Strange times indeed. I like to cook. I hate to bake. Cooking, I look at recipes or dishes for inspiration, then kind of do my own take on them. Baking.....man that is hard. It is math. It is science. Alas, I am a chemist or materials engineer at my core (I am really just a lazy sales dude now) so I should be able to handle this.
Since being grounded from March 16th on, every day spent in my home office (yeah, not the roughest of lives I will admit) I look for things to do. I have planted the mother of all vegetable gardens, even though only 2 of us live here. So....I decided for whatever reason, to make my own sourdough starter. This is supposed to be a 7-10 day endeavor, I am now on day 20, obsessing on perfection. For the uninitiated, sourdough starter, is basically just flour and water, and the natural yeasts "bloom", and each day you add both, discard some until it reaches some magical point where it used as a leavening agent for bread or dough. I am still confused, still working on it.
However, the "discard" (literally stuff you would throw away) is good, perfectly good for something. So finally, I decided I am going to use this to make homemade pizza. But I didn't want to do it in my oven, because I have grills and grills can get really hot. So I got some pizza stones, I have a weber grill, and cranked that baby up.
If you research on the internet, there are a billion pizza dough recipes. A billion sauce recipes. But it is also more than recipe, it is a technique. I mean, I learned, to get that dough off of a pizza peel onto a stone without sticking and keeping all of its toppings is hard. I failed before. Which is why I was on day 25 and still counting of making starter discard and finally gaining the courage to do it.
I finally found a recipe I liked. There is a very famous pizzaria in Brooklyn called Roberta's, their dough is lauded and simple, but alas, it doesn't use a levain (leavener) aside from yeast. So.........hey I am a smart dude, I said "eff it", and applied Science (how's that SMF) and changed the ratio's of the flours and water and yeast to also include my discard. So I made the dough yesterday. I even altered it more, I can't help it, it is why I like to cook and hate the rigidity of baking, a bit of whole wheat flour, 00 Caputo flour, Organic AP flour, sourdough discard, yeast, water, salt a bit of olive oil. Made the dough, let it rise, follow Roberta's procedure. Let it proof over night.
Made a sauce from canned DOP italian San Marzano tomatoes, some garlic, oregano, basil and olive oil, uncooked and processed.
So I made apizza for me and my guests. My god it was great. Fresh Mozzerella, pepperoni, some mushrooms, basil, some salame, it was was great. I made my grill like a defacto woodburning stove by placing a log in with the coals. There are alot of things I learned to do next time that will improve it. But man, it was great and great fun.
Why am I telling you this? I dunno. There isn't much else going on, not much going on with hard football or recruiting news, tired of reminiscing and the toxic politics of today, I think this is one thing at least we can all agree with, making good pizza.
Since being grounded from March 16th on, every day spent in my home office (yeah, not the roughest of lives I will admit) I look for things to do. I have planted the mother of all vegetable gardens, even though only 2 of us live here. So....I decided for whatever reason, to make my own sourdough starter. This is supposed to be a 7-10 day endeavor, I am now on day 20, obsessing on perfection. For the uninitiated, sourdough starter, is basically just flour and water, and the natural yeasts "bloom", and each day you add both, discard some until it reaches some magical point where it used as a leavening agent for bread or dough. I am still confused, still working on it.
However, the "discard" (literally stuff you would throw away) is good, perfectly good for something. So finally, I decided I am going to use this to make homemade pizza. But I didn't want to do it in my oven, because I have grills and grills can get really hot. So I got some pizza stones, I have a weber grill, and cranked that baby up.
If you research on the internet, there are a billion pizza dough recipes. A billion sauce recipes. But it is also more than recipe, it is a technique. I mean, I learned, to get that dough off of a pizza peel onto a stone without sticking and keeping all of its toppings is hard. I failed before. Which is why I was on day 25 and still counting of making starter discard and finally gaining the courage to do it.
I finally found a recipe I liked. There is a very famous pizzaria in Brooklyn called Roberta's, their dough is lauded and simple, but alas, it doesn't use a levain (leavener) aside from yeast. So.........hey I am a smart dude, I said "eff it", and applied Science (how's that SMF) and changed the ratio's of the flours and water and yeast to also include my discard. So I made the dough yesterday. I even altered it more, I can't help it, it is why I like to cook and hate the rigidity of baking, a bit of whole wheat flour, 00 Caputo flour, Organic AP flour, sourdough discard, yeast, water, salt a bit of olive oil. Made the dough, let it rise, follow Roberta's procedure. Let it proof over night.
Made a sauce from canned DOP italian San Marzano tomatoes, some garlic, oregano, basil and olive oil, uncooked and processed.
So I made apizza for me and my guests. My god it was great. Fresh Mozzerella, pepperoni, some mushrooms, basil, some salame, it was was great. I made my grill like a defacto woodburning stove by placing a log in with the coals. There are alot of things I learned to do next time that will improve it. But man, it was great and great fun.
Why am I telling you this? I dunno. There isn't much else going on, not much going on with hard football or recruiting news, tired of reminiscing and the toxic politics of today, I think this is one thing at least we can all agree with, making good pizza.
