Today, I rode to a “homey” pizza place, out and back to home in my Great Pizza Search (GPS) #5! If I plan to criticize others’ pizzas, I need to taste some of my own medicine.
The process started on Friday evening (it’s now Sunday evening) with adding 100% unbleached bread flour and water to my combination of white & wheat starter. After a couple of hours, I split the leven into two batches:
One batch had 100% 00 flour from Italian wheat (took me back to last year’s ride through many miles of Italian wheat in Puglia and Basilicata). The other batch was 100% unbleached bread flour. After 2 hours & 5 stretch and folds both batches went into the refrigerator (in this case for 36 hours)
By Sunday morning both batches had grown 100% & were removed from the refrigerator to come up to room temperature (about 6 hours).
I went for my ride which turned out to be an incredible day, short and easy R&R ride with the great luck to run into some ciucciariello (donkeys, asses) a name aptly earned and given to me by my friends in high school.
While watching the Napoli game, I split each dough into two: one of each dough would become pizza, the other a small loaf of sourdough bread, and I made my sauce using an “adjusted” Aunt Theresa recipe. My adjustment was to add a teaspoon of hot crushed pepper (which was my only minor mistake)
Topping and getting ready to cook. Toppings – 5 cheese blend + shredded parmagian, 1/2 Napoli salame (aka pepperoni), fresh basil from our herb garden.
The end result – two pizza and two small loaves of sourdough bread; one each 100% 00 Italian wheat flour, and the other 100% unbleached bread flour.
The 00 Flour pizza was borderline GREAT.
The Unbleached Flour pizza was GOOD.
The crust was crunchy (it was not foldable due to the square cut). This was the first time that I’ve ever made sourdough pizza. There definitely is a different texture from yeast dough; not better or worse, just different since it has a “crumb” as you’d expect from sourdough bread.
I probably used a little too much olive oil on both pizza to help spread the dough. So, it’s time to learn better stretching techniques.
The taste of the sauce was to die for although extra bit of crushed hot red pepper flakes was a little too much which held this pizza from being truly great.
Now the final verdict, “would I go here again?” ABSOLUTELY (I live here)!
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