To say that I wasn’t a fan of Midnight Mass would be an understatement! I was pretty young when I saw through the ruse that’s the church, and all of its draconian practices designed to extract money from people in the guise of that’s the path to eternal bliss (as if they know…but the Bible says so…).
I especially didn’t like the smell of incense. It was late, I never stayed up past midnight then (and now!), I was tired, and then, the priest would raise the incense burner, and that awful smell of, well, church would emanate from the incense urn. I can’t forget that smell.
I’ve never smelled that smell anywhere else except at funerals which I equate with Midnight Mass. It would fill my nostrils and cause my near fainting (typically, an older person would faint each midnight).
On top of this, my brother (Uncle Chip) was a wanderer. As a young child, he wouldn’t stay in the pews. He’d walk out of the pew, into the aisle, and up and down the aisles! I assumed he was beyond tired by this point and was simply sleep walking! I’d look around church to see if any of my friends were there hoping to spare the embarrassment.
My dad (Grandpa Tony) wouldn’t do anything about Chip’s wandering. He preferred to talk about the other “bad kid” who did the same thing by the name of Urban (yes, that Urban went to our church too); not once calling Chip the “bad kid”!
When I became an alter boy, Midnight Mass became tolerably bad. I was older and could better fend off the tiredness from the timing and the odious incense smell. Besides, our priest was an alcoholic and had extra wine on these big nights. As a result, there was more left over wine for the alter boys to drink when carrying the wine back to the priests’ house. I was a “good kid”!
Caputo Blue Experiment Results
In my last post I mentioned that I was going to experiment with higher hydration because I’d not been satisfied with the workability of my doughs made in Florida with Caputo Blue flour.
That new dough used 66% hydration (660 grams) of water with 1kg (2.2 lbs) of Caputo Blue. The higher hydration was difficult to hand kneed as it was more gooey compared to the lower hydration, but later, it was much more easy to form dough rounds which was the problem with my previous lower hydration.
Unfortunately, because we decided that afternoon to have pizza, I made the dough on the same day as the bake, and the crust lacked a deep “sour” taste found in longer ferments. Also, I’m still learning how to get more leoparding on the bottom with the Ooni Karu although there is good crisp. The overall taste made it a pretty good pizza.
Mercurio’s Dough Experiment
Also mentioned in my last article was the dough recipe from Mercurio’s Pizza in Pittsburgh.
I ran out of Caputo Blue, but now have 10kgs (22 lbs) of Caputo Red, but I still don’t have the flours that Mercurio’s uses; but now, I have live yeast.
The fresh yeast comes in a solid brick similar to a 1 lb brick of butter. We found it at our local Gordon’s Food Service which typically serves restaurants but also has a retail counter. Since this was the first time using fresh yeast, I searched and found on the Red Star Yeast site a conversion from the amount of dry yeast to fresh yeast for recipes (which is 2.7g weight of fresh yeast for each 1g of dry yeast in a recipe).
Additionally, it was the first time that I used a pre-ferment. As I’m still learning, I really didn’t use a Biga, I simply used all the flour, water, salt, and yeast on the counter for the pre-ferment time! OOPS! I then put the “pre-ferment” in the refrigerator for nearly 2 days.
I also used the 66% hydration as in my previous recipe. Again, it was very sticky and gooey when kneeding.
After the long pre-ferment, then long cold ferment, the dough was ready after 2 days in the frig.
Between the 66% hydration and the Caputo Red, the dough rounds formed very easily. Likely the bests dough rounds I’ve made.
The FINAL RESULT – these were likely the best pizzas that I’ve ever made! The combination of the wood fired oven, long ferments, and fresh yeast – THOSE ARE THE TICKETS!
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