Pizza on the Kettle...close...

Pizza Throwdown Entry reportage. From the blog, but, by now you should all know I just copy and paste the entire thing here.

I have been pondering my lack of a wood stove or dedicated pizza cooker for some time, and have been playing around with different configurations for making pizza. I have tried fires on the bottom of the kettle, offset, in the middle, and decided I would try building the fire on the back side of the cooking grill, to see if that worked. It did not work well enough, the pizza stone, in this case a cast iron version, never got hot enough to cook the crust as I would like. But the overall pizzas were still pretty good.

The Dough:
To start off with, I had planned to do this cook on Saturday, then Sunday, but, plans kept evolving, so I ended up with cooking on Monday. The Biga, basically a packet of Red Star dry yeast, 1.5 cups warm water, 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 cup of flour was started on Thrusday afternoon, and was refreshed with water and flour on Saturday and Sunday. By Monday afternoon, it looked like this.


By Monday, the Biga was bubbled up nicely and upon turning out, I could see that the overall texture was that of, well, batter. But, this was encouraging, as the gluten had clearly matured during the long rest, witnessed by the bubbles and gasses entrained throughout the battery Biga.


To this, I added another 1-1/4 cups of Antimo Caputo 00 flour and worked the dough lightly to incorporate the flour. Although cooking by feel, I was still shooting for a ratio of water to flour of 70% to 80% water versus total amount of flour. Once the dough was well incorporated, I gave it a few minutes of kneading to 'wake up' the gluten. I was hoping for a very soft dough. I think this was the most successful part of the cook.


As you can see, the dough balls were quite soft, spreading just a bit when just formed. I did a quick proof under a kitchen towel, the dough actually went through a soft rise to about, gaining about 50% more volume. These four dough balls would eventually be enough for four 9"-10" pizzas. In terms of toppings, the basic list.

Toppings Available:
Ricotta Cream, fresh ricotta whipped with whey liquid
Fresh Bufalo Mozzarella, shredded by hand
Wild Arugula, tossed with a little olive oil
Curly Kale, salt wilted and well rinsed
Sliced Mushrooms
Melted Onion
Pancetta
Sliced scallions
Tuscan Olive Oil
Pomi Tomato Sauce

Basically, all things were tossed onto the pizza crusts before shoving into the kettle. The higher fire, as you will see, got some of the toppings and crusts done nicely, but, the bottoms were too soft. The cool stone complicated and lengthened cooking times. Here are the pies.




All of these were delicious, although I found the Arugula was a little too bitter for my taste. I have to say, the idea of some Meyer lemon juice or a Meyer lemon preserve drizzle might have helped. I would have eaten all of these, but, by the time I was done, I really just wanted a bit of each.



The sliced pictures show the crust texture, which was amazing. A crisp crackle on the top side, a springy, tender interior, a thin but resistant bottom (which, if the stone had gotten hot would have been even better). I did brush the crusts with a high quality extra virgin Tuscan olive oil and a random sprinkling of kosher salt, which made the crusts the best part of these pies.

As for the kettle experiment, it continues...

Bill, I figure nobody is going to steal an image that is radioactive.

Thanks to you other guys

The method I used this time took almost no work at all.

Thanks again.

Really, there was almost no technique involved and that is from someone who has learned the hard way to make bread. A lot of what happened this time was waiting. Mix, wait, mix, wait, mix, wait, mix, knead cook. It is based on the ideas put forth by Zoe Francois in the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, that you do not need to knead bread that much.

I have no idea, my thermometer on my kettle is not working right, according to it, I either cooked it at 100F or 600F. If I had to guess, it was around 375F to 400F, as they did not cook fast. It took 12 to 15 minutes per pizza

Bob's Incredibly Lazy Dough Process:
1. Mix one or two packets of dry yeast, or a little yeast cake with 2 cups warm water. Proof for 15 minutes. If there are bubbles, then add 1 to 1-1/2 cups of AP Flour (or other plain wheat flour, I do not use whole wheat, rye etc...). Mix and place in a ventilated container and refrigerate. The Biga needs to sit for at least 24 hours, 48 hours is the outside without additions.

2. After 24 hours, add 1/2 cup water mixed with 3/4 cup flour of choice, back in refrigerator for 24 hours. Do this every 24 hours you let the Biga sit. If you don't, it starts to go bad, not sour, bad.

3. This is your Biga, it will provide enough yeast to make up to an additional 4 cups of flour into a dough, with the appropriate amount of water. However, I get better results if I mix the dough ingredients with the Biga and refrigerate it another 24 hours. This minimizes kneading, as the gluten will form and mature on it's own with a slow rise.

4. On the day to bake, I remove and let the dough with Biga come to room temperature (really important) then turn out onto a moderately floured board, I will knead the dough for just a few minutes to tighten it up, picking up some flour along the way. Then proof and bake.


Real bakers make a Biga every night, or use a Mother starter, so that they always can make dough. This is not a soured starter, for that, you do need to leave it at room temperature for 4 to 5 days. Covered. Bugs seems to find a souring starter and die in it. Then it is a bad starter.

I use all of those techniques, but, this was so easy. I see you joined recently, so you would not know about my exploding poolish experiment. You have to go off site but, here is a link