Pizzaturday

One of the things I am most glad for since the end of February is that I no longer need to charge my bus/metro pass with a monthly load and can walk the 7-ish kilometres to and from work everyday.

And just this week on my way back home I was wondering how far Pi Day was. I did not remember then, as I couldn’t recall pi’s value. And my thought eventually wandered somewhere else. Case closed… until this morning, when I started browsing through my news feeds and was flooded with reminders that 3/14/15 was upon us.

For a moment I felt like baking a pie. Likely a root vegetable tarte tatin, but I was out of root vegetables and ~~my phone told me~~ I looked outside and saw there was freezing rain. After discussing some options of dinner with my SO, we decided on a convenient pizza (pie).

After lunch I prepared the dough (recipe in another post) and once the freezing rain was over, I went out for the ingredients. This time we decided to keep it simple and just used regular cheddar, tomatoes, grated parmesan and olive oil. Coincidentally, this was the roundest pizza we’ve ever made. The sound of bubbling cheese when it left the oven was particularly pleasant.

We also wanted to make a sweet pizza (it is common in Brazil), so I also brought home Nutella (spread it like it was tomato sauce, top the pie with bananas, thank me on the comments). In the end, though, we’ve had enough with the savoury pie and just saved the remaining dough for another meal and another post.

A cheese and tomato pizza is resting on a pizza stone. On the background there is a bottle of wine, a bottle of olive oil, a plate and a wine glass — The roundest pizza to this date

This week brought a small Anadama (photos pending to write about it) and some muffins for snack, but the moment I was looking for came on Saturday, when I was to try a nice recipe for pizza dough. One that actually uses, hmmm, measures, as my other attempts were based on a YouTube video in Italian. Not that it went wrong. My previous pizzas were really good, but a random amount of water would require a random amount of flour and give me a random amount of dough/pies -usually two, but at times, we had to make the sacrifice of eating pizza for a few days.

After receiving friends over for coffee and corn cake (not my doing), I headed to the kitchen and started working that dough. Bonus points for my friend who brought a huge bottle of olive oil from his family in Greece. Perfect timing, as this ingredient required replacement.

For topping, I used tomato sauce (half-homemade), bocconcini cheese and portobello mushrooms. And since I still suck at opening the dough, I left my girlfriend in charge of that. Apart from a few holes in the dough, she nailed a thin pie with a somewhat thick border.

Raw pizza dough sitting on a floured counter with a towel in the back — Ready to be opened

Ingredients

400 grams of flour

300 ml of water

3 tablespoons of olive oil

7 grams of active dry yeast

10 grams of salt

Directions

Mix the water with the yeast and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Add the olive oil and mix integrate all.

Add the salt and flour and mix it until all ingredients are combined. Let it rest covered with a towel for 20 minutes.
Knead the dough again until it is elastic. Let it rest covered with a towel for 45 minutes to 1 hour (it should double the size).

Shortly before the time has passed

Pre-heat the oven at 260° Celsius (500° Fahrenheit) with the baking stone inside.

Put the dough on a floured surface and press it gently to expel some air. Cut the dough in two and roll them (as picture above). You can let it rest again for a few minutes.

Put the dough for the pie you want to bake first on a floured surface and press it, then opening it with a rolling pin (I cannot open it decently it by hand, so don’t expect me to give you tips on that). If you have a pizza peel, do this part on it.

Cover the pizza with the topping of your choice and transfer it to the baking stone. If using the pizza peel, just transfer it to the oven; if not, it takes some skill to transfer it to the stone, but it is possible.
Bake it for about 10-12 minutes. Post a photo on Facebook and make your friends jealous.

Baked pizza with cheese and mushrooms topping sitting on a baking stone and a wooden cutting board — The pizza ready to make Facebook friends jealous

Manning the Oven

Menu

Happy (Pizza) Pi(e) Day!

Pizzaturday