Joined: Aug 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 1,072 Location: Southern California
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #31 on Nov 10, 2009, 12:46am »
So the flammekueche beat out the chicken-fried steak for tonight's dinner. My Alsatian friend had told me to include swiss cheese, but I forgot. It still tasted good. I did add salmon, though. When I do this again I will also include spinach. The crème fraîche was a really good base.
My question is: how does everyone get their pizza dough thin? I like my crust a bit on the thicker side but mine is still too thick for my liking. I just can't seem to get the dough to stay thin...it keeps springing back. And it doesn't matter which dough recipe or source that I use. Any ideas?
So the flammekueche beat out the chicken-fried steak for tonight's dinner. My Alsatian friend had told me to include swiss cheese, but I forgot. It still tasted good. I did add salmon, though. When I do this again I will also include spinach. The crème fraîche was a really good base.
My question is: how does everyone get their pizza dough thin? I like my crust a bit on the thicker side but mine is still too thick for my liking. I just can't seem to get the dough to stay thin...it keeps springing back. And it doesn't matter which dough recipe or source that I use. Any ideas?
Sounds to ma as if the dough hasn't "rested" enough cristina. Maybe next time either make or buy it the day before. Also (and you know this I'm sure), make sure it's at room temp when you roll or stretch it. When this happens to me, I roll/stretch it and then let it relax for a bit before rolling/stretching again.
Sounds to ma as if the dough hasn't "rested" enough cristina. Maybe next time either make or buy it the day before. Also (and you know this I'm sure), make sure it's at room temp when you roll or stretch it. When this happens to me, I roll/stretch it and then let it relax for a bit before rolling/stretching again.
Crap. Yes, I should have known this.
In the meantime, I have decided that bacon and smoked salmon is far too much salt for one dish (at least for me). Next time, one or the other.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 34,430 Location: Paris, France
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #34 on Nov 10, 2009, 5:54am »
I am totally off smoked salmon now, because since I reduced my salt intake, it now always seems unbearably salty. Thank god I can buy fresh salmon instead.
Joined: Oct 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 445 Location: Canada
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #35 on Nov 10, 2009, 8:39am »
No fair! Pizza is also my all around favorite food, and all those pictures look soooo good, and I'm stuck at work all night with nothing but a peanut butter sandwhich!!!
Have to say, I must be the only person that wasn't impressed with pizza in Italy. Pizza in Paris was suprizingly ok.
At least in Canada, for frozen pizza, I really don't mind the McCain International Thin Crust pizzas. I haven't been able to find a good pizza place in Calgary. Too many chains. We keep ordering from this place called Chicago Deep Dish, only the pizza isn't anything like Chicago deep dish pizza.
Alas, I am too scared to make my own dough, though I used to be a pizza cook by profession : )
Joined: Oct 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 445 Location: Canada
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #37 on Nov 10, 2009, 10:31am »
My bosses made the dough, I just weighed out chunks of it and threw it onto pans. The sauce was a secret too, but soooo good.... sweet with a hint of spice.
I also think composition and ingredient types are vital to pizza, and this place is unique.
The Works: It starts with the delicious sauce. Then mushrooms. Then onion and green pepper rings are torn in half, making for long thin strips under the cheese, instead of diced bits on top. Then, get this, sliced hotdogs! The only place I know that does this. Then large pieces of pepperoni - like, really big thin slices of pepperoni which cover the whole base of the pizza and then topped with the smaller slices of salami. Then mozza cheese. Then on tops goes squares of real bacon and chunks of real hamburger. I would just have a little dish full of ground beef and I would make little balls of it with my fingers and distribute these on top of the pizza with the bacon. This is such good pizza! But definitely one for the fork and knife.
Typically pizza in Nova Scotia comes with an order of garlic fingers, which I have only seen or heard tell of in the Maritime provinces. So decadent. With donair sauce for dipping. Has anyone else had this experience?
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 3,548 Location: Montréal
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #38 on Nov 10, 2009, 7:04pm »
Ms Crisis, no wonder you don't like Italian pizza!
Sorry, I don't like so much "stuff" with it. The "works" would make me ill.
cristina, I was thinking that bacon and smoked salmon would be too much salt, but thought perhaps you were craving salt. By the way, smoked salmon instead of bacon would make a flammekueche kosher, if that is a consideration for anyone, or anyone you know. Or halal, but the reason I mention kosher is that fish can be eaten with dairy, and any meat, even kosher meat, cannot. Whilst observant Muslims can mix the two as long as the meat is halal.
kerouac, I do like smoked salmon, but it is a treat; certainly don't eat it every week.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 34,430 Location: Paris, France
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #39 on Nov 10, 2009, 7:07pm »
It used to be a treat (an expensive one) in France but then it became mass produced, the price came down, and you find it everywhere now -- in salads, in pasta, on pizza, all over the place. I am not attracted to it at all now.
Joined: Aug 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 1,072 Location: Southern California
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #40 on Nov 10, 2009, 9:04pm »
The bacon that I used is a really smokey bacon - normally I don't notice the salt so much. I'm actually thinking that the smoked salmon was a lot saltier than usual.
However what I liked best about this pizza was the use of crème fraîche as the sauce base. I think there are endless possibilities for ingredients to mix with it and I look forward to experimenting more.
Not tonight though. The much dreamed of chicken-fried steak is up next. And then I need to work on making Spindrift's beef casserole. And about a dozen other dinners everyone here has contributed.
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #43 on Nov 10, 2009, 11:14pm »
Never seen it. Hot dogs except in really touristy spots are called the much more exotic and non-Italian sounding "wurstel". At least they taste like hot dog to me.
