Sorry.... More Pizza


 
Cliff Bartlett

Cliff Bartlett

R.I.P. 5/17/2021
We've been craving pizza lately but just haven't gotten around to it. Decided to fix that. Took my pizza dough out of the freezer and on our weekly shopping trip this week I picked up the fixin's. I liked the set up Rich G. used on his latest pizza post, that being to place hot coals on top of the baking steel to boost the heat directed down at the pizza top. I decided to give it a try only with a few more coals as Rich felt the 10 he used was a little light. I also wanted to boost the number of briquettes used In the "C" configuration too. So that's the direction I went. All I can say is be careful what you ask for! I used around 16-18 coals on the steel, one and a half baskets of charcoal and an additional split of dry oak. I won't say the pizza was cremated, but it was far to dark and unpleasant to look at but surprisingly the pizza itself was very good. We managed to eat most of it. I still categorized this cook as a failure, after so many very successful pizzas in the past. I woke up yesterday still pretty bummed about the cook. My wife knew it and suggested I give it a go again last night. I did and was delighted with the resultx. Of course I corrected a few things on my set up. 12 coals on the steel and back to one chimney of charcoal in the kettle and one medium oak split.

The first thing I did yesterday is make more dough. I use Rich G's recipe using Caputo flour along with my regular King Arthur AP. If you haven't tried this recipe you should. Did my prep during the day and tackled the pizza's last evening. A few pic's.

This is a plain Pepperoni Pizza.

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The next is a Salami, Jalapeno and Castelvetrano Olive Pizza.

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Lastly is my Margherita/Puttanesca Pizza. Along with the cheese are capers, Kalamata Olives and yes, two nice anchovy fillets, chopped.

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KP in action on all three pies.

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Heat just beginning to drop on last pie.

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Pies done and ready to slice.

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Plated it up.

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It was hard to pick a winner but I'll go along with my wife's pick, that being the Salami, Jalapeno and Olive edging out the others..... barely. Thanks again for that dough recipe Rich. Hope you're all having a good weekend.
 
Stellar, Cliff!! I'm glad you tried it out again! All three of these pizzas look perfect, and I think you've got the top heat formula figured out for both of us....THANKS! What was your cook time per pie like, and how much rotating did you do to even out the browning? I see lots more great pies coming this summer from up in the Redding area!

R
 
Rich G said:
Stellar, Cliff!! I'm glad you tried it out again! All three of these pizzas look perfect, and I think you've got the top heat formula figured out for both of us....THANKS! What was your cook time per pie like, and how much rotating did you do to even out the browning? I see lots more great pies coming this summer from up in the Redding area!

R
Click to expand...
Thanks Rich.... I spun the pies 180* after three minutes. 6 minutes per pie total.
 
Looks great, Cliff! My fave is the pepperoni, FWIW. After last night's decent attempt, I think I need to order a Hunsaker griddle to put on top of my KP and keep the heat down. Need to find a job first - hopefully that happens this week.

Do you have a link to your dough recipe? I just did a 100% Caputo 00 dough for the first time and loved it - looking to try a few more dough recipes now that I've found a local source.
 
JimK said:
Looks great, Cliff! My fave is the pepperoni, FWIW. After last night's decent attempt, I think I need to order a Hunsaker griddle to put on top of my KP and keep the heat down. Need to find a job first - hopefully that happens this week.

Do you have a link to your dough recipe? I just did a 100% Caputo 00 dough for the first time and loved it - looking to try a few more dough recipes now that I've found a local source.
Click to expand...

I copied this recipe from Rich G's recent Pizza Night post. https://tvwbb.com/threads/pizza-night.81033/ This is exactly what I do. You're lucky to find Caputo locally. I have to get it on line and it's a little pricy....but worth it.

"Thanks, Michael. I've found pizzamaking.com to be a great resource to learn all about pizza, and especially dough formulations for different styles of pizza you might want to make. My dough is a pseudo Neapolitan, that performs best at pretty high temps 700F+. The dough is super soft and silky, and stretches out really easily.

One dough ball @ 280g (good for about a 12" pie is:

171g Flour (50/50 All Purpose/Caputo 00)
104g Water
4.8g Salt
3g Olive Oil
.25g ADY

Scale the ingredients above to however many pies you want to make. Mix flour, salt and ADY together in a bowl. Add water and olive oil, and mix (I hand mix) until the dough forms a shaggy mass with all dry bits somewhat incorporated. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes until it forms a smooth ball, cover and let proof at room temp for 2 hours. If making multiple dough balls, divide dough into as many 280g portions as you have mixed up, form each into a nice tight ball, then put each in it's own oiled container (I use smallish tupperware), and pop into the fridge (covered, of course.) I like to keep the dough in the fridge for at least a day (so, make the dough the day before you want to make pizza), and have had it last just fine in the fridge for up to 4 days. Any longer than that, and you probably want to freeze it. Take dough out of fridge a couple of hours before you want to cook your pies.

Hope that helps, Michael!

R "
 
JimK said:
Looks great, Cliff! My fave is the pepperoni, FWIW. After last night's decent attempt, I think I need to order a Hunsaker griddle to put on top of my KP and keep the heat down. Need to find a job first - hopefully that happens this week.

Do you have a link to your dough recipe? I just did a 100% Caputo 00 dough for the first time and loved it - looking to try a few more dough recipes now that I've found a local source.
Click to expand...
Jim, Cliff posted the dough recipe above, so let us know if you have questions. I like a mix of AP and Caputo since I don't cook at traditional neapolitan temps, which are really required to get the browning/leoparding on a 100% Caputo 00 (pizzeria version) dough. Cutting the Caputo with AP makes it easier to achieve brown crusts at the lower temps we are cooking at (500, 600, even 700F.)

Anyway, hope you like the dough recipe if you try it out. It's my version of a "nearlypolitan" dough recipe from pizzamaking.com.

R
 
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