Pizza Stone

[spqr]

any thoughts on how to get that dough thinner?  i worked it for quite some time, taking breaks even.  however, i didn't have the time [impatient to a fault] and strive for immediate gratification[premature ejaculator].  

tips anyone?

Contrary to many of the instructions on this thread, the key to getting thin crust for most of us thick-fingered folks is the rolling pin. If you roll out your crust to 1/4-inch thick or less, top it immediately and don't let the pizza sit for long before you cook it, you will get a very nice thin crust pie.

Another tip: leave an untopped border of an inch to an inch and a half around the pie.

Here is the fruit of my labors of this afternoon. Homemade hot Italian sausage and kalamata olives.

[mynamejoe]

Rolling pin works fine and there's nothing evil or wrong about using one. By hand works just as well, it's just a little more fun. Even the thick fingered can do it; if you watch the video clip I posted a link to, you'll notice that the "star" isn't exactly ballerina material!

[johnjohn]

I just finished making 3 pizzas - lots of leftovers!!!!

Crust - started by stretching dough by hand very gently - letting it rest - than more stretching and patting. Dough was uneven and in some areas so thin that you could see through it. Ended up using rolling pin - crust was even and thin - real nice looking.

Sauce - drained and seeded San Marzano (1 can) - salted and placed them in a strainer for 1 hour. Placed tomatoes, 2 cloves garlic, Olive Oil, oregano, salt and pepper in food processor - buzzed 1 minute.

Toppings - 1 had roasted red pepper, onion, fresh mozzarella and black olive. 1 had pepperoni, fresh mozzarella and mushroom. 1 had just fresh mozzarella. As they came out of oven - I brushed the crust with olive oil and sprinkled with torn fresh basil.

Baked for 6 minutes (rotated once during cooking) on a stone - stone was heating for 1 hour in 500 oven. crust was crispy - very happy with results. I was hoping to get the black spots on the edge of the crust like at Lombardi's, but didn't happen - I guess I could of cooked it longer, but wanted the cheese to be soft and runny.

I don't have a pizza peel - so I used a flat cookie sheet dusted with corn meal. 1 pizza stuck as I slid it onto the stone - After 5 minutes of working it with a spatula it came off, but was a weird shape. Pulled them off when finished onto cutting board using tongs.

Went pretty light on sauce and toppings from what earlier posts said - In future will put more sauce on - it seemed kind of dry.

Also my stone gave off a huge amount of smoke while it was heating up. I don't think it has ever been washed (I thought I read somewhere that you are not supposed to wash them). Any advice oh how to clean them or reduce the amount of smoke.

Overall a good experience - will experiment more in the future

johnjohn

[Rhea_S]

Tommy, when you flatten the dough, is the dough cold or at room temperature? I made a batch of pizza dough last week from a recipe in March '02 Fine Cooking. If the dough was in the refrigerator all night, I let it sit out for 15-30 minutes depending on the temperature of the room. When the dough is properly proofed, it's very soft and easy to flatten and shape. The recipe I used is excellent. It makes a very nice crisp crust if stretched or rolled very thin. It takes only 15 minutes or less to make the dough and, if you plan to make the pizza on the same day, you let the dough rise for 30 minutes, flatten, top and bake -- completely homemade pizza in less than one hour.

[BettyK]

How about docking the dough? I read this on another website but haven't tried it yet. Apparently it helps

prevent large air bubbles from forming in the crust (which is exactly what happened to me last time).

I agree with Rhea S about resting the dough overnight in the refregerator. I found the dough a lot easier to handle.

[Robert Schonfeld]

I think it's less about the recipe for the dough than it is about the technique. Success depends more on a fairly slack dough made with weak flour being allowed to develop in a cool temperature, turned at least a couple of times, and rested adequately before forming. A rolling pin works fine, but stretching the dough by hand gives the surface a different character, with more texture (stretched rather than pressed), and so it will bake differently and taste different. Stretching by hand also offers the pleasure of handling the dough and the reward of doing something that is tied to tradition and culture. The guy in the tape may not have been a ballerina, but he had the connection.

[tommy]

as far as what i'm doing, it's "pizza place bought dough". i'm not making my own. i brought it down from fridge temp for about 20 mins before working it.

also, why not cook the sauce? i'm seeing a lot of suggestions of "raw" sauce, but what does that buy you? i'm cooking a nice flavorful sauce, free of water. what can be wrong with that?

still confused.

[mynamejoe]

A raw sauce is the traditional, authentic Italian method for pizza sauce. If you like the cooked sauce better, use that. If something tastes better to you, to hell with tradition.

