· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
I bore the freezing cold and made myself a pizza. Turned out rather well! Probably didn’t need so much on top, but apart from that, good stuff. Homemade mozzarella and feta-like cheeses, as well as some nice salami my buddy Evan made in Italy. Happy Monday folks!
My pizza oven stone got broken by my cat making a particularly adventurous leap onto the greenhouse shelf. She got a nice hour or two in the sun, my pizza oven hasn't been used since. I bought some Caputo flour recently and after a couple of failed BBQ pizza attempts, I went back to the method of pizza I used when I got started on the journey. The method is simply: preheat a griddle pan over the gas for 5 minutes or so, when it's ready, turn an oven grill on too. Stretch the pizza dough (it doesn't have to be fully), and drop it on the pan.
Fresh pasta making afternoon yesterday, these were busiate shapes. Sauce was puttanesca, it came out very rich and slightly over seasoned. The dough was the southern Italian style: 100g flour, 50g water per person. I made this in my food processor but it's a funny dough, starting off very crumbly, like sand, then coming together after a bit of a rest and some encouragement. I'd be tempted to mix for a few minutes in the processor then hand knead next time.
First go on the outdoor oven in quite a few years, quite happy with the results. The base needed more preheating but I ran out of patience after wind kept blowing the gas out. This is 62% hydration blue Caputo, home made mozz and some German style mortadella. Took about 100s. I installed a lazy Susan and a circular stone, both worked excellently and reduced my stress levels considerably.
It's not picture perfect: a little rough, but that may just be my folding technique. The texture felt decent, proper stretchy. For lack of decent mozzarella available commercially, I figured I'd give it a go. Technique, I used mostly @frenchguycooking's recipe. As usual, I'm always surprised how little yield there is with milk products.