The pizza still needs work but ain't half bad
The pizza needs some work ... but, its getting there.
For those of you who don't follow my twitter/facebook stream, I recently tried my hand at some homemade pizza. The inspiration and the foundation for the pizza, was a great pizza dough recipe I found online ... i mean, it just had to be great, after all the blog post was titled - Best Pizza Dough Ever Recipe
One of the only downsides to this dough recipe is that you need to let it rise in the fridge overnight, so its not for the impatient. The recipe made enough dough for six 12-inch pizza pies, so the next day I froze 4 of the servings and set out to attempt to make my first batch (2 pies) of homemade pizza.
Take 1:
Batch #1 was a disaster, the good news is that it wasn't the crust's fault. It actually tasted decent, the problem was that it wasn't even remotely crispy. The issue was that my oven maxed out at about 500 degrees and the recipe called for a 800 degree oven. This coupled with the fact that I had too many toppings left a lot of room for improvement. Also, I wasn't using freshly made sauce.
hmmm, ok that wasn't even close, so let's fast forward a couple of days and i went for batch #2.
Take 2:
The reason it took a couple of days was I had to move some pizza dough from the freezer into the fridge to thaw and I forgot to do it the night of the batch #1 fiasco. (btw, in case you are wondering, all of the photos are from batch 2, batch 1 was definitely not photo-worthy)
Once i let the dough thaw in the fridge overnight, I let it rest for a couple of hours on the counter where it rose even further. I've gotta say, having the dough ready to go made batch 2 a breeze. Plus my limited (read: only) experience tossing the dough from batch 1 went a long way - this time I didnt get any on my face or the wall. Not to mention, this time, the pizza was actually round. Anyway ...
I lowered the rack hoping to get the crust crispier this time and went easier on the toppings. It turned out significantly better than the first batch but still needs some work. A) The crust was still underdone, and B) there were still too many toppings. That said, I was significantly less ashamed of this significantly less embarrassing attempt, so I took some photos for you.
Lessons learned:
1) Crust is key: I'm going to invest 20 or so bucks on a pizza stone for the next batch. A pizza stone is a ceramic surface that you put in your oven (prior to preheating) and cook the pizza right on top of it. Apparently those go a long way in crisping up your crust. Here's one I found at Target. Hopefully they have it at the Target by my house. If that still doesn't work, I'll try baking the crust a bit by itself first prior to putting the sauce and cheese on it. Short of that I'm at a loss since I have no intention of replacing my oven.
2) with regards to toppings, less is more: I have to fight (and fight hard) to resist my natural inclination to go heavy with the toppings (esp. sauce and cheese)
a) this is a pretty thin crust, so structurally it should support less toppings, and
b) the less topping the more the crispier the crust will be
Upsides:
- The crust is tasty and fairly easy to make
- I can say i know how to make pizza from scratch
Downsides:
- It is a multiple day affair
- oven doesn't get nearly hot enough
- calling delivery or DiGiorno is definitely much faster.
Here are some more photos from my first (technically second) foray into homemade pizza.
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