Pizza and Focaccia experiments

I was hoping to discover a whole world of dough stories here, but no luck, so here’s mine.

My everyday, regular favorite pizza recipe continues to be the one I wrote about in “The Sloppy Dough Revolution.” Everything about it is right for me and it suits quite a lot of others, too. That’s mostly of the flavor, which is as much flavor as you can wring out of wheat and yeast. There have always been those, however, who complain that they like to knead dough, that they like to put a little more of themselves on the line and that they also like to make thinner pizza at least at times.

I admit you can’t really make a very thin pizza of that dough, nor is it a dough that easily converts to calzone, and you certainly can’t knead it, no matter how much someone has bugged you today. Then of course, there is the timing. You need to know you want pizza at least 12 hours ahead if you go the Sloppy route. Frankly, it doesn’t matter which recipe you use, a 12 hour slow rise will do it nothing but good, but a conventional kneaded dough can be cooked in far less time than the Sloppy Dough even though you sacrifice some flavor.

So that’s what these photos are about: a pizza and focaccia dough that does those things. This was all ready in a couple of hours, or just enough time to raise the dough properly and form the pizzas. And it must be kneaded vigorously.

The first is the thinnest I have the patience to make. I used a rolling pin to form the pizza right on the baking paper which I had scattered with flour. If I’d let it rest a couple of times I could have rolled it even thinner, I’m sure, but this thinness was fine and would be ideal for calzone. I topped it with slices of mozzarella and mild spring onion and the meat from a single sausage. It went straight onto the lowest rack in the oven which had been preheated at MAX for thirty minutes, using a cookie sheet to slide it in like a pizza peel so that it cooked just on the paper.

The bottom got very brown and crisp. I drizzled a little oil before and after cooking, to get both tastes. This pizza deserves to be consumed immediately, hot and crusty. I did most of this one justice.

The thicker one is like a stuffed focaccia ricca, the kind of thing I would make for a picnic because it could be eaten at room temperature. I know I am taking liberties with the name, but everyone does in Italy, so why not me? Focaccia changes its name or meaning from one town to another. I formed it with my fingers, making sure to leave plenty of deep fingerprints in the dough, then studded the top with the same ingredients in chunkier form. I let it rise until doubled on the paper before cooking it in my superheated oven on a middle rack.

What you are looking at is cooked, but just barely so, because it is going to be kept in the refrigerator and used over several days and reheated in pieces. That worked admirably. Amid the various things that went on this week, it was handy to have something I could just cut, heat and eat without messing up even more an already busy kitchen.

So how was it? I thought it was pretty good, although it was less salty than I’d like. I was surprised at that, because I usually find Umbrian sausage salty enough for anything I make with it. I also would have liked a bit of hot chili pepper or peperoncino on it, but that’s strictly a personal taste. The main thing was that although the thin pizza for immediate consumption could have any thing on it, the thick one should not have wet things on it because it will go all soggy and disgusting in the fridge if you use sauces or tomatoes or any other wet ingredient. You don’t need it anyway, trust me.

Not Sloppy Pizza Dough

500 g or 3-3/4 cups of either bread flour or half 00 and half Manitoba
1 packet or 7 g dry yeast granules
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup plus a little (250 plus a little ml) of warm water

Mix all this together using the minimum amount of 1 cup/250 ml of water, then add small amounts of water until you get a soft dough that is not sticky. I used dough hooks on my hand mixer because my food processor is broken.

Flour the work counter and scrape the dough out onto the flour. Flour your hands and knead the dough vigorously for ten minutes or more. Put the dough into a large bowl, cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel you have wet and wrung out, and leave it in a warmish place for about one and a half to two hours, or until it has doubled in bulk.

Punch the dough down and cut it in two pieces. Form each piece in your preferred way, depending on whether you want a thin pizza or a thick bread. Add condiments as you please, but don’t overload it!

Preheat the oven on MAX setting for about thirty minutes before cooking the pizza. Cook thin ones at the bottom of the oven, thick ones in the middle. It should take about fifteen minutes to cook a thin one and as much as twenty minutes for thicker breads. For focaccia to be kept and used over time, take it out as soon as the center cheese has melted down. It will brown when you reheat at 350°F or 175°C near the top of the oven.

September is still warm and still offering many lovely days, so I recommend a picnic. You know the loaf of bread, bottle of wine and thou my love? Well this can be the loaf of bread. I can’t tell you what to do about the thou, but if you don’t already have one, maybe if you picnic in a public enough place a thou will wander over to see what that is? Stranger things have happened.