[spqr]

Ultimately, the choice of sauce comes down to personal preference. I have also sometimes used thinly sliced fresh garden tomatoes in place of a tomato puree of some kind. I've also used hand-mashed canned plum tomatoes. You will get a different kind of pizza, but in each case the pizzas have been quite good. I have come to like the fresh taste of a "raw" tomato sauce, so that is what I use regularly now. I say "raw" because the sauce does cook while the pie is in the oven. I think that making a cooked sauce is a little bit of a waste of time because the complexity of such a sauce can be overpowered by the other toppings, not to mention that it takes a lot of time. But you're right Tommy...there's nothing "wrong" with using a cooked sauce. Your confusion appears to be self-imposed.

[spqr]

The food network is today (sunday, 9-1-02) running a Good Eats marathon. Alton Brown is my idea of what Emeril should have been - he's an intelligent star. The key thing is that Alton's cooking is solidly based in food science. Anyway, I just watched the pizza episode. Contrary to some of the recommendations on this thread, Alton says that good pizza begins and ends with good bread, and because of this, one needs to use bread flour rather than the low protein flour that the Italians use and that has been recommended here many times. He also recommends a 24 hour slow rise (in the refrigerator), which I've never tried.

So I decided to whip up another batch of dough and give it a long, slow rise to see how different my pizza crust will be. I will report back tomorrow. I have never been able to adequately form the crust without using a rolling pin, so I am also eager to see if the overnight in the fridge has the effect that some posters to this thread claim.

I have done a lot of experimentation with different flours for my pizza doughs. In the past two weeks I have sort of settled on 1 1/2 cups of AP to 2 1/2 cups of bread flour as my basic recipe because it yields a pizza crust that is very close to my ideal. So maybe Alton is on to something.

[tommy]

he also said not to use a pin. he's quite a tosser. that is to say, he tossed the dough very well.

he's my hero.

[Kerouac1964]

Just wanted to drop a note of appreciation into this thread!! I love pizza, and have yet to buy my own pizza stone and peel. The pics were mouthwatering and objects of love!

Pizza is such a good thing! Whether it be the worst frozen version tasting of cardboard or in better times woodfired oven baked!!

I leave you with several poems on pizza by 2nd graders:

------------------------------------------------------

Crazy for Pizza

Fetch me a scrumptious delightful pizza.

Let it have tons of melted cheese.

With crispy crust, nice & fluffy!

With hot bubbly sauce.

Make it boiling hot

So it burns my mouth when I eat it.

Hmmm, give it to me now!

by Ashley

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Best Pizza Ever

Sizzling in the pan the tender delicious

pizza pie is pulled from the oven.

As the waiter brings it to the table the

cheese is dripping on the floor.

As the family looks at it, the cheese is dripping.

Covered with pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers,

spice, tomatoes, and black olives.

The little girl picks up a slice and sticks it

in her mouth and it is so gooey and good

she gobbles up 15 triangular slices of

that delicious pizza in just 5 minutes.

by Jenny

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Pizza Feels

Hot and cheesey guess what it is?

Squishy, mushy, what can it be?

Delightful, crunchy, well what is it then?

I guess it's Pizza!!! Yuuuum!!

by Alyssa

[Robert Schonfeld]

Alton says that  good pizza begins and ends with good bread, and because of this, one needs to use bread flour rather than the low protein flour that the Italians use

What do the Italians know?

[bigbear]

What do the Italians know?

They know where you live.

[oraklet]

"Alton says that good pizza begins and ends with good bread, and because of this, one needs to use bread flour rather than the low protein flour that the Italians use and that has been recommended here many times"

yes. absolutely. indeed.

i would have to add, though, that as taste in the bread part of the pizza is not as important as in "real" bread, i'm not using a biga for the dough. texture, as i see it, is more important.

key factor to shaping is, the dough should be QUITE STICKY! pour the risen, room temp dough onto thin layer of pasta flour, spread more pasta flour on top so that it wont stick to your fingers, make sure the dough has a more or less regular shape, then start shaping it from the center, leaving a border as suggested by spqr. it's sooo easy. takes very little practice.

filling can be anything you wish, long as there's not too much of it. and right, oven should be as hot as it can be.

stretching may be even better, but this works fine with me as well as anybody else that has tasted my pizzas. it's the one and only thing i really know how to do really good!

edit: pasta flour = durum wheat semolina

[Robert Schonfeld]

yes. absolutely. indeed.

i would have to add, though, that as taste in the bread part of the pizza is not as important as in "real" bread, i'm not using a biga for the dough. texture, as i see it, is more important.

edit: pasta flour = durum wheat semolina

I can't agree, oraklet. There's no excuse for abdicating the achievement of good taste in any wheat product. It can be done without sacrificing any other characteristic.

Semolina flour comes in degrees of fineness. The finer the better for pasta; less so for use in bread recipes.

[spqr]

Okay, so I just finished making another batch of 4 pizzas using the long, slow risen dough I mixed up yesterday. I have to say that it does yield a much better crust than I am used to getting. The crusts on this batch of pizzas are beautiful and they taste terrific.

