sauce this time. Instead of taking 4-5 hours on the cooktop it was done in 2 hours and every bit as good.
This year’s pizza dough was an 8% pre-fermented flour, 100% hydration, poolish made with a pinch of instant yeast. and left to sit for 3 hours. No whole or sprouted grains this time. The dough flour was 2/3rds Winco High Gluten and 1/3 Albertson’s bread flour. Overall hydration was 72%. We like this combination for tough, no holes, elastic yet extensible dough perfect for the extreme thin pizza crust we love.
I smoked the fresh: hot Italian sausage, yellow onions and crimini mushrooms for an hour and half just like my idol Chris Bianco does for his world best pizza at Bianco’s Pizzeria. The other toppings were red, yellow and orange bell peppers, very thin smoked pepperoni, shredded mozzarella, American Grano Padano parmesan. And fresh basil for garnish.
I forgot that my round stone was broken so the pizzas baked on it got stuck in the broken crack and ended up misshaped after trying to spin them at the 5 minute mark and get them out of the oven and they stuck to the opened crack. Bit, the taste was just about the best we have ever made and that is saying something. They crust were perfect - no sagging or soggy allowed! It has to be crispy, thin and un-foldable. New Yorkers would maybe prefer their fhicker, soggy,floppy kind and hate our favorite.
Someone stole a crispy pepperoni to show what was underneath..... but it wasn't Lucy.
What makes the crust so good is the fresh rosemary, rehydrated dried tomato and fresh mince garlic added to the dough with a bit of EVOO and then it being retarded for 18 hours in the fridge after the bulk ferment. The smoked toppings just put it over the top, making for a perfect last meal for the year end ….with a nice Chianti of course. The 4 of us devoured these two pizzas faster than ramming speed.
There is still some rugelach left ......but not many
Happy New Year to all Fresh Lofians!
Comments
Great bake as ever! Besides the induction cooktop, anything else from your sweet daughter? You know I'm curious
!
Yippee
Precious memories!
pizza look scrumptious as always...
Leslie
The pizza was grand! A fitting way to end a great year. The best to you and yours in 2018
because I am still new to this and amounts and percentages confuse me, could you share your dough recipe? I make pizza all the time but would love to try a sourdough pizza. Thanks, looks delicious. Actually I’d love your entire recipe!
Happy new year and wonderful memories for you!
Sharon
pizzas all the time and have many recipes for them. Just use the search button and for dabrownman sourdough pizza. Here is one from 2015 New Years that has SD, yeast and yeast water all at the same time.
New Years Eve Pizza
This looks great!
I really have difficulties to work with pizza dough that is more than 65% hydration, but I think a higher hydration should taste better and be more extensible.
dough that rests in fridge so long over is not too much at 72% hydration with a bit of bench flour! It isn't bad at all and the extensible nature comes out with a rest during the stretching .
Happy New Year!
Cracker thin pizzas have a place in my heart although it's just a recent discovery. I'll try a flavored crust in pizzas or calzones which is easier to bake for me.
then nearly as much. The crust just isn't same without the add ins in there. I would like to see your calzones made on an open fire for sure!
Happy New Year Job!
And if you're going to have a target to aspire to, I guess you can't do much better than Chris Bianco. But I see that you have approximately the same (mis)shaping skills that I still possess when it comes to these discs of dough. I almost always let the wife take the reins when it come to shaping pizza.
A lot of years ago at this point, Bianco's was already well established and we went to visit some friends in Chandler. We arrived at Bianco's in advance of the opening bell to find ourselves queued up at the back of an endless line. I pretty much have a policy in place when it comes to waiting in long lines. I don't. I gave up on that when I got out of the navy more than 4 decades ago. So we pitched out of there to find a pizza joint elsewhere, and nowhere near as good as I suspect that Bianco's pizza is.
And just how do you know that the ankle-biter didn't do a five-finger (or five-claw) discount on the missing pepperoni slice?
pepperoni. She snatched it out of the air as I threw it to her. She always gets the first bite of just about everything made around here. We need someone to make sure this stuff isn't poisonous! The pies weren't mis-shaped. MY new SIL actually did a commendable job of shaping them but I forgot the bottom stone was cracked and they sort of stuck themselves into the crack and ,when I went to spin the pizzas at the half way mark, they were manhandled by one pissed off oven tender:-)
Bianco's next restaurant they are teaming up with one of the best taco places in town. I suppose they will be making some kind of Pizza Taco Pockets :-) He still has his deal with Chad Robertson for a marketplace in LA too. The ilnes aren't as long at his 2nd pizza place next door to Tratto, his upscale restaurant where the menu changes every week that we like so much.
Us old Navy guys hate standing in line for anything.
Happy New Year Don Baggs!
and not the chain store either.
USS Lowry DD-770 and USS Detector MSO-29 (the only wooden ships in the Navy - along with the MSCs). But I wasn't a good fit to say the least, as I was too immature to deal with it back then - kept asking for Mess Cooking (KP) instead of being in the Engine Room, as I'll take washing trays and food prep over maintaining monster sized engines any day. But it seemed like a good way to run away from home. Just not in the midst of a war with a very long coastline for shelling, ya dope!
Well, since that day, sadly I still haven't made it to Bianco's. Had Chris ever been a bread baker? as there seems to be a strong correlation between those types and some of the better pizza makers in this country.
In Portland the two consistently highest ranked pizza joints were started by Ken Forkish - I think we know that name, and Brian Spangler at his fantastic Apizza Scholls. Brian was the sole baker and owner of Olive Mtn. baking company in Portland before he moved on to pizza, and now he has national recognition. Another pizza star there is Kathy Whims chef/owner of the swankiest Italian restaurant in town. She shut it down and (I think) learned pizza making on one of her numerous visits to Italy. And then honed her skills with Ken and mostly Alan Maniscalco, the head baker at Ken's and later at his pizzeria.
boat left over from WW2, couldn't really call it a ship but it was a boat. it wasn't even big enough to have a name just a number -like all the brown river craft:-) The Kitty Hawk CVA - 63 was much better duty and they had many fine bakers in the mess to boot - but they didn't make SD on the carrier. A Chief in the Navy introduced me to SD on Treasure Island while I was there being mustered out of active duty in 73 and...... doing KP on temporary duty!
Chris was a big SD bread baker but has now been banned going anywhere near the ovens. for health reasons His brother is the head baker of all things bread now and makes all the bread for Tratto. They made some great Italian style SD for the table if you ask for it and the marinated and smoked chicken liver on grilled SD is to die for. My girls don't like liver so I got it all:-) The pizza oven is too hot for bread so they bale it in the deck oven.
I don't think it is possible for a bread or pizza maker not to make the other!
Did you make the sauce on the induction cooktop or in the IP? If it was the induction thingy, how does that save so much time? I'm glad you are both back on the site - I missed you. Sam and Barney get the last bite, not the first. If they got the first there might well not be a second. Patsy
pressure and then for 60 minutes on the induction for simmering to thicken it up. Then it was retarded for 24 hours to let the flavors meld - yummy! Saved about 2 hours cooking time because of the IP. I made chicken stock in the IP yesterday and it was just fantastic. Really sucked all the gelatin out of those bones in 60 minutes flat. I was reading where a lady made pizza in the IP but it sounded like it would be on the steamy side instead of the crispy side to me.
Lucky for me Lucy's legs are too short to jump up on the counters and wolf food. She does get up there if we leave the love seat too close to the counter though - she jumps up on the back of it and then jumps over to the counter! She was bred to be stupid but will amaze you with her sneaky ways. It is good to be back.
The best to you and yours in 2018!