I have one general complaint about nearly every pizza I’ve
ordered from a restaurant or chain: not enough toppings! Since I now live in Port Huron , and Deluca’s Pizza in Lansing refused to deliver here, I make my
own. To be fair, there are family owned pizzerias here in town, and they do
make a nice pie. However; a good pizza isn’t an inexpensive meal anymore. You
can, without being extravagant, drop as much as $40 - $60 on a quality pizza
these days, and that’s without breadsticks and all the other trappings. There
is also the matter of knowing exactly what’s in your food, which can best be
answered by making it with your own hands.
Today I learned a few new things about pizza. It turns out
that the pizza dough recipe I’ve been using to make pan pizza, does not, at all,
work for hand tossed pizza. Who knew? For a while now I had been making pizza
in one of my 13 x 8 half sheet pans and the results were tasty, however, I was
always disappointed by the somewhat limp center of the pizza. I had come to
accept this as an unfortunately short coming of home made pizzas. I had been
curious about the perforated pizza pans that I’d seen in stores, but had never
been inspired to buy one, until I found them at a greatly reduced price $4 each
at a Homegoods clearance store, and decided to take the plunge.
The first dough was looking plush, smooth and supple, but after
transferring it to an oiled bowl to ferment, I noticed it really could use just
a drizzle more oil to avoid sticking to the bowl. Cut to me standing over the
bowl patting a very oily ball of dough from hand to hand trying to remove as
much excess oil while simultaneously shouting for my husband to bring me
another bowl. Apparently, I’m not very good at drizzling canola oil right out
of the bottle. After slipping the ball into the new bowl I realized there was
no way it was going to be salvageable. Into the trash it went.
Batch two went smoother during the mixing and fermentation
stage, but I discovered I was in deep trouble when I attempted to divide, and
shape the dough to place it onto my brand new perforated pizza pans. After
tearing several wholes in the first ball of dough, I decided that I just needed
to go for it. I reshaped it into small flat disc, mounted the dough on my
knuckles and tossed it gently. It worked, but when it came down it stuck to my
knuckles. I laid the dough on more flour, brushed off the excess and threw it
again. The dough expanded dramatically, landed over my knuckles, folded down my
right arm, and stuck there!
If you currently imagining an angry bear in a white apron,
clawing pizza dough off his right arm, you’ve probably got the scene about
right. At the end of the comedy of errors I decided to knead the balls of dough
back together on a heavily floured work surface, and managed to shape the two
balls into one large pizza. I covered that in plastic wrap and let it proof
while I finished preparing the toppings. Whether it was the tension in the air,
or my growling and grunting that did the trick, my in-laws received a last
minute invitation to dinner out with friends and then took it. Being as I now
had one pizza instead of two, I was grateful for two less mouths to feed.
In the end, my new pans with the wholes on the bottom worked
beautifully. I had a crisp almost crunchy crust that held up to the sauce,
cheese and toppings: caramelized onions, cremini mushrooms, roasted red pepper,
jarred “cocktail” artichokes, and black olives, and fresh tomatoes.
Sure, I will have to find a new pizza dough recipe, but no
one was actually injured, I didn’t have to scrape anything off the ceiling, and
no equipment was permanently damaged, so I’m calling it a win.
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