Game Day Pizza

 

After feeding my sourdough starters a couple days ago it occurred to me to me to make pizza dough - four 320g balls.

Froze two (an experiment) and proofed the other two for a halftime pie and one more for snacking this week.

At 15F and falling the outdoor brick oven is a non starter.  Nevertheless, the bottom convection oven on the new GE range will get up to 550F and bake a pie on the pizza stone in 10 minutes, give or take.

From bottom up: homemade hand-tossed sourdough crust, Rao’s imported Italian pizza sauce, locally-sourced whole milk mozz, topped with Becco’s Italian sausage, fresh shrooms, black olives, fresh basil from Columbia and a drizzle of EVO.

Behold the CSMO - aka the Milwaukee Special.

Nixon for the DAGGER.

The Bears still suck...
 

A Bad Stretch

When I was growing-up carry-out pizza from a real pizza parlor was a treat.  A very rare treat.  As a matter of fact I have an acquaintance that once told me he never had pizza until he was in high school or college or some such thing.

Since we got our brick oven, pizza around here has been raised to an art-form.  For the spring semester I'm teaching another round of pizza-making classes.

Admittedly, I have become a pizza snob. 

In the 1960s there was a time that this culinary hideousness found its way under our roof.

Just like those ancient times before kettle grills there was burnt and ash-covered chicken.  Frequently raw in the center.  For pizza it was a particularly bad stretch.

 

Indoor Pizza

Most of you readers know that we use our wood-fired brick oven to cook outdoors during the more pleasant months of the year.  This time of year we'll fire it up if we score a day above freezing and especially during daylight hours.  Baking or roasting in the dark at 20F is not appealing at all.

Recently we hosted guests for the weekend and one of the requests was for homemade pizzas.

So I prepared a batch of sourdough crust balls to undergo a cold fermentation in the garage fridge and prepped everything else with the exception of the firing the forno.  Too dang cold and I was disinclined to be traipsing from oven to house and back in the dark while balancing a pizza peel. 

So I used the new GE Profile range that I've been becoming accustomed-to .  

The bottom oven has a pizza stone and I can preheat it to 550F which will bake a fresh pizza in about 10 minutes - give or take.

And I never had to leave the comfort of my own kitchen.

Pizza!  Pizza!

The Garden Chronicles

If you are a San Marzano tomato snob you likely already know that a purebred San Marzano tomato is grown in the rich, volcanic soil in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

This year I’ve sourced my San Marzanos from a mutant plant that has overgrown the composter.  

A very robust volunteer from 2023 garden waste.

I collected enough fruits to can and foolishly imagined a dozen half pints.

Here is my harvest.

Four half pints.

Tomatoes and cracked Spanish sea salt. That’s it.

On a foundation of my sourdough crust this is the foundation of a real Neapolitan pie….
 

Pizza! Pizza!

Tossed some pies in the Forno last night with some pals.

After a dalliance with instant dry yeast, 2024 has been witness to the return of sourdough leavening.

An altogether superior bake.

Bonus was tomatoes and sweet peppers from the garden….
 

The Next Morning

Sometimes you have to toss a pie in the Forno at the end of the day.

Thursday evening I fed my sourdough starters and figured I'd use some of the discard to make pizza dough for the holiday weekend.

Last night I made a couple of pizzas.  CSMOs to be exact. For the uninitiated that acronym stands for: cheese, sausage, mushroom and onion.  In the pizza world that is commonly known as The Milwaukee Special.  We ate one and par-baked the second - freezing it for a quick meal down the road.

Pro Tip - Not wanting to waste any BTUs, upon rising this morning the oven had cooled to 375F.  So I baked Door County cherry scones.  

Of course, you can bake bread, cinnamon rolls or cookies too.  Forno be like a big ole battery retaining heat for hours.....

Gathering Of The Clan

Another weekend of family eating, drinking and frivolity is in the record books.  Three generations of our immediate tribe gathering outside of a holiday, wedding, funeral or other family event.   And the monsoons paused just long enough to smoke chicken and ribs on Friday and make a batch of brick oven pizzas Saturday.  Today dawned sunny and bright.

It can stop with the rain now.

Anyway, now that the dog hair has been swept, bedding laundered, garbage bagged; some evidence worth sharing....

 

 

Gentlemen - Start Your Ovens

First bake of the season....

 

Cookn' With Propane

I'm back to baking on a regular basis with about seven or eight successful bakes in the last several weeks.  

Heretofore, I thought I had lost my mojo.  'Twas instant dry yeast  that had lost its vigor a year before its x-date printed on the jar.  Believe the results - not the Best By Date.

With the lengthening days and warming weather it's getting close to firing-up the backyard brick oven.  Nevertheless, that doesn't mean you cannot make pizza in you kitchen range.

If you have a stone and get preheat it to 550F you can turn-out a darn good pie with an excellent homemade crust in under ten minutes.  Pro Tip:  Rao's Pizza Sauce.  (Three kinds)

I'm cooking with propane so your mileage may vary.....

 

Pizza Man

Attempted an experiment a week ago for the backyard brick oven.  

