Homemade pizza

Although I bake bread about weekly, making pizza at home is more of a now-and-then kind of thing for me. I hadn't made any for maybe two or three months when I got the urge last week.

Unless I want to try my hand at a specific style (e.g. Detroit), my default recipe for a while now has been the Master Dough with Starter found in The Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani. It's relatively simple to make and has consistently given me good results. I'm also fortunate enough to have a huge supply of Gold Medal All Trumps high-gluten bromated flour, which is ideal for this dough.

For toppings, I decided to go with what I would call a modified Margherita. Ordinarily for that style I would use crushed San Marzano (or at least plum) tomatoes, but I also had on hand a large quantity of Saporito brand "Super Heavy" concentrated pizza sauce, so I used that. I thinned it out with tap water until it seemed to be about the right consistency, and I also stirred in olive oil that I had used for sautéing some fresh garlic. 

(Quick aside: virtually every recipe that includes olive oil calls for extra-virgin. A few years ago, I decided to try plain old regular olive oil, and I've never gone back to the EVOO, at least for cooking. In some ways it's even better because it has a higher smoke point.)

One of the benefits of using high-gluten flour is that it creates a dough that it can be stretched well without tearing. That said, I have never mastered the art of stretching dough. I can do it well enough, but I am always amazed when I see pizzeria workers stretching and stretching to incredible dimensions. But given the relatively modest dimensions of my oven, I don't need to strive for that.

(Second aside: bromated flour contains potassium bromate, a flour "improver" that strengthens dough and allows for greater oven spring and higher rising in the oven. Potassium bromate has been identified as a possible carcinogen, but it breaks down at high temperatures, so it doesn't worry me to use it in pizza dough.)

Over an hour before baking, I turned on my oven to 500 degrees, as called for in the recipe. I have a half-inch-thick pizza steel, which I had cut at a local metal fabricator, at 15 inches square, which allows for about an inch of space all around in my oven. It weighs a ton--I probably could have gotten by with a quarter-inch thick--but it's great, and in my experience much better than the pizza stones I used to use, which inevitably would crack, and couldn't retain heat nearly as well.

The dough stretched easily, and after moving it to a square of parchment paper (which in my opinion isn't far behind the wheel among the greatest human inventions) on a pizza peel, I topped it with sauce, fresh mozzarella, and the garlic, and slid it onto the steel. 

I didn't keep good track of the time, but after about six or so minutes I took it out, added some basil leaves, and put it back in, rotated 180 degrees. About the same amount of time later, the cheese was showing signs of browning, the basil was wilting, and the underside was darkening, so I removed it and quickly gave it a quick sprinkling of grated Parmesan. 

All in all, it came out pretty well. The crust had risen nicely and showed some signs of charring underneath. If I had gotten this from a pizzeria, I would've had no complaints.

One thing that I both love and am frustrated by about baking, whether it's bread or pizza, is that I almost never am 100% satisfied with the results, and that I always think I could do better next time. And so it was here, in at least two respects.

One: no matter how thinly I stretch pizza dough, it rises to about medium-thick in the oven. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and maybe that's also a function of the flour I use, but I have yet to achieve the thinness of NY-style pizza. (Note to self: next time just cut down on the amount of flour.)

Two:  I'm still trying to figure out the ideal rack for the pizza steel. This time around I put it on the second-highest rack (my oven has four racks), and I would've liked a bit more charring underneath but I had to take it out lest the toppings got overcooked. Last time, I used the second-lowest, and it got too dark underneath. This calls for more consideration, and I have some ideas. (For a great examination of the subject, go here.)

Bottom line, though. I got back into pizza-making. And now here I am again blogging about pizza, for the first time since 2018. 

I don't expect many people to see this or read it. But if you do, check back. I have a lot of 'splainin' to do.