Today\'s Pizza: Chewy Crust

Buxwheat

Made a few pizzas today from the dough I made yesterday. Zippy's recipe but with a few changes. Out of sugar so I used brown sugar. Out of water so I used Red Brick Summer Brew (unfiltered wheat ale). Used KA Bread Flour. Added 2 Tbs olive oil, too, to make it easier to handle. After kneading, cut the dough in half and put each chunk in a ziploc bag w/ some olive oil and into the fridge. Pulled it out this AM and let it sit at room temp for 4 hrs before using.

Set up the egg a little differently. I don't have a plate setter so I put a grid down in the regular position and put 6 fire bricks on it. 4 lying flat and 2 on their edges.



Put the pizza stone on top of the bricks on edges.



Made 2 pies: both just tomato and cheese (mozzarella, provolone, and parmesan). Put cheeses down first, then sauce, then sprinkled with parmesan.

Cheesed:



Sauced:



Done:



Done on the bottom, too:



Second pie on the egg:



Second pie off the egg:



Crust very chewy, could have used just a bit more time to crispy up some, but still very good. That KA Bread Flour makes some really tough dough! Took me a while to get it stretched out without drawing itself back up. I'm ready to try baking some loaves with it next.

AnnaG

Nice looking pizzas!!! I have yet to make my own dough, but that is on the "to do" list...

Buxwheat

Took me all of about 30 minutes to make the dough (with the aid of a KitchenAid mixer), and 15 minutes of that was watching the mixer do the kneading! Another 10 minutes for the yeast to start working, but I killed that time with a cold adult beverage. Check out Zippylip's pizza making slideshow. Marc is one of the top pizza makers on the forum and can provide you all need to know about making your own pies.

2cats

Buxwheat wrote:

That KA Bread Flour makes some really tough dough! Took me a while to get it stretched out without drawing itself back up.

I'm a novice using KABF, and although I got to the point where the warmed dough starts off very soft an initially very extensible, as I get tantallizingly close to 14", it always seems to begin to become elastic. I don't have any real spreading technique yet; I'm just pushing out from the center without turning the dough around on the floured surface. Then I get scared, cut my losses, and take what I've got. They're fairly round, close to 14", but far from perfect. I wonder if it is purely a dough issue, purely a spreading technique issue, somce conbination, or something else.