 

Homemade, cold fermentation dough, garlic alfredo, fresh basil, sliced whole milk mozz, fresh mushrooms, sweet onions and shrimp. 

 

 

Two minute bake in the Forno.

 

Drizzle of EVO before serving.

 

Yummy result. 

 

After discussing this with my sidekick spouse we concur that chicken would work too. 

 

I’d also consider substituting chopped scallions for the sweet onion.  Rather than put them on before the bake I'd sprinkle them on with the drizzle of EVO before serving.

 

Crushed red pepper would also amp-up the flavor profile.

 

Pizza Margherita

A gloomy, on-again, off-again, rain means brick oven cooking. 

Pizza Margherita - the simplest Neapolitan pizza. 

 

The Italian city of Naples is generally-accepted as the home to the creation story of pizza.  Founded in the 16th century the urban peasants of Naples were quite impoverished and thus it was that pizza - a flatbread with toppings - easy to make and could be eaten for any meal that affordably fed the working class of Naples.   

The popular interpretation of the origin of this particular pie is an account from 1889 and a visit by King Umberto I and Queen Margherita to Naples. The Queen summoned the famed pizza-maker Raffaele Esposito to bake three pizzas for her. The first two - an anchovy followed by a marinara were uninspiring to the Queen.  The third - featuring the green, white and red colors of the Italian flag - met with the Queen's approval.  Esposito named his pie for Queen Margherita and requested of her a Royal Seal.  But I digress - I watch to many Stanley Tucci Italian cooking shows on streaming television.

This pie features a long cold fermentation dough, sauce, whole milk mozz, fresh garden basil, salt, and a drizzle of EVO. 

Also broke-in a new professional peel for ease of oven entry and egress….

Typical Saturday

Busy day yesterday.

Walked the dog.  Fetched gas and diesel. Reinstalled hazards to navigation along the north property line to keep nocturnal road hunters from driving onto the property from the dead-end town road to poach deer.  

This was accomplished by means of returning the oversized boulders to the ditch that the logger had moved.  I also moved a bunch of larger ash pulp bolts to the mix like ginormous pixie stix.  Sure, a determined violator will persist in poaching a deer - my point is simply to provide a deterrent to any easy mark.  Thank the Lord for a bucket on the tractor and high-pressure hydraulics.

There is also a high probability I'll hide a trail camera along the edge of the road to record license plate data.  If there is criminal behavior I'll have something for the warden to follow-up on.

After this I swept and vacuumed the machine shed, gassed-up both 4-wheelers and Jill and I covered the boat.  

Whew!

Cold beers on the porch followed while I fired-up the Forno.

 

At 900 F after only two minutes there was New York-style, cracker-thin pizza for dinner.  Yum!

And there was sufficient dough and toppings to par-bake two additional pies to freeze for easy meals down the road.

Looking forward to clearing the chore list of autumn tasks in the next week as the pre-rut has commenced.

And I saw plenty of deer out in the woods yesterday during daylight.

There is some serious hunting to be done.....

Taunting

And now for something completely different and fun to watch.....

What To Do With Garden Tomatoes

Dining-upon garden produce regular-like. Including tomatoes!

 

With the addition of the Forno this year I planted Italian herbs and plum tomatoes. Fresh-sliced plum tomatoes from the garden on a New York thin crust pie are delectable. Add some fresh basil when served and it’s the bomb. 

 

 

With the current surplus I canned six pints of plum and a couple of quarts of ordinary tomatoes today.And there is more in the pipeline too.

 

I have a vision of venison bolognese in my future…..

 

Analogy of the Day

 

Pizza is like sex 

Sometimes mind blowing

Sometimes really good 

And never bad

 

Garden Tomatoes Hold the High Ground

Yesterday a garden tomato was featured in our fish tacos. 

 

In October I speculated that there was a high probability of garden tomatoes making an end of November finish line. It would be close - yet there was a chance.

 

A FB friend suggested I feature them in a pizza.

 

Here it is - end of the first week of December - garden tomatoes, chicken, Marchant’s bacon, mozzarella and basil pizza pie. Red sauce too. 

 

Believe it or not there are tomatoes (small buggers) remaining.

 

Absolutely unbelievable.........

 

The Last Tomato

If you are a regular reader you would know that at the beginning of October I picked all of the salvageable tomatoes from the garden and pulled my tomato plants up to be composted.  Many dozen semi-ripened and green tomatoes were moved to the countertop of the attached garage to finish ripening.

While technically not THE LAST tomato - one of the very last tomatoes found itself to a pizza pie as possibly one of the longest lasting garden tomatoes of the season.  Now commences nine months of wandering thru the desert of crappy supermarket tomatoes until the first arrivals of next year are picked for our dining pleasure.

If you have the opportunity look for these nifty, imported from Austria and Hungary, ready to bake Wewalka pizza crusts.  You might be able to locate a grocery that carries them here.

Fast and easy and particularly delicious when you add fresh shopped garden tomatoes to the topping.

Bake at 450F. for fifteen minutes. 

Boom!