exercising self control

So last night, I was making our traditional Friday night pizza ala Peter Reinhart, using his Neo-Neopalitan crust. Mmmmmm..... This isn't your throw-the-dough-together-an-hour-before-it-goes-into-the-oven pizza. Usually, I make the dough the night before, or even prepare it as far ahead as four days prior. Yesterday's version had a meager eight-hour fermentation.

I was pulling my pie out of the blazing 550* on convection oven. Flip. Cheese-side-down hanging on the rack. Dripping onto the door. Toppings becoming one with the floor, glass, gap between the door and oven. Grrrrrrrrr. SELF CONTROL, STEPH -- there are children present. "What's wrong, Mommy?" "What happened, Steph?" "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!"

So I scraped up the salvageable bits, plopped them onto the side-right-up crust, cut it into four and devoured it. "Mommy, you're right! It doesn't matter how (horrible and grotesque) it looks! It's GOOD!"

a good pizza crust recipe

Found a pretty good crust recipe at King Arthur Flour - halfway crispy/chewy. Chad still is not convinced that this is the Holy Grail of crusts. He continues his quest (well, cheers me on) for the perfect crust. He really loves the frozen California Pizza Kitchen uber-thin crust style which he claims is chewy, not crispy. I just haven't been able to duplicate this delicate balance: super thin yet chewy, not crispy.

Not to brag, but the fresh basil and Italian parsley were from our garden, as were the chopped tomatoes. No, I did not make the fresh mozzarella (although I have a recipe for it and would love to try it!).

pizza = sourdough discard crust

Almost anyone who is a sourdough baker at some point realizes that they have to stop throwing away their "discard" because it is such a waste of flour! I started a sourdough discard jar, which is not fed like my primary starter jar. I just dump my discard starter into this big old jar and shove it to the back of the fridge. But I'm always looking for something, anything, to do with this stuff. I've done pancakes, I am going to try english muffins, and today I decided to make pizza crust.

I put 1 cup of discard starter in the bowl of the stand mixer, then added about a 1/2 a cup of water, a teaspoon of kosher salt, a teaspoon of dry yeast (which I probably didn't need to do) and start adding bread flour. I ended up with about a 1:2:4 ratio of water to starter to flour (in other words about, 1/2 cup of water, 1 cup of discard starter and 2 cups of flour). I kneaded it on 2, then upped it to 5 on my KitchenAid for about 7 or 8 minutes, until the dough was smooth, satiny and still a bit tacky, but definitely clean from the bowl.

I divided this into two balls and covered with a tea towel for about half an hour to rest while the oven was pre heated to a blistering 550, with a baking stone placed on the middle shelf.

I have no skill jerking a completed pizza off of a peel, so generally, I stretch my crust and place it onto a piece of parchment on the back of a sheet pan/cookie sheet. I then add my toppings. (I used this technique: flatten into a disc, then balance the disc on the back of my knuckles and stretch with my thumbs, only stretching the outer inch or so. The crust rarely tears and is surprisingly even and thin...the way we like it.) I can then easily slide the parchmented pizza onto the stone.

I think I should have either pre-baked the crust for a few minutes, or just put the sauce and pepperoni on first, and then added the cheese during the last few minutes, because the crust, although cooked through, didn't get that good char and slight crunch on the edges.

But....the flavor was super good. Pretty tangy. I'm definitely writing this one down and putting into my weekly used recipes binder!