I took the dough out of the refrigerator early this morning to let it come to room temperature. Three hours later, however, the dough was still quite cool to the touch but, being an instant gratification kinda guy, I couldn't wait any longer and so I made the pizzas.

Two things: my crust rose much more than it usually does, and I found that the dough was no more easily patted out by hand than my other doughs were. I suspect that the extra rise I got is related to the fact that the dough was still cool when I rolled it out, topped it and stuck the pie in the oven, which gave the yeast a little more time to act before the heat murdered them. Why I cannot seem to pat out or throw the dough to form the pizza crust I have no clue. Yes, I did let it rest for 10 minutes and tried again, but it was still a no-go.

[DaveFaris]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned (I don't think) is that keeping a pizza stone in your oven all the time is a good thing. Because of its themal mass, it helps keep the temperature in your oven more even, and allows the oven to regain its temperature more quickly after you open and close the door. (Again, so says Alton.) I keep mine on the bottom of my stove 24/7.

[oraklet]

robert,

i could think of one excuse: that the topping will in most cases overpower the finer nuances of the bread. but i (almost) always let the dough rise for at least 8 hours to get some taste in the border and a good structure. i do use the same semolina flour for both bread and pasta. maybe my pasta could be even better, but it is, at least, better than any i can buy. takes a lot of work, though.

spqr,

is your dough sticky (should be)?

[spqr]

i do use the same semolina flour for both bread and pasta. maybe my pasta could be even better, but it is, at least, better than any i can buy. takes a lot of work, though.

spqr,

is your dough sticky (should be)?

As I reported in an earlier post, I have experimented quite a bit with flours for my pizza doughs and I have lately settled (for the time being at least) on about a 1:3 ratio of AP flour to bread flour. I haven't yet tried to use semolina in the mix.

Regarding the stickiness of my dough...I tend to make medium-dry doughs, finding that very wet doughs are too hard to handle. I've read that one should try to make as wet a dough as possible when making bread but I've never been able to ferret out a sensible explanation from the book or magazine article as to why I should do this. I sometimes watch the two or three old Julia Child episodes on video where she demonstrates her French bread technique. She sort of plucks at the ball of dough to show how sticky the dough should be. I think my doughs start out that sticky but they quickly lose that after they get kneaded and rolled out on the bench flour.

[Fat Guy]

If you can get thick, unglazed ceramic tiles, or kiln shelving, you'll be happier than you will be with a pizza stones, as most stones are too thin to really retain heat well. An inch or more is good.

Has anybody tried the HearthKit, that Steve Klc mentioned on some other thread, and i've seen advertised in some food magazines, endorsed by many baking people, including the relevant to the topic of this thread Scicolone ( authors of Pizza, Any Way You Slice It")

I just saw the HearthKit ad in this month's Saveur and I was like, hey, I'm going to post about that on eGullet. Good thing I did a search first. At least this once I've narrowly escaped looking like too much of an idiot. I'll try again later.

[CooksQuest]

Tommy,

*Great* looking pie.

Just one post-cooking question:

Were you able to keep subsequent slices from getting soggy after you took the whole pie out of the oven and began to eat the pie?

I've found that if I leave the cooked pie on the peel, by the time I get to the second slice, the crispness suffers.

To counter that, I now take the pizza stone out of the oven and put the pizza stone on a hot plate on my serving table. Now, all of the slices stay crisp. (Had I left it in the oven, the cheese would have suffered).

Just watch out for creating a fire hazard...

[tommy]

Were you able to keep subsequent slices from getting soggy <B>after</B> you took the whole pie out of the oven and began to eat the pie?

thanks.

yes, it actually stayed crispy. it was pretty damned crispy to begin with, and i tried to make sure that the toppings weren't too "wet."

in the past, the toppings would ooze over the sides of the slice and eventually make it a bit soggy. but not this time.

i did, however, toy with the idea of removing the stone when it was hot. but i don't think i'll be taking that chance. you're a braver person than i.

[stagis]

OK - a little confusion here: The recipes I've seen for pizza dough ALL add some oil into the mix. I've taught my 14-year-old to make Italian bread, and said to him,"OK - now if you want pizza, just add 1/4 cup of oil to the dough before you start kneading..."

I saw no oil in the recipes early in this thread.....why not?

Thanks - Rob

[Dana]

BE CAREFUL if you take your stone out of the oven while hot. Several years ago I did this whlie baking some choc-chip cookies on my stone (makes a terrific crust) My stone hade come with a metal rack with handles for ease in removing it from the oven. For some stupid reason, I grabbed the rack with one hand and the stone in the other. The stone came out of the rack, and the rack proceeded to bounce around on my arm while I screeched in pain. I still have the scars to prove it. Not a good thing.