Pizza Slow, Mastodon posts, page 39

took a guest through Glen Canyon up Twin Peaks new year’s eve, toured Philosopher’s Way with junior today. enjoy the green while it’s with us.

photograph of the southern peak, “Noe Peak” from the northern peak, “Eureka Peak” on a very clear last day of 2024

photograph of the trails we were walking traversing the east side of Twin Peaks down into the neighborhood below, mostly green this time of year, with a few single tracks rising and dipping along the hillside

photograph of a portion of Philosopher’s Way in McLaren Park, SF.a stone marker to the left of the trail indicates that hikes should proceed forward. A tree has fallen obstructing the trail just past the market, and a 6 foot circumference root ball pops up o the the right, while the trunk extends beyond the photo left.

Photograph of Bernal Heights and beyond, including downtown, the Bay Bridge, Berkeley, and so on, from McLaren Park, SF.

Had a few friends over for a holiday party this week and made two extra large New York style pizzas to feed everyone a lot faster and with a lot less work than my neapolitan process.

For the kids, a half-pep/half-mozz. For the adults: smoked kalamata olives (holy moly, amazing), red onion, mushroom, basil, pecorino, mozz.

photo, a slice of pizza on a cutting board.the pizza is topped with smoked kalamata olives (holy moly, amazing), red onion, mushroom, basil, pecorino, mozz.the sauce: drain a can of whole peeled san marzanos, dicard the liquid, and zap what’s left in the blender w/ one head of garlic and generous pinches of salt, sugar, and oregano.

I’ve been struggling to land on a good dough process without doing a bunch of math.

Lucky for me, I found a modern Lehmann calculator (named after a forums poster, so you know the approach is good), and have had great luck with it, using bakers percentages a bit more like Kenji’s at 60% hydration, 2% oil, 2% salt, 1% instant yeast.

I use cold water from the fridge and mix it using a food processor until it registers mid-70s F on a thermapen, then cold ferment.

Maybe counter-inuitive but someone posted (I don’t remember who or where, probably on pizzamaking.com) that bulk fermenting dough like this at room temperatures effectively insulates the dough from dropping to fridge temps when you later cold ferment, what with all the bubbles.

The dough should already have warmed up from both the cold strike water equalizing with the other ingredients to a target temp, and the kneading further raising the temp.

Just throw it in the fridge immediately.

Very small sample size but: I overshot kneading on one of two dough balls by 10 degrees to mid-80s F, so when I placed them in my fermenting tray (and flattened them out given I had so much space to work with, so that they would cool more evenly), I marked that one.

After cold fermenting, the too-warm dough was slightly smaller, visually, than the correctly kneaded dough.

Go figure.

also born on this day, go figure

https://mastodon.social/@workingclasshistory/113733763757962621

upgraded the pizza oven to the new ‘max’ ooni, which is insanely huge, so that I could do this: make an NY style pizza with slices that are the “correct” size, and feed the family one-and-done.

throwing out the dough to 20" was easy, launching was easy, etc.

I set my expectations low but am very impressed w/ the first bake even though I dislike the dough I made, mostly nits with the fermentation, and I launched too hot

photograph, finished extra large new york style pizza with sauce, cheese, basil, and pepperoni on a wood peel on a counter, a pizza wheel is laying next to the pizza on the left

photograph of the underside of the pizza tilted up from the peel, displaying bubbles of varying sizes from very small to half an inch burst and leapoarded, larger bubbles merely lifted as cavities, w/ a near black ring around the outer edge of the crust

photograph of one slice on a paper plate and two slices on a second paper plate, both on the peel(the paper plates are actually melamine and we re-use them every friday for pizza night because it sets the vibes correctly)

macro of one plated slice, finished w/ shaved parm, red pepper flakes, and oreganothe very thin crust is visibly bubbled and a burned bottom layer has pulled away from the rest of the crust in waves

the november Clarkesworld was particularly fun, and I specifically liked the opener, https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/nelson_11_24/, the second one https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/spires_11_24/, the third one https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/auslender_11_24/, and the last one https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/swanwick_11_24/