I'm doing a dinner party with about 15 guests mostly family/friends this coming weekend.
Really hoping things go well.
The last one I did on New Year Eve was almost a disaster. It was supposed to be a pizza party (NYE drinking so pizza good for that I thought). I bought a baking steel and fermented by dough just right. I made past pizzas before often enough on my little home stove so recipes were tested.
When it was about 6pm, I started making my pizzas and stretching the dough balls into circles.
But the problem was the pizza dough wouldn't stretch without snapping and breaking - like it was a different dough. I tried repeatedly and likely overworked the dough and started to panic because I have like 15 people waiting for an exciting meal, hungry and with high expectations.
I was at a family/friends place and I used a different flour - Gold Medal and not my usual King Arthur. I realized that it was bleached and with a lower protein content and that the lower protein meant that I would have weakened gluten strands that will break when stretched - aaarggghhh!!!
I didn't know what to do and people saw my panic and recommended I drink some booze which I did so in huge amounts.
I got drunk and calmed down and needed to stretch it differently. I remembered a technique I saw by Ken Forkish on youtube and you just let the dough hang on stretch on its own gravity - it worked somewhat and I had squares.
Next I put it in the stove. My normal recipe method was to bake at 500 for ~4 min. Next put sauce and cheese and then broil for 3 min.
But this was not my usual stove and gas so when I switched from bake to broil the gas broiler won't turn on. When it finally came on 15 min later, my pizza was too high and the parchment paper caught fire.
I lowered the pizza steel.
I tried my next pizza. Bake at 500 then switch to broil. Again the broiler won't come on and it took another 15 min or so. I realized that I could only choose top heat or bottom heat bc once the broiler is off, it won't come back on.
I chose top heat and hoped for the best.
The pizzas came out okay that night. People genuinely raved about it because the rich fermented flavor of the dough was so pleasing and new to them (since they only had store bought pizza before).
So the night went well through improvisation.
I'm doing another one (a fancier 5 course meal) and just kinda worried. But it would be interesting to hear if you had similar things happen and how did it end?
