Mandroid's pizza was heartbreakingly awesome.

I say heartbreakingly because it makes one realize how total shit most pizza is. At the same time, while eating, one is just astonished by how good pizza can be.

Seriously, her crust is on par with the best pizza crust I've ever had in my life. Mind: blown.

Ben

benadrian wrote:Mandroid's pizza was heartbreakingly awesome.

I say heartbreakingly because it makes one realize how total shit most pizza is. At the same time, while eating, one is just astonished by how good pizza can be.

Seriously, her crust is on par with the best pizza crust I've ever had in my life. Mind: blown.

Ben

cool. i made pizza for my family last night as well. absolutely nothing compares to fresh homemade pizza. I use minimal sauce and cheese as well. most places use way too much cheese.

I have a nice burn on my left hand after trying to juggle a red-hot slice from counter to table as well.

I assume you have a pizza stone.

Mandroid, do you make or buy dough? Pans, or right on the stone. I do both.

Yo Ben, apparently we share a birthday.

No pizza here but I got a banjo! That's some good shit.

Congrats.

the$inmusicisallmine wrote:I assume you have a pizza stone.

Mandroid, do you make or buy dough? Pans, or right on the stone. I do both.

Yes. I usually do the pan(s) on the stone at really high heat for about 5 minutes, remove from oven and crank down the heat to 400-425, top with ingredients, and cook another 5-10 minutes or so depending upon size.

In addition to a 12" pan, I have these little 6" mini-pizza pans which are wonderful because you can top each pizza differently. They're also great for freezing mini-crusts for later use as a quick meal. Once they bake for the first 5 minutes, you just set them on a tray in the freezer and once they're frozen, you can slide them into a freezer bag and use later.

I always make my own dough. I used to just follow a very simple, classic recipe for dough but since I made my sourdough starter back in November, I've been baking with that quite a bit, as otherwise the constant feedings would eventually result in the refrigerator being nothing but a giant vat of starter. The one drawback of using it for pizza crust is that it takes so long for the first rise to be complete, so you have to plan to make the pizza well in advance. The bonus to using the sourdough is the flavour and the fact that I have somehow bred a strain of super-yeast that will cause dough to rise like no commercial yeast I've ever used.

I also make my own sauce, though no longer having a garden has reduced me to using canned whole tomatoes and mostly dried herbs. I usually make more sauce than I need and then freeze the rest in Ziploc bags for later usage. People complain that it takes too long to make things from scratch and, yeah, things like chili or a good fresh tomato sauce take some time to make, but if you manage to freeze 3 or 4 meals worth of the product it's worth the 3 or 4 hours of initial work.

The surprise success of last night was sort of a sweet and savory dessert pizza. I ground some nutmeg on the crust before baking and topped with some ricotta/spinach filling I had frozen from the last time I made lasagna. I put some shredded parmesan on top of that, , then white onions, chopped artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, and walnuts. I had one pomegranate that was miraculously still good and which had been buried in the produce drawer of the fridge since last year, so I opened that up and threw some of the seeds on top. I was thinking that dried cranberries might be nice and then remembered that I had organic raisins from back when I first made the sourdough starter, so I rehydrated those in some merlot and balsamic vinegar and put those on the pizza and then topped with crumbles of gorgonzola and some minced mint.

I was worried that it would be too sweet and the onions or kalamatas would be out of place but the flavours blended together surprisingly well and the sweetness was more of a creaminess than a sugary sweet.

I did three other pizzas as well. Two were pepperoni, kalamata olives, red onions, red peppers, artichoke hearts, pineapple, provolone and mozzarella, tomato sauce--the usual toppings. The other was a tequila-lime chicken pizza using slices of the ground tortilla crusted tequila-lime chicken I made for supper on Saturday night. I added some cornmeal to the crust, topped it with a layer of refried beans and then pickled shredded carrot, white onion, then the chicken slices, the spicy cream sauce from the original chicken recipe, pepper jack and extra sharp cheddar cheeses, and some julienes of red pepper, chopped red onions, and some cilantro and olives. I set aside some tomato and lettuce for the slices once they were out of the oven.

I have several nasty burns on my arms and hands today. Our new piel doesn't work so well on the mini-pizzas, so I instead resorted to reaching into the oven to lift them up and slide them on the piel using my hands.

EDIT: Happy Birthday, sunlore!

Mandroid:
Thanks for responding.

I use store bought dough from the local italian bakery. (It is actually called "the italian people's bakery") it costs $1 per doughball and it is nice and fresh. my wife makes her own "red gravy" sauce every couple of weeks, so I use that for sauce.

I use 12" round pans with holes in the bottom. between the pan and the pizza I use a piece of parchment paper. I build the pizza on top of parchment and the pan. Then I cook it for 4 minutes at 475 on top of the pizza stone, until it "sets".
At that point, I remove the pan (the pizza just slides off gently because of the parchment) then I remove the parchment with a swift yank, leaving the pizza on the stone. Cook for another 5 minutes, checking at 2 minutes to pop any bubbles. Non-plain (any topping besides cheese) pizza takes an extra minute or so.

Happy belated birthday! The pizza sounds awesome... how was it?