Instructions on How to Use a Pizza Stone

Transcription

1 Instructions on How to Use a Pizza Stone Total time: about one hour (dough from scratch, preparing toppings and baking) Equipment needed: Pizza stone (I have a 14.5 Emile Henry ceramic pizza stone) Pizza peel (a big paddle to move pizza around) Parchment paper ( the sheet, not roll kind. 100 sheets for $8.99) Danish dough whisk (optional) Large mixing bowl Cooling rack Place the pizza stone in a cold oven. Turn the oven on to 500 degrees. The pizza stone needs to heat up with the oven. After the oven has preheated (mine takes 15 minutes to get to 500), let the oven sit at 500 degrees for another 30 minutes before you use the stone. The idea is to mimic a brick oven. Pizzas will cook in 6-8 minutes. The dough will be crispy on the outside, yet chewy on the inside. The stone will cook the pizzas evenly and pull out moisture to give the crust a crisp. After you start the oven, it s time to start the dough. These instructions for pizza dough are from scratch and will take about 10 minutes. I started with a large mixing bowl and a Danish dough wand. This dough recipe makes three large pizzas: Pizza Dough Recipe 3 cups warm water 2 T. honey (I used sugar) 1 T. yeast (I used instant yeast, doesn t take long to grow) 1 T. salt 1 T. dough enhancer (I did not buy this. It was $10. The woman said my dough will just need some time to sit otherwise it s ready faster with the enhancer.) 6-8 cups of bread flour (half can be wheat)

2 Figure 1. Adding water, yeast, sugar, salt and some dough Figure 2. Mixing in flour - about 4 cups added so far I was able to stir in by hand about 5.5 cups of the flour before I had to knead it on the counter. Knead for 5 minutes, and then put it back in the bowl to rest and cover. The dough should be tacky but not sticking to your hands. Add dough while kneading if necessary.

3 Figure 3. Dough after it has been kneaded 5 minutes By now you have 30 minutes or so before the pizza stone is ready, so prepare the ingredients and the pizzas. The ingredients I tried were: 2 cooked and crumbled spicy Italian sausages Pepperoni (not quite all of a package) Jar of marinated artichokes (6.5 oz) Jar of roasted red peppers (12 oz) Sliced olives (4 oz) Sliced onion (1) Ricotta, ¼ of a container(casein intolerant me can use ricotta) Mozarella (the kind you have to grate, but not fresh mozzarella that is in water unless you want margherita) Figure 4. Prepared ingredients for three pizzas

4 Here is an easy recipe for pantry pizza sauce. I made one pantry sauce and then already had a jar of store bought pizza sauce. I prefer the pantry recipe over the store bought. Pantry Pizza Sauce Recipe 1 8oz can of tomato sauce 1 tsp each garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, basil Pinch of red pepper flakes Figure 5. Pantry pizza sauce; this is for one pizza After the dough has sat about 20 minutes, take it out of the bowl and break it into 3 pieces. (If you used dough enhancer, your dough will not have to sit this long, so wait to start the dough after the oven has started.)

5 Figure 6. Dough for three pizzas; ready to roll out Using a little flour and your rolling pin, roll one of the thirds into a large circle. Take a sheet of parchment paper, place it on top of the dough circle and carefully flip the dough over on to the sheet. (Try to remove any excess flour sitting on the counter or you ll make a cloud of flour!) Reshape if needed. If you d like to add cornmeal, lift up an edge and toss cornmeal under the dough. NOTE: if your dough keeps shrinking on you as you roll it, let the dough for a couple minutes or move on to the next circle. Letting the dough relax some will allow you to stretch it more. Figure 7. Roll out dough on counter, flip onto parchment paper Top the pizza with sauce, and then add the toppings and cheese. If you use fresh veggies, slice them thinly. Meats should be cooked. Shredded prepackage cheese contains a coating and will not get you the melty pizza goodness you could be eating. Ideally, you should shred your own cheese. (Of course, ricotta doesn t melt but it still tastes good!)

6 Figure 8. Topping the pizzas. We did one cheese, one ricotta and one half and half. Figure 9. Pizza ready for the oven Using a pizza peel, transfer your first pizza (parchment paper and all) on to the pizza stone. Pizzas will cook in 6-8 minutes (ours actually took 11 minutes; we may have added too many toppings). When crust is browned and cheese looks melted, take out the pizza using the pizza peel and let it rest on a cooling rack. The parchment paper will stay with the pizza and you can cut the pizza right on the paper. (We did not use the cooling rack at first. Our pizza which was resting on a towel on the counter which caused it to get soggy leading to limp pizza slices, so a cooling rack is required.)

7 Figure 10. Finish pizza being removed using a pizza peel Transfer your next pizza on to the pizza stone. Repeat for all your pizzas. By the time the second pizza is ready to take out of the oven, you can remove the first pizza from the cooling rack, slice it and serve. Figure 11. A final product! The same dough can be used to make breadsticks. Roll out the dough; flip it onto parchment paper; mist with olive oil and spices/parmesan cheese. You could make two pizzas and one breadsticks with this dough recipe. COMMENTS: I calculated all the ingredients (even down to ¼ a container of ricotta, etc). Three large pizzas cost $20.30 to make! We did use a lot of toppings. I would probably use mushrooms and one green pepper

8 instead of the jarred artichokes and red peppers next time. This pizza was so filling; I only ate three slices (instead of my normal 4 slices). We both preferred this over any delivery pizza. As a non-cheese eater, I liked how I could make my pizza exactly how I wanted and not skimp on the toppings. We had two whole pizzas that were untouched but cooked, so we put them in the fridge (happened to have some pizza boxes lying around) and just reheated the pizzas/paper the next day in the oven for 10 minutes right on the oven rack. The pizzas was even better the next day I think (the crust was crispier). I may have let the dough rest too long at first (I waited 30 minutes). It made for a thicker crust and slightly different than from the class, but still very good pizza! I have recipes for cooked tomato sauce and a white sauce if anyone wants those. Pesto can also be used for a sauce as well. I plan to try a BBQ sauce, caramelized onion and shredded chicken recipe next. Also a pineapple/ham pizza too. If you have a crowd to feed, you can easily double the dough recipe to make 6 pizzas. Kids can easily help top the pizzas.