Pizzaiolos - We Knead To Bake, Then We Toss The Dough: Daring Baker Challenge October 2008

This month’s Daring Baker Challenge is dedicated to Sher of What Did You Eat? She, Glenna of A Fridge Full Of Food and Rosa of Rosa’s Yummy Yums were to have hosted this month’s challenge but Sher passed away of a heart attack on the the 20th of July this year. And Glenna is no more a Daring Baker, for personal reasons.
So Rosa is hosting this challenge with Sher’s recipe idea and it’s a Pizza Party at the Daring Bakers. Welcome one and all.

This month’s recipe is from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and the pizza dough requires an overnight rest in the fridge. We had to stick to the recipe and method for the dough but had freedom to get creative with the sauces and toppings while keeping to the theme of “less is more” and not going overboard with the toppings!
And we had to toss the pizza in true pizzaiolo style!!

The complete recipe for the challenge can be printed here.


My Pizza Making Experience:


I make pizza on and off but had never tried a dough which needed an overnight rest in the fridge. And I have never, ever tossed dough before! But more on that soon.

Making the dough was fine. I halved the recipe to make three 9” pizzas. I just followed the instructions and that was all there was to it. I used my hands to knead the dough because I find pulling off the bread dough from the electric mixer hooks a messy job.

The dough had its mandatory overnight snooze in the fridge. Given the unusually high temperatures here in the past 2 weeks, that ball of dough had a more comfortable night than we did!

We were to have a pizza dinner, so I took out the dough 2 hours earlier, as instructed, and this is where the fun began. I divided the dough into three, pressed out each into a little circle and now had to toss the dough into a pizza.

I had visions of dough sticking to the ceiling, or maybe landing on the floor or even ending up somewhere in between. While this month’s challenge would have entertained us immensely I had a dreadful feeling we would have to go to bed without dinner. Luckily, while we had a good laugh with my daughter doing her best to capture my not so graceful pizza tosses, we didn’t have to go without dinner. But I was just too tired to eat.

By the way, can you see a ghost in my kitchen window? No we don’t live in a haunted apartment. That’s just the pizza dough flying past!!


The Sauce and the Toppings:


I didn’t get very adventurous this time. I just used my home-made Marinara Sauce which I make in large quantities and freeze in small single use portions.

Two pizzas were topped with spring onions, capsicum (green bell peppers), shredded cabbage, sweet corn and paneer (an Indian soft cheese), some mozzarella and dried Italian herbs.

My husband wanted onions, apple, mozzarella and the herbs. So that’s what he got.



Verdict:

The pizzas were good. My husband’s choice of apple and onion was very good with a nice mix of sweet, salty and tangy.

I didn’t find this pizza base all that much better than my usual pizza recipe. I know a lot of fellow DBs thought the texture of this pizza was excellent. It could have been that all that tossing, tearing and getting the dough back into some resemblance of a pizza took its toll on the dough.

I know that I definitely won’t be tossing pizza dough again as I don’t nurse any secret ambitions in this direction.
My daughter and I did enjoy giving tossing dough a try and I couldn’t ask for more than another “savoury” challenge.

The other Daring Bakers have been busy and inventive with sauces and toppings and there are quite a few sweet pizzas out there too. So that’s where you ought to be heading for, until its time for another DB challenge.