Going the Italian Route.

From making roasted tomato soup and penne pasta with seafood to gnocchi with roasted tomato sugo, I suppose it was only in due time that we tried our hand at making some thin crust pizzas.

So that’s pretty much in short how GT and I found ourselves in the kitchen on Saturday morning, covered in flour as we prepared our ingredients and rolled out pizza discs between laughing and teasing about our very amateur rolling skills.

As it tends to be with me and my having to make everything myself (I mean really, if I’m gonna make pizzas, I might as well make it all from scratch right?), I insisted that we make our own tomato sauce (glurgs of white wine stirred in some tomato paste, minced garlic, fresh rosemary and thyme) and barbeque sauce for our mixed mushroom and barbeque chicken with red onions pizzas.

The trick we found to rolling out the crusts as thin as possible, with much thanks to Peter Reinhart, was to work with a small amount of dough. We chose to take the easier route out and used rolling pins instead of tossing them in the air, like Peter Reinhart very impressively demostrates in the book, and pressed the dough gently with our fingers to stretch it even further.

Also, another thing that I think helped us get that crackly, paper thin crust we were after was baking the crust on an inverted baking tray, much like a pizza stone.

And that was in short how we came about to have two glorious thin crust pizzas, that between GT and my brother just flew off the plates, for lunch.

I’m truly pleased I can now have thin crust pizzas whenever I want, however I want.

Pizza Dough [Taken from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice]

Ingredients
4 1/2 cup bread flour
1 3/4 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups iced water

1. The day before baking Combine the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil and water in a mixingg bowl. Stir well until a dough forms. Using an electric mixer with a dough hook, knead the dough on medium speed until a smooth, sticky dough forms. The dough should stick to the bottom of the bowl but should clear the sides of the bowl. Add more dough if the dough’s too wet or more water if the dough clears the bottom of the bowl.
2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Shape the dough into a flat disk and divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Place the dough balls in a lightly oiled pan and cover the pan with clingwrap. Place the pan in the fridge overnight. To freeze any excess dough balls you might not need, lightly coat the dough balls in oil and place them in individual freezer bags. They will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
3. On the day of baking Remove the pan from the fridge 2 hours before baking. Turn the dough balls out to a lightly floured surface and shape the balls into small, flat disks. Let the dough disks rest for 2 hours.
4. Preheat the oven as hot as it will go. Invert a baking tray and line the tray with baking paper. Roll the disks out to about 9 inches in diameter, making sure to loosen the base of the disc from the work surface regularly. Transfer the pizza dough to the lined baking tray. Lightly top it with sauce and toppings of your choice. Bake the pizza in the centre of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes until crust is lightly browned and toppings are cooked. Makes 6 thin crusted 9-inch pizzas

Posted by thecoffeesnob on November 8, 2009

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