Sunday Pizza Party - Mozzarella & Brussells Sprouts

I didn't have time to activate my sourdough culture, so I used instant yeast for this batch. It didn't have the sourdough flavor, but rose very well. Pictures first, then the recipe...



Mix the following for about 1 minute
125g of King Arthur bread flour
110g of filtered water (room temp)
1/2 tsp of salt
Cover and let rest 20 minutes
Measure 45g of KA bread flour and put aside

Add 1/4 tsp instant yeast
Mix for 8 minutes with a spoon.
Halfway through, start adding the additional bread flour
If it gets to hard to mix and it doesn't seem like the flour is being absorbed, take out of the bowl and knead by hand
I used about 1/2 to 2/3 of the flour
Cover and let rest for 15 minutes

Form dough into ball
Place in oiled container, cover and let rise.
It took about 2 hours for the dough to rise at about 69 degrees.

About an hour before cooking, preheat oven as hot as it will go. I was cooking at about 550 for this batch. I had my baking stone in the upper third of the oven. In the past I put the stone on the bottom of the oven to heat the stone as much as possible, but often ended up with pizzas that were overcooked on the bottom and undercooked on the top.

Mozzarella:

I'm lazy, so I used Furmano's Pizza Sauce for the mozzarella pizza. Topped with Mozzarella from Maplebrook Farm,Pecorino Fresco from Dancing Ewe Farm (purchased that morning from the Rhinebeck Farmer's Market) and a dash of olive oil. Cooked for 8 minutes rotating halfway through.

Brussels Sprout:

While I was cooking the mozzarella pie, I boiled 5 sprouts for 10 minutes and proceeded to chop them in eights. I spread my dough and instead of sauce used olive oil and minced garlic (approx 1bsp oil & 1/2 tsp garlic). I once again topped with mozzarella & pecorino fresco. I added the sprouts, added a little more olive oil and cooked for 8 minutes rotating halfway through.

Brussels Sprout Sourdough Pizza

The wife and I were recently in NYC and ate lunch at Motorino's East Village location. The wife had the Brussels Sprout pizza (smoked pancetta, mozzarella, garlic, pecorino). It was fantastic! Here is my attempt at recreation:

I made the dough two days in advance and then put it in the fridge. I'm using an adaptation of Jeff Varasano's recipe.

- Make sure your sourdough starter is fully active. I used mine approx 9 hours after the last feeding. A little later than I would have liked (darn job!).
- Mix 50g sourdough starter, 1/2 tsp salt, 125g bread flour, 110g water until everything is mixed together into a batter. Cover and let rest 20 minutes.
- Mix for approx 8 minutes by hand or in a mixer. During minutes 5-8, mix in an additional 45g bread flour. Cover and let rest 15 minutes.
- Transfer to floured board and shape into a ball. Let rest 10 minutes.
- Transfer to oiled container and put in fridge.

Take the dough out of the fridge approx 90 minutes before baking. Begin preheating your oven 60 minutes before baking. I set my oven to to highest it will go, usually ends up being 500-525.

I only recently cooked Brussels sprouts for the first time, I boiled them using these instructions. After boiling, I cut each in half. Next time, I would probably quarter them for smaller pieces.

- Spread the dough until you have the desired thickness, I leave a little bit of a rim around the edge for the crust.

- Mix approx 1 tbsp of olive oil with 1/2 tsp minced garlic. Spead this on the dough as you would pizza sauce.

- Add mozzarella, sprinkle some chopped/cooked bacon, add Brussels sprouts and grate some Pecorino Romano cheese over everything.

- Cook for approx 8 minutes, rotating 180 degrees half way through.

And the finished product:
And a mozzarella from the same batch:

Hey YeastSpotting, what up?

Mixed Grain Sourdough

I was itching to use the Organic Grain Mix (millet, flax, corn, wheat, rye & oats) I had recently purchased from Bread Alone (my local bakery). Most of my bread baking has been with with white or whole wheat flour, so I thought it would be best to use a simple recipe for testing. I decided upon a slightly modified version of Ed Wood's "San Francisco Sourdough" recipe from Classic Sourdoughs. I used my liquid Camaldoli (Italian) culture (also from Ed Wood).

Night Before:

Combine 1/2 cup refridgerated liquid sourdough culture, 3/4 cup white flour, 1/4 cup whole grain mix, 1/2 cup water. Mix until smooth. Cover and leave at room temperature for 12 hours.

Morning:

Add 3/4 cup white flour, 1/4 cup whole grain mix, 1/2 cup water. Mix until smooth. Cover and leave at room temperature for 8 hours.

Evening:

Mix/knead in 3 cups of white flour 1 cup at a time. Transfer to floured surface and mix/knead one additional cup, or until proper texture. I used about 1/2 cup here. Split into pieces and form/shapes loaves. I went with 2 batards and a boule to rise in my round brotrum. Let rise for 3-4 hours. I cooked the batards after a 3 hour rise and the boule at about 3 1/2.

