My first pizza in, what, ~twelve years?

Botch · November 2024

I think it was 2011 when I bought my Large, joined this forum, and discovered the site https://www.pizzamaking.com/ maybe a month later. I was having fun with steaks and briskets, but I went totally bonkers on pizzas: buying books, scouring the above website and EweTube, experimenting with flours, hydrations, sauces, times and temps, Egg setups, and taking copious notes. Six to nine pizzas per week. Finally, after a year or two, I burned out, badly, and only had pizza during a Going-Away luncheon or family visit (and I concentrated on salads and pastas, if available).

A few weeks ago I was nosing around my local grocer's (Harmons) cheese/deli kiosk, and discovered a "Mozzerella for Pizza" package I'd not seen before. The label said "Low Moisture", but nothing about "Whole Milk/Full Fat" (but no mention of Skim Milk either). I checked the fine print Ingredients, and it just listed "Milk", would think if it was skim milk they'd have to state that, but I'm not sure. A lot of home pizza bakers use a brand called "Polly-O", but that's not available in UT. Fresh Mozz is tasty but high-moisture, not good for pizza. Anyway, the seed got re-planted, and a couple days ago I picked up a pkg of this new Mozz, some Boar's Head pepperoni (not on their Recall list), and boxed ground tomatoes.

Mixed up a good dough recipe and let slow-rise in the frig, and tried to grate this new cheese. It was in a "tube" form, sliced into 1/4" slices. The first pie I tried grating a chunk, but that didn't work very well. Today, I remembered my multi-wire slicer (for mozz chunks, strawberries, mushrooms), dug it out, washed off the dust, and by stacking the sliced mozz in it, slicing, turning 90º, slicing again, got perfect 1/4" cubes to spread on the pie. I forgot to add the dough relaxer to the dough, but otherwise still had muscle memory for the stretching; 500º with no smoking chunks this time. Didn't come out too bad:

That new cheese was delicious, and browned nicely before breaking up into orange grease (that transition can take 30 seconds). I'm gonna be playing with pizzas again, but since learning slow-fermented dough balls can sit in the frig for a week or two, hopefully not go overboard and burn out again.

paqman · November 2024

Beautiful!

Definitely prepare a couple of dough balls in advance. I personally prefer it at day 3 of cold fermentation.

Botch · November 2024

paqman said:

Beautiful!

Definitely prepare a couple of dough balls in advance. I personally prefer it at day 3 of cold fermentation.

Cold fermentation was a bugaboo for me, until I finally figured out that my frig was set just slightly too cold; my iced-tea jugs never froze because I go thru too much in a day, and many other items (cured meats, cheeses) had enough fats to not freeze, but it was killing the yeast in my pizza balls (and my fresh herbs).