Sunday, June 3, 2007

I almost felt like an archeologist!

Thursday night it pizza nite, every Thursday, you'll find us eating pizza, and since this Thursday i was no where near The Big Cheese, i decided to actually MAKE the pizza dough. Oh boy! This dude, Jay, has the highest rating on allrecipes for his pizza dough, so for sure, this is THE ONE.

Jay's Signature Pizza Crust

Allrecipes also uses his dough for their Forming Pizza Crust tutorial. For sure, THIS is the pizza dough to make if you are going to try any on that website, THIS is it. So i did.

I gotta tell you, it was v. easy to make and punching down dough is REALLY fun. But our dough came out from rising super sticky. So we tried to get it to be less sticky by adding flour, and more flour and yes, more flour.

The pizza stone was patiently waiting in the oven, nice and hot at 500 for the pizza. Well, you see, we've made pizza a whole 3 times already and when we get to the putting the pizza in the oven phase. We um...DEFINITELY need some help. I read about a pizza paddle or a peel (a large wooden thingy to slide the pizza onto the stone). And by coincidence my mom was headed to BedBath&Beyond, i asked her to find me one. They told her they don't carry it, but may have it in stock soon. Okie dokie.


So we substituted of a sturdy piece of cardboard, well floured. Yup, you got it, MORE FLOUR!

Do i need to tell you what happened or can you figure it out?! Our pizza came out of the oven and well i didn't even take a photo, my hubby paused and everything before he started to slice it up. Like as if to say, hello...picture?! lol.

As he lifted my slice up to put it on my plate, i said omg, no way! i couldn't eat that, a white and i'm talking pure white pizza crust, white from all the damn flour! lol. I ran to the kitchen and got natural bristled basting brush and started brushing. It came off with no problem, but i felt like i was going to uncover hieroglyphics under all that flour! lol.

Our pizza was ok, we had much better success with the premade dough from the Big Cheese, but i can't blame the recipe. I'll blame BedBath&Beyond for not carrying a pizza paddle. :P NO, but in all honesty, if you readers out there can help a girl out. How do you transfer the pizza onto the pizza stone?!


I did eventually take a photo, but the most important thing in this shot is ALL THE DAMN FLOUR! lol.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't have a peel either, but use a flat airbake cookie sheet instead. Use Cornmeal, not flour. Roll or stretch your pizza dough out and put it on the cornmeal dusted peel (or cookie sheet.) Make sure the pizza dough moves around, or it will never work. :)

Good Luck!!!!

~Amber~ said...

Wow, what an night in your kitchen huh?

I use stones all the time and I have *never* preheated and I do not leave them in the oven all the time either. Quite frankly I have way to many different ones to be leaving them in the oven.

This is my trick to a wonderfully crisp crust. Preheat the oven to 400-450 degrees. Form the dough into the correct shape onto the stone using cornmeal between the stone and the dough (instead of flour). Prebake the crust for 5-10 minutes, until the crust is "set" and lightly browned. Take the stone with the crust on it out and top with sauce, cheese, and other toppings. Put back into the oven and cook until the cheese is melted, bubbly and browned.