Sunday, July 29, 2007

Pizza attempts 7 & 8

I made this pizza using the same recipe, except I am now keeping track of how much flour I use. I mixed in 214g of flour and let it autolyse. I let it sit for a little too long (45 mins) and when I came back it was all bubbly, much like a yeast starter. I mixed for 8 minutes with the dough hook of a hand mixer, added 72g of flour gradually, and kneaded about 10 minutes by hand (my hand mixer isn't powerful enough to handle all of the flour mixed in). I then balled the dough, slapped it in a bowl with some oil, and refrigerated. I noticed that this dough felt really good, and passed the windowpane test with flying colors, so maybe my kneading technique is getting better.

It was after I put the dough in the fridge that I realized I forgot the salt. You might know that dough without salt is about as useful for baking as a ball of mud. I pulled it out of the fridge about 6 hours later and tried to incorporate 2 tsp. of crushed up kosher salt. It wasn't easy, and I felt like I was tearing the dough too much because it was stiff from the fridge. Eventually it warmed up and became easier to handle. I decided to bake it that night after a 30 minute rise because I figured I screwed it up already. The pizza was actually about the same as my previous attempts.

No comments: