Saturday, May 1, 2010

ONE

How did we decide on what type of pizza to make. Greg likes New York Style Pizza. The boys like Cheese pizza. So, we decided to make the New York style pizza crust,and assemble the pizza in New York style fashion (cheese first, whole tomatoes).

The DOUGH RECIPE:

1 cup of warm tap water (110 to 115 degrees)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 to 3 1/2 cups bread flour (add one cup of flour at a time)

preheat oven to 200 degrees. Add all the ingredients in their listed order. Stir. Once the dough is formed, kneed it on a floured surface and keep adding flour until it is no longer sticky. We wound up using about 4 cups in the end. Place the dough ball back into a greased bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise in the oven. Turn the oven off so that the dough doesn't cook while rising. Let it double in size for about 45 minutes. Once it has risen pound the dough and let it cool, covered in the fridge for about 15 minutes. Then it is ready to shape. We divided ours in half. Rolled them out thin, just like the New Yorkers! Make sure to slap the middle and work your way out toward the edges to create an edge. After we had ours shaped we placed the dough on our air bake pans. Thin crusts are supposed to be baked directly on the rack, but in the interest of not getting burned or making a mess in the oven, we use pans Thank you very much. While the dough was rising we prepared the TOPPINGS: Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese (I didn't follow a recipe for the toppings, I just "eyeballed it." About a 1/3 lb of sliced mozzarella per pizza and a hand full of grated parmesian, I guess. Whole tomatoes (I chopped these up a bit. The boys wouldn't have eaten them whole) We threw in some fresh minced garlic, basil and dry oregano cooked up two links of Italian sausage. Oh, the massacre!
ASSEMBLY:
The cheese pizza was not assembled in the true New York style. We put the tomatoes on first then the cheese. We put a little olive oil around the edges. Bake for 5-10 minutes @ 450 degrees. The sausage pizza was assembled correctly. First cheese, then sausage, then tomatoes.












They turned out great! Join us next week. Noah wants to make a pepperoni pizza with cheese crust!

Friday, April 30, 2010

Welcome!

Noah wants to be a "Pizza Maker" when he grows up. He really enjoys making pizza and has a pizza cookbook that he wants to use as a guide for this blog. The Pizza Book by Evelyne Slomon.