Pizza

Last night, I refreshed a liquid levain with the intension of baking a batch of Pat's (proth5) baguettes today. I made a slightly higher hydration dough with Giusto's Baker's Choice flour and 10% KAF White Whole Wheat.

This morning, I mixed the dough, did the autolyse, stretched and folded, and put the dough in a bowl to bulk ferment. After the first folding, my wife and I dashed out to run a couple errands. As we drove, we discussed dinner and decided we felt like pizza.

Sooo ... Pat's baguettes turned into the best pizza crust I've yet made. It was so good! It stretched beautifully thin without tearing and baked up crisp with a chewy crumb. The bottom was cracker-thin and crisp. The slight sourdough tang in the very flavorful crust was lovely.

I finally mastered "more is not better" with the toppings: a very thin film of the sauce in Floyd's "Pizza Primer" with a little fresh mozzarella and quite a lot of mushrooms. A sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan. The photos were taken before I added some leaves from our basel plant.

I also made one pie without mushrooms. It was also yummy.

Pat's formula can be found here:

http://tfl.thefreshloaf.com/node/10852/baguette-crumb-65-hydration-dough

David

[DELETED BY AUTHOR]

OK, so I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it works! Baguette dough is one of my favorite pizza doughs because it is easy to handle, has just a hint of sweetness, and bakes up as a sturdy, crisp, and thin platform (no sagging) that works no matter whether the topping be light or heavy. I baked this in the oven on my new stone (I didn't want to risk repeating last Friday's BBQed-beyond-all-recognition pizza). I had planned to top it with some pesto and fresh basil, but the pesto had molded and the basil, shriveled, so I just went with sauce and fresh mozzarella.

--Pamela

It has rained for 4 days now. We are all stir crazy, so we made pizza. The kids did their own toppings. This one was just pepperoni. As they say in the papers, " A good time was had by all" .