pizza my way - part 2

I have been in a pizza making spree this few days. I want to improve the result through practice and experimenting the ingredients and techniques. This is the third pizza that I made in the last three days. I would call this a break through as I was able to achieve the best crust which had been elusive until now.


I have mentioned in my previous post achieving a good crust is difficult for home cook because of the limitations of common home oven. I have been using a metal screen to hold the pizza when baking. I came up with this idea when I realize one huge problem when baking is the vapor in the dough cannot escape with common home cook methods. By using the metal screen the hot air in the oven is free to circulate the bottom surface of the pizza.

For preparing the pizza dough, I made no change on the ingredients or techniques, except a very subtle change. I kneeling a table spoon of cooking oil after the first rise. This would comes to two table spoons total counting the one I added to the bowl to prevent the dough from sticking when it rises.

i am getting very good of keeping one hand clean during the initial mixing; the kneeling requires both hand but at that stage the dough is not so sticky

 

as in previous pizza i used a bit of tennessee smokey mountain country ham - i waited 6 weeks to get this; i came across this while watching the mind of a chef; before that i was intrigued these american salt cured ham but afraid they are just salt bombs and much inferior to the euproean counterparts; the one from mr. benton is anything but

a little bit goes a long ways

this jar of feta cheese is over 13 years old; that had been countless times i contemplate throwing it out and i am glad i didn't; i remember i even threw it into the trash bin once

the toppings (except the cheeses) shown here - the cuttlefish on the cutting board just before being cut into thin slices

i tuned into the network tv channel to see what is on for entertainment while i cook - "cooking" show that is more like spectator sports

 followed by a pizza commercial (the brits call it advert)

The most important change I made this time is the oven setting. In the course of my pizza making I had experimented with different baking modes available with my miele oven. Realizing that I want more heat for the bottom of the crust I lower the baking rack to the bottom rung. I also increase the temperature by 40F or so as well as baking the pizza with Top+Bottom Heating setting instead of Intensive Baking that I have been using prior.

The result is a perfectly baked pizza. The crust is not soggy at all. It is moist and yet crunchy outside. I didn't need to touch up the top by broiling it as I did with the two pizzas before this. My neighbor and I shared this 14" pizza and he too said the crust is just prefect.
we were in a hurry to dig in so the photo sucks

The topping ingredients I used this time are:

• andouille sausage
• anchovy
• cuttlefish
• american wild shrimps
• capers
• country ham
• shallot onion
• garlic
• bell pepper
• mushroom
• feta cheese
• parmesan cheese

Many of the ingredients for the topping I used are known to have a lot of glutamate (specially but not limited to: country ham, andouille, anchovy, feta, parmesan) so the finished product is packed with umami. As there is quite a list of ingredients, it is important to exercise portion control or else you would end up with a very soggy or very salty pizza. Cooking is all about balance and nearly always more is hardly better.

So what brings me to write about making homemade seafood pizza? Definitely not for the competition of attracting the most number of eyeballs. A search for "homemade seafood pizza" yields 2.8 million hits.

This pizza takes about 30 minutes of labor to make. By labor I mean I don't count the time for the dough to rise. Since I carefully cut the raw ingredients into thin pieces or bits there is no need to cook them before hand (doing so will cause lost of favors). The shrimps and cuttlefish slices are topped raw. I don't care for smothering the pizza with excessive amount of cheap mozzarella cheese. By laying the ingredients according to the time take to cook them the result is a healthy, delicious, and uncommon pizza. This pizza will not give you a heartburn as there is very little fat. A little of good andouille sausage goes a long ways and there is one link here. There is not a whole lot of starch as the crust is quite thin and light.