Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Winding Down

The new year will be here soon and my kanji dreams really hit a dead end half way through. I had made so much progress too. It was really the death of my computer that led to that or so I'm thinking. Maybe I'll jump back on track next year. But we aren't short of being lazy in these parts. No, at least not all the time.

I recently dug back into my bread book and decided to try hearth baked bread again. That just refers to baking at high temps with steam for the most part. It's hard with my oven but I've continued to surprise myself by what I can get out of it. 2 weeks ago I made a wet dough that sat overnight in the refrigerator. The following day it was left to warm up and double in size. This overnight rest helps develop the flavors that a 2 hour normal rise wouldn't bring out.

Pain a l'Ancienne

The baguettes were pretty tasty. My oven doesn't cook exactly as I prefer so the end result isn't as I wish. It's close enough though.

Then the past Saturday I made dough for Nepoletana pizza which was a first. I didn't want to make it before because of the lack of a super hot oven to bake it. I decided to try the grill with my pizza stone. The dough was very soft and stretchy. This isn't dough for tossing. It only needs some gentle stretching. The first pizza started to burn on the bottom before the top could cook properly.

1st Pizza Napoletana

There was good flavor but the crust was underdone. It did have some great rise to it which is what I hoped for. The second pizza was moved to the traditional oven and the taste changed considerably. Not to mention the dough didn't bake well enough and was still wet inside. So for the third pizza it went back outside on the grill. I put some foil on the grate to protect the stone from overheating which helped a lot.

3rd Pizza Napoletana

You can see the crust cooked up much better and the bottom didn't burn. The taste of the crust was wonderful in addition to the sauce and cheese. I'm currently brainstorming how I might modify the grill lid to make it hold heat. I might use some clay or a system to hold some rock in the lid. If I can pull that off then some spectacular pies will be coming. This makes me want to build an oven even more. It's amazing how much the baking method can affect taste.

Maybe this will all have something do with my future job. Time will tell.

1 comment:

Mom said...

I miss your pizza!!!

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