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I probably got the idea from here, but as with Mark Bello's pizza, I'm happy to take the credit. Here is the single improvement to pizzamaking that will make your life the most better the quickest (you know what I mean):

PARCHMENT PAPER.

Cut a circle out. Put the dough onto it. No matter what you do after that, even if you take the heel of your boot and grind it into the dough, your dough will not stick to the peel and come apart. Your round pizza will come out round, not get bowtie shaped. And there will be no difference in the crust-- at least the way I cook, no guarantees if you have an oven like BillSFNM's.

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I was thinking of pitching a pizza baking show to the Travel Channel, but I'm reluctant after they unceremoniously shot down my brilliant idea for a show in which aspiring Food Network chefs prepare dishes in an attempt to make Andrew Zimmern gag, or even better, toss his cookies.

Parchment burns to ash before it even hits the deck in my oven.

Parchment is an effective aid, especially with wetter doughs, although it can interfere with the reaction between the hot stone and the raw dough that can affect the final texture. When I do use it in my kitchen oven, I get it out of the way as soon as the crust starts to set.

Bill/SFNM

Ingenious!!!
I am forever in your debt.



That's a great idea--I could just pull it after a minute or two (my oven doesn't cook pizza in 45 seconds )



Too bad. I would have faithfully TIVO'ed it every week.

Yeah, I wondered if it would survive in there. And I suspect even if something did, as you say there's more going on in there between stone and crust that it would mess up. At standard home oven temperatures with a baking stone, though, I can attest from extensive personal testing that you'll never notice a difference except in the hassle you give up.

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Watch Sky Full of Bacon, the Chicago food HD podcast!
New episode: Soil, Corn, Cows and Cheese
Watch the Reader's James Beard Award-winning Key Ingredient here.

I'd like to dedicate tonight's pizza to Mike G.
1/2 of the pizza was 3 cheese: cheddar, pecorino sardo and gorgonzola (sounds strange but it worked) + a little tarragon and thyme.
I used the rest of the arugula pesto from the other night + a little of the three cheese combo, black olives and sun-dried tomatoes on the other 1/2.
The parchment worked like a charm.
It didn't negatively affect the crust browning at all. The other advantage is that I outlined my pizza stone in pen on the parchment first so I could stretch the crust a little more and get it almost exactly the size of the stone. Love it!
I used a different dough tonight--leftover dough from Peter Reinhart's pain a l'ancienne recipe.

Pizza on parchment


Crust


Pain a l'ancienne a la Peter Reinhart

Not technically a "pizza," but I made a pepper and onion coca. Here it is, pre-baking (I didn't manage to get a post-oven shot):


[Note the parchment!]

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Local Beet

The parchment paper trick is a gem!
Here are a couple recent pizzas---
Three cheese (cheddar, parm, gorgonzola) with tarragon:


Everything left in small quantities in my fridge (which happened to include a little ricotta salata --not a great pizza cheese, goat cheese, marinara with a little sausage, olives and a little pecorino sardo):

Maybe a little heavy on the toppings but I had a some small quantities I wanted to use up. Pretty tasty, though.

I'm trying to use the herbs that have been thriving in my garden (miraculous as I have a terrible black thumb and can't generally keep plants alive) as well as the booty from my CSA.

Marinara, basil, caciocavallo cheese, sauteed garlic scapes and spring onions (thanks brandon_w for the inspiration):


Gorgonzola, bacon, thyme, carmelized onions and black olives (and the remaining scapes/onion mix):


Also, Graziano's carries 00 flour in 1 kg bags--I can't remember exact price but def between $3-4. Just picked one up today.

Thank you so much for the parchment tip. Used it tonight and it worked like a charm when transferring the pizza from the work surface to the preheated pizza stone.

Are you going to post your picture Mrs. M.? You could also link your food blog.

Sis

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They all look quite tasty, but this one in particular has made me drool.

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Fuckerberg on Food

Good looking stuff thaiobsessed.

This past saturday I had friends over for pizzas, but was so busy talking, cooking and eating that I neglected to take pictures. Made six different pizzas:

Garlic cheese "bread"
Tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella
Canadian bacon, cheddar cheese, and egg.
Sausage with sautéed shitake mushrooms and onions
Spicy pepperoni with pepper jack cheese
Dessert pizza. Peanut butter and Nutella sauce with bananas and marshmallows.

The first two pizzas I made were with dough I had frozen the last time I made dough. It didn't get much rise in the oven and did not crisp as well. Kind of a bummer. The other pizzas all turned out really well. The shitake and sausage was even better than I thought it would be, shitakes have such a strong flavor they held up against the sausage really well.

Dessert pizza was great. However I learned that if the oven is over 600º you should cook the pizza half way first, pull it out, then top with marshmallows, and finish cooking. The dough was a slight bit underdone because I didn't want the marshmallows to be a black mass.

Pesto Pizza

Dough brushed with olive oil only before baking. Pesto spread on pie after baking.

That must be the way to go. I've been putting it on before and it always gets a little too crusty. Bill, any ideas on incorporating sweet 100's onto pizza?
Here is a recent pizza based very loosely on the Pizza Rosa al Bianco recipe from Peter Reinhart's cookbook:
Pistachios, carmelized onions, thyme, caciocavallo cheese.

The venerable Sra. Hazan insists that pesto must never be cooked.

