Blizzard + Pizza = Bliss

Can't imagine why the local pizza place wasn't delivering yesterday...wimps. No matter, homemade pizza is so much better than anything your local joint is making, once you try it you'll be hooked. A couple of tips:
- Preheat your oven with pizza stone in place for at least an hour.
- Don't fuss over getting the crust round. Less fiddling is best, and it tastes the same regardless of the shape
- To prevent a soggy crust, instead of a sauce, take whole Italian plum tomatoes and press out most of the liquid between your hands, then lay the strips right on the crust.

My recipe uses a levain, or wild-yeast starter, which I highly recommend, but if you don't yet have one, increase the instant yeast to 1 tsp, and increase the all-purpose flour and water by 80 g each.


Makes 2 12-inch pizzas:

Crust: 
274 g all-purpose flour
48 g whole wheat flour
161 g levain
200 g water
9 g salt
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 teaspoon olive oil (1 teas in dough; 1 teas for brushing the finished crust)


Topping:
12 ounces fresh mozerella
1 28-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes
A handful of fresh basil leaves
Oregano for seasoning

1. Feed starter at least 2 hours or night before beginning
2. Combine all ingredients, and allow to rest (autolyse), covered, for 20-30 min.
3. Knead by hand for 6-7 minutes or in a stand mixer on medium speed for 3 min. Dough should be silky and elastic.
4. Place in oiled bowl; cover with oil-misted plastic wrap and allow to ferment at room temperature 4-5 hours (can also be refrigerated overnight and brought back to room temp)
5. An hour before baking, preheat oven to 500 deg. F
6. Divide in half. Press gently into a disk on a well-floured countertop, then get hands underneath and stretch out using your knuckles, moving the dough with little jumps. 
7. Drop onto a peel that is well dusted with cornmeal.
8. Brush crust with the remaining olive oil
9. Top with strips of tomatoes that you've squeezed most of the juice out of and that have been seasoned with a little salt, pepper, and oregano
10. Add slices of mozzarella and basil leaves, if using. Optionally, sprinkle a little more olive oil over the top.
11. Bake till top is bubbly and crust is browned. Don't be afraid of some charring. Most of us have a tendency to undercook pizza.
12. Allow to sit for a few minutes before eating, or your skin on the roof of your mouth will come off like the peel of an orange. Trust me on this. 

Bon appetit!

The Sound of Flour

A photographer came over for a photo shoot this week, and after shooting about a thousand photos, wanted to record the sounds of bread making as well. "I want to capture the sound of flour," she said.

"Artists!" I muttered to myself. If there's one activity that's silent, it's bread making. Except, as it turns out,  it's not. Once I started to listen, the sounds of flour becoming bread became deafening: whipping fresh flour into the starter; the creaking of the oven door; the hiss of steam, the scraping sound of a finished loaf sliding off the peel; the crunch of eating a slice.

Even, yes, the sound of flour -- as it fell into the mixing bowl. Listen to your next loaf of bread; it has much to say to you.

Steam: Part II

Within 30 minutes of posting Steam: Part I, it was pointed out to me by a distant relative (my son, but he lives 3,000 miles away) that I have a social responsibility to mention that in my zeal to create steam in my own kitchen, I had destroyed not one but two ovens (three, if you count that I destroyed the second oven twice).

550 degree steam and electronic controls don't mix. I totally fried the electronics panel of oven #1 and was forced to move to oven #2 where I managed to produce a small explosion.*

BTW, it's my opinion that the main reason for electronics in ovens is to guarantee built-in obsolescence. My mom has an oven built in the 1950s that's still going strong. A bi-metal strip for a thermostat, heater coils, that's all you need, but if manufacturers still built ovens like that, they'd never sell any new ones.

*From the shameless promotion department...if you want to hear the full story of my exploding ovens, my argument with the appliance repair man, and what not to tell your spouse when you bake...the full story is revealed in excruciating detail in 52 Loaves: One Man's Determined Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust

Steam: Part I

Much has been written about home bakers' favorite ways to generate steam, which is essential to good bread making. Here are some methods that some well-known bakers have used:

Julia Child tried for a while dropping a hot metal ax head into a pan of cold water. (You can just picture Julia, wearing a welder’s helmet and asbestos gloves, holding a pair of tongs with a red-hot, glowing ax-head at the other end.)

Mark Bittman reports "filling a pot with stones and preheating it, then pouring boiling water over the stones to create a wet sauna (quite effective but dangerous).”

You have a more dangerous (or interesting) method? I'd like to hear about it, but you'll have to go to some lengths to top a red hot ax head. Me, I'm pouring about a cup of water in to a cast iron skillet I just leave in the oven all the time. Works great, but forget about ever using it for omelets again.

Perfect Baguettes at Home

Dan Leader suggests in his latest book that the secret to one of the most celebrated baguettes in Paris might be a touch of corn flour. This week I substituted 40 grams* of corn flour (note: corn flour, not corn meal) for all-purpose flour in my Baguettes à l'Anciennce, and I like the results. The dough felt gritty as I started kneading, but the corn flour did eventually blend in, and seemed to provide a creamier interior.

My recipe uses a starter, or levain, You can easily make your own levain by following the instructions here, but if you absolutely insist on using a straight dough, simply increase the flour and water by 125 grams each, increase the yeast to a teaspoon, and knead for a few minutes longer. The texture won't be quite as airy, and the taste not as rich, but it's far still better than anything you're likely to buy. A recipe (which assumes you have some experience with baking) follows, but if you don't, not to worry: Detailed instructions and photos are included in the full recipe on my website.

*Yes, that says "grams." You'll need a scale (see my previous post) and will need to think like (gasp) a European. Or Asian. Or Samoan Islander. Or a resident of just about any other place on the planet that long ago converted to the easy-to-use metric system while we still struggle with ounces and pounds. But don't get me started...Here's the recipe.

Ingredients

335 g all-purpose flour
40 g corn flour
250 g levain (fed 2 hrs or the night before)
220 g water
¼ teas. instant yeast
10 g salt 

1. Mix all ingredients and allow dough to rest for 25 min.
2. Knead by hand on unfloured countertop for about 7 minutes, till dough feels silky and elastic.
3. Return to bowl, cover with oil-misted plastic wrap, and ferment 4-5 hours
4. Preheat baking stone in oven to 525 degrees F.
   
5. On floured countertop, divide into 4 small balls, then fold and roll each into a baguette
   
6. Proof between folds of linen couche or parchment paper for 1 hr
7. Transfer to a peel or the back of a cookie sheet. Score each loaf with a razor
   
8. Slide into oven, add steam by your favorite method, and reduce oven temperature to 475.
9. Bake for about 25 minutes (start watching at 20) until dark brown, and interior is 205-210 deg.
10. Cool on rack at least 1 hr before serving.