The recipe calls for cooking 40-45 min at 375, but I prefer to follow Peter Reinhart's method (from BBA) of cooking basic sourdough at higher temperatures for a shorter amount of time. Preheat the oven to 500. Place the loafs on the baking stone and pour 1 cup of water into the cast iron skillet on the bottom of the oven. 30, 60 & 90 seconds into baking open the oven and spray the walls with water. Lower the oven temperature to 450 and bake for 10 minutes. Rotate loaves 180 degrees and bake approx 10-15 minutes or until internal temperature is at least 205 degrees.

I was very pleased with how these loaves came out! They had a good crumb, good texture and the mixed grain added excellent flavor. I will be submitting this to YeastSpotting, wish me luck!

Instant vs Sourdough

Instant:

Sourdough [that didn't rise] :-(

English Muffins

I followed Peter Reinhart's recipe from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. The only change I made was making 9 smaller muffins from the recipe rather than 6.

Wait...wasn't this a pizza blog?

Err...well...yeah...turns out I love making bread too. Future posts will have more details about each loaf, but until then...here are some photos to hold you over.

Sourdough Boule - I used my round brotrum that I received for christmas to shape the loaf (thanks MIL!). I followed Ed Wood's basic sourdough recipe from Classic Sourdoughs pretty closely using my Camaldoli sourdough culture. Rather than cooking at 350 for 45 min...I cooked at 450 for about 30.

French - This loaf is similar to the sourdough boule, but with a milder flavor. Once again I used my Camaldoli sourdough starter and followed Ed Wood's recipe closely. As above, I cooked at 450 for roughly 30 minutes.

Olive & Onion - This was my first attempt at one of the more advanced loafs. Until now, much of my baking had been limited to sourdough, french and whole or semi-wheat loaves. Once again, this was one of Ed Wood's recipes from Sourdough Classics and I used my Camaldoli sourdough starter. Making the dough was very similar to the loaves above. Before the final shaping, I sauteed some onions and olives and then let them cool. I Spread the dough out into a rectangle and sprinkled my onion/olive mixture over the dough leaving about an inch around the edge. I then rolled it up, sealed the ends and baked at 350 for roughly 45 minutes. In the future, I will make sure to use plain olives. I purchased olives mixed with provencial herbs my from local health food store and they ended up being very salty.

Clam Pizza

Wow, it has been a long time! Since I last posted I have made a whole lot of pizza and a whole lot of bread! This was by far the best pizza yet. I am starting to get the hang of working with the sourdough culture and knowing when it is active. I used 30g of culture for this pizza with the same ratios of flour/water/salt as below. Scratch that, I halved the salt.

After shaping my dough, I put down a layer of sliced whole milk mozzarella. I put my clam mixture on top of that (I small can of clams, 1tbsp olive oil, 1sp minced garlic, a few sprinkles of sea salt). I was originally going to do a white pizza, but at the last minute I added a little pizza sauce on top.

Cooked it for 9 minutes at roughly 500. And finally, the pictures (taken on my phone, will use a better camera in the future)!

Sourdough Activation - 24 Hours

After starting the process by mixing my dry sourdough with flour & water, the mixture had been inside the proofing box for 24 hours.
At 11PM on Tuesday, I did the first "feeding"...adding 1 cup of flour and 3/4 cup water. Here is a picture before the feeding (nice and bubbly!): On Wednesday morning around 9AM, I did the second feeding. Our jar was getting a little full, so I poured out half of the mixture into a bowl and stuck it in the fridge as a backup. I then stirred in 1 cup flour and 3/4 water. Hopefully we will start seeing some frothing soon!

Sourdough has arrived!

I ordered 2 italian cultures from www.sourdo.com a few weeks ago, and they finally arrived on Friday! I made a proofing box out of a styrofoam cooler and 2 small light bulbs. Per the directions, I mixed the culture with flour & water last night around 11 and it is being proofed right now. I will take some pictures and report back over the next few days.

Emmental Cheese & Carmelized Onions

I got the idea to do this pizza from Varasano's menu. I had never made a white pie before, but I wanted to mix it up a little bit. I used a half size of my normal dough recipe (aged 24 hours in the fridge). Spread the dough and covered lightly with dried thyme. The dough was so easy to worth with that it ended up being the size of a normal pizza...but just thinner. Covered the pie with a healthy covering of SwissRose emmental cheese I had shredded. Added a few drops of olive oil (very lightly) and then spread out the carmelized onions (made from 1 medium yellow onion). Cooked for 8 minutes at about 500.

It came out great! The saltiness/tanginess of the cheese worked really well with the sweetness of the onions. I used a little less yeast then I normally use, so the crust was not too puffy around the edges...I may actually stick with this amount of yeast in the future. My only concern would be using such a think crust with a sauce, I'm concerned it could get a bit soggy.