I'm thinking any pizzeria that tried that move in Tuscany would be shunned. And quite rightly so, that is worthy of the food abomination thread!
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 3,548 Location: Montréal
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #44 on Nov 10, 2009, 11:57pm »
I didn't see it either, when back in Italy (Umbria and Tuscany) a couple of summers ago. The toppings are a bit more varied than fumobici's Neapolitan purism, but nothing weird or over the top.
Joined: Oct 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 445 Location: Canada
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #45 on Nov 11, 2009, 8:18am »
Generally speaking, I think hotdogs are a bad idea on pizza. It's just this one place I used to work at.... it really worked for that particular pizza! Then again, I've never had the Mexican version.
lagatta, don't get me wrong! I like pizza of all sorts! Love a plain cheese pizza, thin crust with herbs. I like Italian style pizza... I just didn't particularly enjoy the pizza I had in Italy. Then again, I was 17 then... maybe my tastes weren't as refined as they are now. I think, actually, the problem was the huge slices of vegetables on top of the cheese. My pizza came with thin slices of eggplant on top ... and eggplants have a large-ish circumferance and a potentially tough texture... putting a whole eggplant slice on top of a pizza just doesn't work. How to do eggplant properly on pizza? One of my favorite spots in Sackville, New Brunswick had pickled eggplant wedges available as a topping! It was wonderful!
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 3,224 Location: Greenest UK
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #46 on Nov 21, 2009, 7:21pm »
we're having pizza tonight! we got the bases from the healthfood shop. And the toppings are: thin layer of tomato concentrate, sliced tomatoes, sliced onion, cooked ham, mozzarella.
I would like to make the really really thin crust napolitan style pizza base myself. just have to learn/have the guts to do it.
Joined: May 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 5,379 Location: Winnipeg
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #47 on Nov 21, 2009, 7:29pm »
annie, please tell me to get lost if this is unwanted advice...
One of the problems with pizza making lies in the "construction". The whole topping part of the pizza often slides right off the crust when it's being eaten. If you spread a little bit of the cheese over the tomato sauce before placing any of the other toppings on, this can be avoided. With your toppings I'd go: sauce (thin layer), scattering of cheese, some cooked ham, cheese, onions and tomato - both sliced thin. If your "bases" are raw dough, use a hot oven - if they're pre-cooked, go medium temp.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 25,283 Location: Mexico
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #55 on Nov 22, 2009, 4:22pm »
Wow, Imec ~~ when I got to the pepperoni picture in that sequence, my brain finally kicked in and I realized how BIG that pizza is! Then I went back & checked the photos of the mozzarella and the (?)Canadian bacon. Whew. How do you get it into the oven -- with one of those pizza slider things? Also, I'm assuming you bake it directly on the oven rack, without a pan. (apologies if that was covered earlier)
Wow, Imec ~~ when I got to the pepperoni picture in that sequence, my brain finally kicked in and I realized how BIG that pizza is! Then I went back & checked the photos of the mozzarella and the (?)Canadian bacon. Whew. How do you get it into the oven -- with one of those pizza slider things? Also, I'm assuming you bake it directly on the oven rack, without a pan. (apologies if that was covered earlier)
It's actually on a pizza screen that looks like this - it's 14" or 15" in diameter.
The ham is capicollo (spicy Italian ham made from shoulder I think - maybe lagatta knows). I do use a pizza shovel to remove it from the 550F oven.
I also make smaller, very thin pizzas (thinner crust with far less topping) which I make on a floured and cornmealed wooden board and slide directly onto tiles or a pizza stone.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 3,548 Location: Montréal
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #57 on Nov 22, 2009, 4:35pm »
Edited to add: see imec answered your question as I was posting!
And I forgot to say "that looks like capicollo to me, not back (Canadian) bacon". Yes, capicollo is spiced ham shoulder. Although not as fatty as pepperoni, it is a bit fatter than back bacon, which might get dry on a pizza. Often people prefer back bacon to the more usual kind precisely because it is much leaner, but that is usually just to eat as is.
Confess I really do NOT like pepperoni.
Perhaps the imecs have a pizza stone, and a peel.
I bought a pizza stone for 25 cents at a yard sale, and gave it to my downstairs neighbour who has professional training as an artesanal baker. He is working at another job now; he and a friend had started up a bakery in the East End (Hochelaga-Maisonneuve) and it pretty much wrecked their friendship. Not easy working with someone at 3am!
Of course I can borrow the stone whenever I want. I'll have to find a peel for my friend as a present - there are several professional restaurant supply places near here, because of marché Jean-Talon and all.
In the meantime, the neighbourhood where my friends started up their ill-fated boulangerie, which was quite rundown despite beautiful greystone buildings, has been somewhat gentrified - though not to the degree bixa evokes in another thread - and another artesanal bakery has taken off.
My friend has a modest inheritance and is mulling over another go at a boulangerie. Hope it is close by here.
My name really isn't Don, but I used to be anónimo.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 2,941 Location: Michoacán, México
Re: The Pizza Thread « Reply #58 on Nov 22, 2009, 7:46pm »
"I bought a pizza stone for 25 cents at a yard sale, and gave it to my downstairs neighbour who has professional training as an artesanal baker. He is working at another job now; he and a friend had started up a bakery in the East End (Hochelaga-Maisonneuve) and it pretty much wrecked their friendship. Not easy working with someone at 3am!"
I once worked with two, talented guys like that. One thought that to avoid stressing their friendship, he'd show up at 8 or 9:00 a.m. But that didn't work, either, and the partnership split, for related reasons, as I myself was leaving by the rear door.
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