I mean, smoked chuck roasts are pretty good stuff.
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Last edited by Jfrosty27; September 21, 2025, 06:53 PM.Comment
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Been awhile since I did a pizza. I wanted to try out a poolish technique, which involves making a preferment before mixing it with the main dough. It does require some planning as day one is poolish making (just a 50/50 blend of flour/water, and yeast), day two is making the dough balls and then cold fermenting them further in the fridge, and day three is pizza.
Here we are with the dough stretched out on my peel. This is a Neapolitan-style pizza, so here's how I approached it. First goes the sauce which for me is Muir Glen crushed tomatoes mixed with a little salt. I blend it for a few seconds with an immersion blender to break down the larger pieces.
One key I have learned is to go easy on the sauce and toppings. Too much and you'll weigh the pizza down and it won't slide off the peel. Next, I added some grated pecorino-romano cheese. Then some torn fresh mozzarella followed by some spicy soppressata.
Three minutes in a 700 F Ninja woodfire oven (preheated for at least 45 minutes) and we get this.
Those of you who are eagle-eyed will notice that the final pizza doesn't quite match the previous photo. And here is where we get to The Ultimate Truth (tm) of pizza making: pizzas sense frustration. They sense distraction. They feed on this. Pizza making teaches patience, perhaps even zen. If you try to rush this, you will end up with a wrecked pizza, every single time.
And that is what happened to pizza number one. I was distracted while trying to launch it off the peel and I hesitated at the wrong moment and it got caught on the edge of the stone and....well, pizza disaster. Dough, sauce, toppings, all over the place. Whoops. But this is why you never make just one dough ball.
My second dough ball was more taut than the previous one, so I couldn't get it stretched out as well as I liked, but it worked.
Did the poolish make a difference? I don't know. The dough was delightfully yeasty, so the three day ferment was a positive thing. This is the best crust I've ever had. It's delicious: crispy on the outside and pillowy on the inside.
One of the reasons to do the poolish approach is that it supposedly gives the pizza more "oven spring," that is, those big bubbles in the cornicone (the edge of the crust). I think 700 F is just a little too low to get a lot of them, but I did get some.
You can see in the above photo I have a third dough ball. I decided to save that for tomorrow. (I also am going to give it three hours instead of two to come up to room temp so it should be easier to stretch.)
I also think I am going to do straight pepperoni instead of soppressata. I like the soppressata, but it is so thin that -- at least the brand I have -- almost disintegrates into the pizza, which isn't a terrible thing, but it is like it becomes part of the sauce. I need something more rigid.
Ever forward!
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Sometimes I think Michael_in_TX and I are kindred spirits. The pizza always knows!!! When things go south for me…. I get frustrated and it just goes further downhill from there. Or if I had a bad day, I tell BF that I am not cooking with love and the pizza will fail. And I am right. That said, I do try my best at shutting out the “chatter” and I will turn out some winners!
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Fired up the Sportsman's Grill for some yakitori
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