Luzerne County Community College has a pretty good culinary program, and not just “for a community college”. They have continuing education classes geared for residents. The teachers are restaurant professionals and instructors.
Saturday was the first day of a 2 day pizza making class, taught by John Tabone, who just a couple months ago sold his share of Bar Pazzo to his partners, and Kim McLendon, who is the host of the Rustic Kitchen cooking show, and the nutrition coordinator for the Commission on Economic Opportunity, (and a former Mrs Pennsylvania).
I can learn a lot about food and cooking from books and video and TV, but with dough, to me there is no substitute for touching it and feeling its density, its tackiness, its sponginess, and just how it behaves in general. This was that. I kept my phone in my pocket most of the time. This is new stuff for me, and I wanted to give it my full attention. But I did grab some shots, which I’ll share.
A lot of the prep was already done. That was so we could spent most of the time working on the dough. And frankly, nobody needs help shredding cheese and slicing pepperoni. The sauce was a simple uncooked tomato base, with dried oregano and other herbs; John and Kim demonstrated its prep, which was straightforward.
If you look behind the rack, on the floor, there is a stack of three proofing bins. We each made two rounds of dough, using 65% hydration. We spent time talking about mixing and shaping, and getting the texture right. We wrapped our rounds to take home along with instructions to let them sit in the refrigerator for 72 hours. Then, for the class, those were replaced by rounds of dough from the bins, that were prepped by John and Kim 72 hours ago! That was a pretty doggone slick way of compressing a weeks’ worth of resting and proofing into an hour, IMO.
We then spent some time learning how to shape the proofed dough into pizza crust, how to build an edge, how to apply sauce and toppings, etc.
I made a pepperoni pie,
And a plain pie (forgot to get a before shot).
These were both straight-up pizza shop pies, very basic, exactly what we were shooting for in class. I’m going to make some dough this week to practice, and use the dough from class to make some pies mid week.
Saturday was the first day of a 2 day pizza making class, taught by John Tabone, who just a couple months ago sold his share of Bar Pazzo to his partners, and Kim McLendon, who is the host of the Rustic Kitchen cooking show, and the nutrition coordinator for the Commission on Economic Opportunity, (and a former Mrs Pennsylvania).
I can learn a lot about food and cooking from books and video and TV, but with dough, to me there is no substitute for touching it and feeling its density, its tackiness, its sponginess, and just how it behaves in general. This was that. I kept my phone in my pocket most of the time. This is new stuff for me, and I wanted to give it my full attention. But I did grab some shots, which I’ll share.
A lot of the prep was already done. That was so we could spent most of the time working on the dough. And frankly, nobody needs help shredding cheese and slicing pepperoni. The sauce was a simple uncooked tomato base, with dried oregano and other herbs; John and Kim demonstrated its prep, which was straightforward.
If you look behind the rack, on the floor, there is a stack of three proofing bins. We each made two rounds of dough, using 65% hydration. We spent time talking about mixing and shaping, and getting the texture right. We wrapped our rounds to take home along with instructions to let them sit in the refrigerator for 72 hours. Then, for the class, those were replaced by rounds of dough from the bins, that were prepped by John and Kim 72 hours ago! That was a pretty doggone slick way of compressing a weeks’ worth of resting and proofing into an hour, IMO.
We then spent some time learning how to shape the proofed dough into pizza crust, how to build an edge, how to apply sauce and toppings, etc.
I made a pepperoni pie,
And a plain pie (forgot to get a before shot).
These were both straight-up pizza shop pies, very basic, exactly what we were shooting for in class. I’m going to make some dough this week to practice, and use the dough from class to make some pies mid week.
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