Finally back

After a year of dental work I finally got my full set of choppers back at the end of February, then the world went to crap.  Now we're in the midst of a stay-at-home order and are practicing social distancing, bars and restaurants are closed for dine-in but some are offering pick-up and delivery to try and keep afloat.  I fear many of the small mom-and-pop places won't be able to reopen once this pandemic has run its course, all we can do is try to support them and their staff by ordering pick-up when possible and donating to the various funds set up to support the front of house staff who are trying to find ways to wait this thing out.

Since the last post I've added a few new toys for my Camp Chef DLX pellet grill that I haven't really been able to play with, the first being the Sidekick side burner.  It came with a griddle and will fit a number of other accessories, I later picked up their Grill Box for searing and was later pleased to discover that my 2Stone Pizza Grill seems to fit on the Sidekick pretty well.  I'm still debating on whether to use that for pizza of get the Pizza Oven accessory made specifically for the Sidekick, I htink the Camp Chef Pizza Oven Box would fit a bit more securely to the Sidekick so I'm leaning that way.

The other thing I've been working on lately is my pizza dough formula, I'm currently using a recipe based on one from Pizzeria Beddia I found on-line.  Mine's a little bit different than the original recipe in that I use a preferment.  The recipe I'm using is:

Preferment:
200 grams  Water
200 grams  Bread flour
0.5 gram     IDY

Mix together until combined and let sit overnight or up to 24 hours.  Sometimes if I have a recently emptied bottle of bottle conditioned or unfiltered ale I'll swish the water around in it to pick up any remaining yeast cells for the preferment, but if you want to have the same product each time that adds too many variables.

Once the preferment has prefermented I add:

155 grams  Water
8.4 grams   Sugar
0.5 grams   IDY
14.3 grams Olive oil
310 grams  Bread flour

Knead until the dough comes together as a shaggy mass, then cover and let sit for 30 minutes.  This autolyse step gives time for the flour to fully hydrate and for enzymes to activate.  Once the autolyse is done start kneading on low for about 2-3 minutes or until the dough starts to get smooth, ten add:

15 grams   Fine sea salt

Continue kneading for another 2-3 minutes to incorporate the salt.

At this point I'll portion the dough (this makes 2 - 3 pizzas depending on the size you want), round the balls and place them in oiled bowls or bags to ferment.  For same day you can let it ferment at room temperature for about 2-3 hours or you can put the dough in the refrigerater to cold ferment for up to 3 days.  In my opinion cold fermentation results in better flavor development and a dough that is easier to stretch but the warm fermented one is still pretty good!  I'm not sure how this dough will work with the higher temps possible with the Sidekick and either my 2Stone Pizza Grill or the Camp Chef Pizza Oven accessory, I may need to cut down on the sugar to prevent over-browning but that experiment will have to wait until it gets a bit warmer out.

Stay healthy!

Homemade Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

I've never had a good Chicago style deep dish pizza outside of Chicago.  When I'm visiting friends and relatives in other areas of the country they often want to take me to a local place that serves "authentic" Chicago deep dish, but it rarely delivers.  Most often they just serve a version a pan pizza, a thick crust topped with standard toppings baked in a walled pan.  Chicago deep dish is baked in a similar pan, but has a much thinner crust that's pressed into the pan and up the sides.  For some time I've been experimenting with my recipe for Chicago deep dish pizza, but because I don't want to weigh 300 pounds I have to take it a little slow.  Here is my latest attempt...

The pans used for deep dish pizza are usually made of blue steel and have to be seasoned, I used to have a nice blue steel one like this one from Ottinetti but at some point over the years it was lost.  Blue steel pans have to be seasoned, but once that's done they'll last for years and years as long as you take care of (and don't misplace) them.  Lacking an authentic deep dish pan I opted to just use a large cast-iron skillet.

I used the following recipe for the dough...

300 grams AP flour
174 grams water
70 grams corn oil
7 grams EV olive oil
9 grams IDY
4 grams sugar
6 grams salt

The sugar was dissolved in the water and the yeast sprinkled over top and mixed in.  After allowing that to sit for a few minutes all the rest of the ingredients were added and mixed for about 1 minute.  The dough was then put in the refrigerator overnight.  The next morning the dough was put out at room temperature and allowed to ferment all day while I was at work (about 9-10 hours), my theory on the buttery flavor in good Chicago deep dish dough is that the long, warm ferment allows for the formation of diacetyl which is a component of artificial butter flavor.  When I got home I pressed the dough in to the pan and up the sides.  The dough was a little too slack in my opinion, next try I'm going to cut the oil down by about 25% to try and get something a little easier to handle.

Slices of mozzarella were placed on top of the dough going up the sides, I also had some shredded mozzarella that I put on top of the slices.  Next came Italian sausage (from Bari here in Chicago), sliced onions, pepperoni and green peppers.  All that was topped with sauce and more cheese was sprinkled on top.  Normally the cheese on top would be a combination of pecorino romano  and parmesan but due to a recent refrigerator failure my food stocks are still a little low.