I do use Sweet 100's on pizza. I cut them in half and place cut side up on top of the cheese. I bake at over 900F and when I lift the pie to the roof of the oven for a few seconds near the end, it is exposed to temps that can support nuclear fusion. Much of the excess moisture of the tomatoes is driven off and the edges start to char a bit.

For a conventional oven, I would look for a way to remove much of the moisture before baking. Squeezing out the seeds and gelatinous goo around the seeds might work, but there is a lot of good flavor in that goo. I've tried putting fresh cherry tomatoes in the dehydrator for a few hours with good success. A cooked sauce made of chopped cherry tomatoes can be excellent, but it will lose some of that amazing complex flavor.

Unfortunately, my oven doesn't heat to 900 degrees.
Well, maybe it would if I disabled the lock and used the self-clean feature...(yes, I've been perusing that crazy pizza-makers site).
So, I oven roasted sweet 100's tomatoes and put them on pizza with pancetta, Saxony cheese from the Green City Market, carmelized onions.
I didn't have time to get a nice long, slow roast but they were still darn good. Can't wait to sloooooow roast some and try it again.

I've been using Peter Reinhart's sourdough crust a lot lately. I can't seem to stretch it as well and I using end up succumbing to using a rolling pin, but I like the flavor quite a lot.
This week's pizza featured "spicy" lamb sausage from the Green City Market, gorgonzola from Graziano's, oven-roasted sweet 100's and sage from my garden.

If you're using the recipe from American Pie, after you have formed the ball in step 3, it is very important not to re-knead the dough during step 4. It needs to be treated as gently as possible to keep the dough workable so you can stretch it without a rolling pin.

Thanks Bill. That's where I'm going wrong. I haven't been very careful about over-handling it.
Also, I'm making it in batches and freezing some. That may be a bad idea with this type of dough.

This pizza was inspired by the monthly challenge over at pizzamaking.com forum. The theme this month was "German". I decided to do schnitzel pizza.

In general, this has been a revelation for my homemade pizza-making.

Take two seconds and closely watch one of Bill's videos of his pizza-making. His gentle handling, patting and streching of his risen dough is light-years from the way I used to quickly roll out my pizza dough with a rolling pin.

I've recently been very careful to not flatten my dough too much after letting it rise. I flour my work surface generously and gently pat and strech the dough into 12 or 14-inch rounds. And, despite using normal flour, (fresh) yeast and a baking stone in a conventional oven, the improvements are drastic. Fluffy, chewy crusts with crunchy, hard edges.

I suppose it's common sense (even if it took me a long, long time to figure it out) but if you want fluffy, chewy crusts (at least around the edges), be very careful not to work and squeeze all of the air bubbles out of them before putting them in the oven!

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So, I used some of my frozen sourdough pizza dough and I was very careful to minimize handling. I stretched a little, waited 5-10 minutes (not so) patiently, then stretched again, then rested, then stretched. It was definitely better. I think it will be best with freshly-made dough.
This pizza was a sage pesto, oven roast tomato, lamb sausage combo.
Anyone have any thoughts on using a Silpat on a pizza stone? How much heat can those things take? I'm tempted to try it but I don't want to ruin the mat and/or stone.

One purpose of the stone is to transfer its stored heat back into the pizza. The more stuff you place between the pizza and the stone, the less effective it is at that task.

Just wanted to add, Bill--your videos are unbelievable. How long does it take to learn to stretch dough like that?

Last night's deep dish:

Pork, herbs, mozz, cogito, tropea onion and tomatoes from Wednesday's feast at Charcoal Oven*.

*Yeah, I'm workin' it. Someone has to,

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Thanks, thaiobsessed. For me, it has been somewhat less a matter of learning how to stretch the dough and more of learning how to make a dough that is easy to work with yet retains the character I like when baked. I would say it took me about 7 years to get my dough ingredients and procedure to the point where a major klutz like me could get the dough stretched. topped, and into the oven without excessive swearing.

Pesto pizza with fresh tomatoes and pecorino. Dough is 1/4th whole wheat flour:



There's a roasted eggplant and tomato sauce pie in the background. The closeups of it didn't come out.

Best,
M

Bill/SFNM if you're out there: THANK YOU!!!
for all the dough advice on the 'What's wrong with this bread?' thread and your blog and videos.
I was getting fed up with the Peter Reinhart sourdough pizza dough. It kept tearing and didn't seem to stretch very well. Then I experimented with a) more kneading and b)holding back some of the flour from the initial mixing (I learned that from Bill's Extreme Cooking videos). Tonight I used the most recent batch of dough with great success. I tried to keep handling to a minimum and the crust was airy and delicious with nice browning on the bottom. I almost wish I hadn't put anything on it.
Now I just need a wood-fired pizza oven...(Santa, are you listening...?)

Inspired by mhill95149 in the 'random food pictures' thread (thanks for the inspiration): roasted corn, roasted poblano peppers, red onion, cheddar and a sprinkle of fresh cilantro.

YOU'RE WELCOME!!!

I have all kinds of respect for Reinhart. I took a bread baking class from him back in his Brother Juniper days and I still use some of his stuff to this day (I'm making a honey-apple-sesame challah right now based on one of his old recipes). But I've never really been impressed with any of his pizza recipes - perhaps some kind of disconnect between his taste and mine.

So when are you going to attempt a Thai-inspired pizza. O.K., maybe we shouldn't call it a pizza, but the possibilities seem exciting. Southern Muslim Chicken? Duck with Red Curry? Too weird?