Announcing The Quest: Pizza Crust

My blog here is slowly dying.  This is my fault.  I had the awesome luck of the Poetry competition in the spring to ensure I updated.  Hopefully in November I will update everyday with a NaNoWriMo thing.  How then to fill the space?  Well, last Spring I was getting heavily into baking.  It is something I greatly enjoy doing and it has been far too hot lately to do it.  With the weather cooling off, however, I feel far more comfortable getting back into the swing of it all.

I wish I had the organizational skills to have separate blogs for all my interests, but categories will have to suffice.

The Quest is my name for a quest.  The Quest to find the best recipe for a certain item I really enjoy.  Last Spring I was amazed at the wide variety of pizza crust recipes I found.  There were so many variations on time of rise, amount of kneading, amount of yeast, oil added, and the most controversial topic:  The pizza stone.

My hope is that every Friday I will be able to cook a pizza.  After consumption by myself and my beautiful assistant (Samantha) I will describe it here.  If copyright allows, I will reprint the recipe, but I will more likely link to it.  There are several recipes out there, so I cannot be sure how many I will utilize before I finish.  There will be a few rules I will try to follow:

1)  I will use the same sauce for each pizza.  Once the crust is achieved, the Quest for Sauce may start.  Or it might not.  Whatever.  In the interest of time, I will be using plain storebought sauce.  Any additions for flavor will be noted and kept throughout.

2)  Toppings will be consistent.  The fairest thing to do would be a simple mozzarella/sauce combo with herbage.  If it’s a good crust this should be sufficient – but the store-bought sauce could negatively affect this.  This rule could change.

Those are all I have so far.  Now, there will be additional recipes added no doubt.  But the ones I plan for sure to use are:

Alton Brown’s Pizza Pizzas recipe which uses bread flour
Rose Levy Berenbaum’s recipe which does not.
Beer Crust Pizza – I will find the source
Jiffy brand Crust – Is it just as good out of the box?  I doubt it!
Store Bought Crust – Probably Boboli, just to be fair
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook – The classic checkerboard cookbook offers a tasty pie as well.

And so we have six contenders at this point.  I may axe the pre-made crust but if my ultimate goal is the best pizza possible I should take it into account.  Right now, my money is on Berenbaum or Brown but anything can happen in The Quest.

I will hopefully make the first pie tomorrow and post it up post-eating.

 

Sourdough: The Writer’s Bread

I am making my first loaf of sourdough bread with homemade, wild starter.  I don’t know how well it will turn out.  I am always nervous I haven’t kneaded enough.  I see strands of gluten, though, so I think that part is okay.  I let it rise overnight and am letting it rise a second time right now.  It is in the safety of the oven for this rise.

The reason I call it “The Writer’s Bread” is because it takes a long time to make.  The actual mixing and kneading do not, but it takes a long time to properly rise – especially if you don’t use commercial yeast.  You can do all sorts of things while it rises – including write a story.  I think one could probably draft a complete story in that time, and finish editing another.

The starter is good for a writer, too.  It’s like having a pet.  Once a day – or so – you can hop up from the desk and say “I need to feed the starter!”

The only real problem I have had is finding recipes.  There are plenty online, but most use commercial yeast.  There’s nothing wrong with a little help in the rise, especially if the starter is fairly mature, but I really get a kick out of doing things the old-fashioned way.  I was going to use the recipe from The Bread Bible, but I turned it back into the library.  It got checked out again.  So, I am using a combination of recipes and my own know-how to make this loaf.  If it fails?  Well, I have plenty of starter.

Soon, baking will be by the wayside as I will be at camp.  But in the fall, when I have time, I will be doing some pizza crust testing.  It should be pretty fun.