new Pizza Stone Superbowl test

[NMDemDist2]

some of you may remember I scored a baking stone and pizza peel (paddle) Friday at the thrift store. today seemed a great time to try it out

Husb2Sparkly kindly gave me his pizza dough recipe here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=236x4779#4791

here's how it turned out:

[Stinky The Clown]

1. WoooHooo!!!

That looks killer good! How'd it taste? How long did you preheat? How long did it take to cook?

:yourock:

[NMDemDist2]

2. it tasted great, I preheated 3 hours (LOL) took about 12 minutes

and was slightly too done.

I'm pretty pleased and have half the dough in the fridge for later this week :bounce:

[eleny]

3. It looks great, AzDem

The crust looks especially nice. The color is perfect!

[NMDemDist2]

4. H2S gave me the dough recipe and I am starting to make friends

with the Puck monster mixer on the counter

It was a hit with hubby, so now I can start "tweaking" the recipe in.

[Stinky The Clown]

5. Yup, now that you have the basic idea, the tweaking is the real fun!

Experiment with dough thickness, too. Thinner cooks faster. Looks like the ones you made are about 3/8" thick .... maybe a bit more? You can make them as thin as 1/4". That usually yields a slightly more crusty/crunchy crust. Thicker would be chewier.

Also, play with toppings. That's the fun part! We often make two or three kinds from a single dough batch. I generally make pretty small pizzas - six and sometimes eight from the batch recipe I gave you. With all those, it is easy to make a small quantity of several toppings ... or just use the same basics and vary the condimenti.

[NMDemDist2]

6. actually the actual crust was quite thin, I just formed a "lip"

the main part of the pie was thin and crispy :)

i need to work up a good sauce, I just used a canned pasta gravy and it was too thin

and more cheese... and fresh herbs.....

this is gonna be fun I can tell LOL

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Here's an easy "raw" sauce

1 28 oz. can of whole, peeled, Italian tomatoes. If you can find them, get San Marzano tomatoes. They're an order of magnitude better than anything else. They also cost a little more ..... about $2.50 to $3.00 a can. If you can't get the San Marzanos, use plum tomatoes.



Garlic, sliced or diced or minced or grated - to taste. You'll probably wanna start with as much as you would use if you were making that can size of macaroni gravy.

Coarsely chopped fresh herbs ..... basil, oregano, and flat leaf parsley.

Fresh mozzarella. This brand, Belgioioso, which my local Safeway has, is available pretty widely, but any fresh mozz packed in whey (water) will do. If they have several sizes, buy whatever's cheapest. You'll be making smaller dollops, so size here **doesn't** matter.



Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste.

Crush the tomatoes by hand. Once crushed, strain the tomatoes through a wire sieve. You want the solids as dry as you can get them (by "dry", I mean thick and not runny. About what they would be had you cooked them down for hours and hours). Save the liquid that drains through in a drinking glass (or clean bowl). If the sauce appears too thick, add some of the liquid back. If you don't need to use the liquid, add some salt and pepper and, if its the San Marzanos, enjoy the sweetest tomato juice you ever had!

Mix about 1/2 of the herbs, and the garlic, into the tomatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. If you have the time, let this sit in the fridge for several hours, or even overnight, to allow the flavors to blend.

Paint the pizza with a very thin coating of olive oil. Use a basting or pastry brush, or even a paper towel. Just a thin coat. Spread a thin coat of tomatoes on the olive oil. You want it to be a bunch of chunks of tomato. This is not supposed to look like a homogeneous sauce. The mozzarella is very soft, so just hold it in your hand and sorta squeeze lumps of it onto the tomatoes. Don't try to cover it. The cheese will sorta melt and spread when baking.

Pop 'er in the oven. Bake as needed - maybe 6 minutes or so ..... depends on many factors ..... but until the cheese is melted, the crust edge is deep golden, and the bottom is light brown (at least).

When it comes out of the oven, sprinkle some fresh herbs on the hot pizza. Allow to set for a few minutes before cutting.

This "raw sauce" recipe will taste more like fresh tomatoes than if you cooked the sauce first. The only cooking it gets is while in the oven, so the sauce really says closer to raw than to cooked. But the flavor is night and day from a cooked sauce. While not exactly the same, this is very close to the classic Neapolitan Margherita pizza. The classic is usually (but not always) done with sliced, whole, fresh tomatoes and the herbs, reduced to only the basil, are sprinkled on only after the pizza is baked.

This is about what you'll get with this recipe.



In summer, you could do this same thing on the gas grill. If you can set the grill so only half is on, do that. Put the unbaked pizza shell, with no toppings, directly on a lightly oiled grill over the fire. Let it bake part way ... just **barely** golden. Take it off the grill and, while still hot, quickly top it as above, on the side you just cooked (i.e.: cooked side up/raw side down). Put it back on the grill, this time on the side away from the fire, and close the cover. When the toppings are almost done, check the bottom. If it needs more time to cook the bottom, move the pizza back over the fire.

MMM-mmm Good!

[NMDemDist2]

9. do I spy a bit of sausage on that pizza?

thanks for the grill info, we were just talking how much it heats up the house to get that stone hot, this won't happen in the summer around here :)

[Stinky The Clown]

10. No salsiccia

Just crust blisters, pomodori, erbe, and browned formaggio

[NMDemDist2]

7. looking at these pics again, it cracks me up to see my "free" EVOO

bottle and how I need to refill it hehehehehe

[Lugnut]

11. That is just beautiful

I always make fresh dough pizza. I have to dig out my stone and try it.