It irritates me when something I bake doesn't come out right. Bad enough when I can't make the recipe behave; when there are what I'll call structural failures, where the output isn't right for reasons that have nothing to do with the recipe, it's worse.
Therefore: If anyone knows of a decent way to move a home-made pizza from the surface where it was made into the oven, I would like to hear of it. The best seems to be putting corn meal as a lubricant onto a metal surface, such as a cookie sheet (without edges) or a pizza peel (which I do NOT intend to buy); this means that it only sticks a third of the time. I just used a recommendation to put cornmeal on parchment paper, which didn't work too well.
5 comments:
I've never made real homemade pizza. But is it a sticking issue? maybe try flour instead of corn meal....I'm just guessing, though. I've no knowledge of pizza, except that I like to eat it.
It's definitely sticking. I think of corn meal because most of the recipes that I see for pizza say to sprinkle the surface (sometimes the 'peel', sometimes the baking surface, sometimes both) with corn meal. I am not sure if flour would be as slippery -- which is funny, in a way, as when it falls on the floor, its quite slippery -- I still have a lingering paranoia about falling, and I look with some concern down at it, usually sprinkling some water to clump it.
As for eating it -- my wife and daughter ate the one I made today, a 7-inch wide one, and they pronounced it acceptable. I have six more balls of dough, if you want to stop by and get one. Its not hard to do; its just hard (for me, anyway) to get right. When I made the honey-wheat pizza, I really liked it. Very nice flavor. Want the recipe?
Sure! Thank you. I don't know if I'll be any good at baking it, but I'd like to try it sometime. I'll probably have it stuck to everything in my kitchen.
Here you go --
`Honey Wheat Pizza Dough -- makes 2 8 inch pizzas
* 1 1/2 cups water, warmed to 110°F
* 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
* 1/4 cup cornmeal
* 2 teaspoons salt
* 1/4 cup honey
* 2 tablespoons whole milk
Lightly coat a large bowl with olive oil and set aside.
Combine the water, yeast, and sugar in a small bowl and set aside.
Sift flours, cornmeal, and salt together into a large bowl.
Add the yeast mixture, honey, and milk and stir until dough begins to form — it will be slightly sticky.
Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead until dough is smooth but still tacky — about 10 minutes.
Form the dough into a ball and transfer it to the prepared bowl, turning to coat all sides.
Cover with a clean, damp kitchen towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until the dough doubles in volume — about 90 minutes.
Punch the dough down, remove from the bowl, and let dough rest for 5 minutes.
Divide the dough in half and turn one piece out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into desired shape and size.
Lightly brush the dough's surface with olive oil, top, and bake at 500°F for about 10 minutes. Note:
If baking on grill, precook toppings, bake for two to three minutes on medium, remove, add toppings, and bake for two to four minutes more.
Repeat with remaining dough.
I make pizza all the time.....the trick is to roll the dough on a table with plenty of flour, spread the dough out on parchment paper to let it rise a bit (fifteen minutes or so) then sprinkle some cornmeal generously onto a peel and transfer the risen dough onto the peel. The parchment paper might need to be picked at a bit....but it doesn't stick to the parchment paper as badly as to almost anything else.
Then your pizza stone should be nice and hot, and just slide the peel into the oven, and slip off the assembled pizza onto the hot pizza stone.
A peel is pretty useful....I hang mine up on the side of the cupboard. Doesn't take up any room that way. My apprentice "woodburned" a Sicilian village scene into it. A peel will last for years, and is worth the investment.
When it comes off, some cornmeal gets everywhere, but it sweeps up easily....
Brenda (my delightful wife) tells me that if you don't have a peel or a pizza stone that you should put grease up a cookie sheet with lots of olive oil, and bake it in that. That is how you would bake nan bread. That might still stick, so she suggests a non-stick cookie sheet. T'other day, we tried these flexible plastic roll up cookie sheets....work like a charm on cookies! Would be great on pizza dough I would think!
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