The sauce was simple, just a can of 6-in-1 crushed tomatoes seasoned with a a few teaspoons kosher salt, a clove of garlic (minced), 1 teaspoon of greek oregano and a little sugar to taste.

The pizza was baked at 400°f for 30 minutes, then the oven temp was lowered to 350°f and baked for another 30 minutes.  Once removed from the oven it was allowed to cool in the pan for ~ 5 minutes before being de-panned and put on a brown paper bag to wick away excess oil.

A pizza wheel isn't much use for this type of pie, a long chef's knife can be used but I prefer a rocker style pizza cutter.  The dough cooked well, but the excess slackness caused the edges to be a little thicker than I would have liked, reducing the oil in the recipe (to 50 grams corn and 5 grams EVOO) should remedy this problem the next time.  Flavor was spot on but I might go for a fennel or hot Italian sausage for the next go.  Still a work-in-progress but getting very close to where I want it to be.

Pizza on a Baking Steel

I've been making pizza for a long time, usually on a pizza stone in the oven but when weather permits I'll sometimes pull out the 2Stone Pizza Grill and make some pies outside on my Weber Grill.  The char you can get baking at 800-1000 degrees adds a lot of flavor in my opinion, but it takes a LOT of extra effort and several days to pull off properly.  I have found a relatively nearby source for the '00" flour I like to use for Neapolitan pies (Caputo's Cheese Market) but on more than one occasion my well laid plans were thwarted by bad weather.  I had read in "Modernist Cuisine" about using a sheet of solid aluminum instead of a pizza stone but really didn't think too much about trying it until reading about a Kickstarter project for a new product called a Baking Steel on the Serious Eats website.  I must have dropped hints t the right people because lo and behold, a new Baking Steel was waiting for me under the tree on Christmas morn.

A Baking Steel is basically what it sounds like, a sheet of steel (14" x 16" x 1/4" thick) you put in the oven to bake your pizza on instead of a stone or pan.  Some of the advantages are a greater thermal mass and better heat transfer properties than a pizza stone.  I thought it would be easy for me to just have a piece of steel cut to the same dimensions, but the cost of materials and shipping would have made it about the same price and I would have had to pay extra to have the edges ground down to make it safe to pick up without leather gloves.  The Baking Steel seemed a better option.  A recipe for NY style pizza dough was included in the box so that's where we start.

The NY style Pizza Dough recipe included with the Baking Steel was originally posed on the Serious Eats website by J. Kenji López-Alt but is based on one from Peter Reinhart's Pizza Quest blog.  One thing I don't like about the recipe is that it's in ounces.  My scale has a 1 gram resolution, but when weighing in ounces the resolution is only 1/8 ounce (about 3.5 grams) so I can get inconsistent results when trying to measure small weights in ounces.  Here is the recipe, expressed in the original ounces, converted to grams and in baker's percentages for those so inclined.

22.5 oz     637.9 grams   100%   Bread Flour
0.5 oz       14.2 grams      2.2%   Sugar
0.35 oz     9.9 grams        1.6%   Salt
0.35 oz     9.9 grams        1.6%   Active Dry Yeast
1.125 oz   31.9 grams      5%      Extra Virgin Olive Oil
15 oz        425.2 grams    66.7% Water

The recipe calls for using a food processor to pulse the ingredients together for 15 minutes or until it comes together, then for an additional 15 seconds and finally finishing off by kneading by hand a little bit before splitting in to 3 parts, putting each ball in to a zip-top bag and in to the fridge for at least 1 and up to 5 days.  I prefer using a Kitchenaid mixer with a dough hook set to low for about 4-5 minutes, then scaling in to 375 gram balls and bagging for the fridge.

On pizza day I removed a dough ball from the fridge, rounded it on the counter and placed it under a bowl on a floured surface to warm up to room temperature (I gave it about 75 minutes).  For the bake I placed the pizza steel on the bottom shelf as the instructions...well...instructed and set the oven temperature to 550 degrees.  I let the steel preheat in the oven for about an hour while the dough rested.  When ready, I opened op the dough in to about a 12" pizza skin and placed it on a well floured wooden peel (I find wooden peels are best for loading the pies in to the oven).  I used a basic marinara sauce topped with some thinly sliced red onions, green peppers, kalamata olives, fresh purple and green basil and finally some slices of fresh mozzarella.  The pizza baked about 5 or 6 minutes before being removed from the oven using a metal peel (which I like to removal over the wooden one) and placed on the counter on a large brown paper bag.  After a few minutes of cooling a small drizzle of white truffle oil was added.  Here is the final result.

Everyone liked the final result!  I think the top of the pie didn't cook as fast as the crust so there are a few things I might try differently next time.  The easiest thing would be to place the steel on a higher rack in the oven which should increase the radiant heat hitting the top of the pizza. The other option would be to decrease the amount of sugar in the dough which would slow the browning.  I don't have a pic of the bottom of the crust but it was uniformly well browned.  Not the char you get at ultra high temperatures but much less work to get an awesome result!  I'm going to have a lot of fun with this!