Although I haven’t been continually blogging about my pizzas, I still have been chugging along. Can you chug pizzas? Err, never mind.

I have got most of the variables working together in some sort of harmony — at least a sort of non-discordance. But I believe that my dough is wetter than I would like. So my next step is to try a dryer dough. The recipe that I am using has a baker’s percentage of 62% (345 grams of water and 555 grams of flour). I recalculated the ratio to 58%. But there was an unknown in the pizza recipe that was bugging me. It called for 48 grams of sourdough starter. And I have no idea what the percentage of water is to the flour in my sourdough culture. Since I started a new sourdough starter (an Italian Camaldoli culture), I have been adding exact amounts of flour and water. For each feeding, I add 165 grams of water (3/4 of a cup) and 120 grams of flour (1 cup). This results in a percentage of 137.5%. So, in my recipe, when I add 100 grams of culture to the flour, water, and salt, I now know the exact amount of water and flour. I calculated that I needed to add 99 more grams of flour to get the final percentage down to 58%.

Pizza pictures after the cut…

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… sourdough babies. Its time for a change. I am trying a new sourdough culture out. Just to see how different it is in yeast action and taste. So I went to and bought the Italian sourdoughs. There were two that came and I resurrected the Camaldoli culture.

The picture is a day after sitting in my oven with the light on (it keeps the temperature around 90 degrees). This is the third feeding (there was enough culture to go into two wide-mouth canning jars). It is interesting how there is are three, very clearly separated layers. That is the first time that I have seen that before.

A couple of days later, it is now looking very homogeneous. And it is pretty active. A three-fourths full container overflowed all over the bottom of my oven. Fun, fun.

Tried another pizza tonight. But I still have yet to achieve a qualified success. I like my sauce, the toppings, and how it cooks, but I do not like the dough. I think that there is a basic failure somewhere.

I don’t think that it was elastic enough to rise properly on the stone. At that point in the cooking process, the yeast has done its thing and now it is steam’s turn to blow that balloon up. Which it didn’t because the dough was too tough.

Of course I was side tracked because I tried a different type of flour. An Italian flour called “Belaria: Farina di grano tenero tipo ‘OO'”. I don’t think I am ready to experiment with different flours. It is cool that Central Market offers different types of flours that are not readily available. But I shouldn’t be distracted at this point.

So, this time, I went back to King Arthur bread flour. I used a packet of yeast to supplement the sourdough culture (my culture seems to be rather laid back). And I performed a “window pane” test on the dough. Which it seemed to pass.

I shall see how it turns out in less than a week.

Yep, the rotisserie burner cooked the top nicely. But the problem now is that it is done in four minutes. The dough needs a little bit more time to cook all of the way through. So, for the next time, I will try turning off the burners, removing it from the screen, letting it cook, and then finishing it off with the rotisserie. Will that work?

I am starting to get sick of pizza by now…

I made pizza again tonight. I used the dough that I made two weeks ago. There didn’t seem to be any problems using it. This time the bottom crust turn out nicely cooked. The pizza stone was at 750 degrees and I used a screen for almost all of the time while it was cooking. I think that I won’t bother taking it off for the next attempt.

One problem though. The top didn’t cook enough. Well, it did melt the cheese. But I was looking for some nice browning. For the next time, I am going to turn on the rotisserie burner when the pizza is in there. I probably let out all of the heat when I open the grill and put the pizza in (as well when I check on the progress). To bad I dot not have a Salamander burner on top.

Tonight, I whipped up another pizza for dinner. I was already set up with ingredients from last week: sausage, cooked onions, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese. So no time spent there. This time, I used a recently purchased pizza screen. The pizza screen worked pretty well. At least initially. I was worried that the pizza might sink in between the holes in the screen and stick to it. But it didn’t. However, it was removed from the hot stone (an aluminum screen is not very conductive). So it didn’t brown as well as it could have.

There were problems however. Last week, I mixed more dough up and let it sit in the refrigerator over the week. Which was, of course, packed full. So I crammed them in where ever they would fit. And wouldn’t you know it but one of them fell down. Yesterday, I noticed that the plastic container had broken a hole in it. Fortunately, the dough was not dried out. So I patched the hole with scotch tape. The second problem was the fact that it is a really wet dough. I thought I was good about sprinkling flour on it when I was rolling it out. But it eventually stuck to the counter. I pulled it off and reformed a new ball and rolled it out again. Maybe the second time around it was a little tougher with that extra gluten from kneading back into shape.

For the next time, I am going to try to “blind bake” the dough. Put just the dough on the screen and then cook it for a minute or two. And quickly pull it off. Put the toppings on, and use the peel to transfer it back and finish cooking it.

Update:
I left the dough in the final shape too long on the counter. The dough absorbed the light flour dusting and stuck to the counter. I did blind bake the dough. But when I took it out and went to put the toppings on it, I learned that the wet dough steamed a lot. Water condensed on the bottom, which was not good. Also, this time I heated the stone for a good 45 minutes. The temperature went up to 750 degrees. And after 5 minutes, I went outside and found that the bottom had burned. There was a thick crust of carbon. Next time, I am going back to the screen and the longer preheating time.

I made pizza from the recipie that I linked to earlier. Seven days ago, I made the dough and put it in my refrigerator. Periodically, I would burp the containers and/or punch the dough back down. So today, I am in the mood to make some pizza. I notice two things: 1) the dough is very loose and relaxed and 2) the aroma is not like a “fine wine” at all. I think that my sourdough culture is rather laid back. Maybe I don’t feed it enough…

Anyways, so I heat up the grill and cook the ingredients. I get the pizza stone up to 650 degrees Fahrenheit. I flour the peel and flour the bottom of the dough. I put the dough on the peel and then put on the ingredients. But when I put it on the grill, I can’t get it off. That dough is loose, loose, loose. So I turn lemons into lemonaide and turn my disaster into a calzone. It turned out pretty good even when I forgot to cut some vents for the steam.

I have one more container of the dough and, tomorrow, I am going to make some bread.

I tried another recipe out today. On some PBS cooking show, I saw them make an asparagus tart with Gruyére cheese to bind it. So, I bought the supplies and prepared to make it. And then I wussed out and searched for a recipe and found this. It is really simple to make. Although I did manage to mess it up. I used a plastic pizza cutter to straighten the edges on the puff pastry dough. And then I tried to cut a border with it and “dock” the middle part with a fork. Unfortunately, I didn’t cut deep enough and the whole sheet rose up. But it was easy to recover from. I recut the border with a knife and pushed the middle down with a fork.

Next time, I will add some prosciutto ham to add another flavor note to the medley…

I also used two 1250 watt halogen lights to brighten up the picture. And to compensate for this yellowish light, I used an Expodisc. This is an 18% filter. You take a picture and use that picture (see above) as the color temperature of the following pictures. It is pretty surprising to see just how brown the light is…

Our local grocery chain/monopoly fustrates me. If it was a person it would have multiple personality disorder. What am I talking about? Their inventory. Each store has slightly different products than the other. The biggest difference is a Central Market store compared to a entry-level H.E.B.

The current example is the lack of butter selection. I used to shop at the H.E.B. on 620 and Great Oaks Drive. It was more upscale than the one on IH-35 and 79. But now that the supersized version has opened a mile away from my house, I have changed stores. What I don’t understand is the super-sized version is supposed to have a better selection. However, in terms of butter, it plain sucks. It does not carry the above H.E.B. brand butter (which is shipped to the 620 store).

Why do I want that version? In one word, fat! It has one more gram of it on the label. And that gram makes a difference in taste. Although it is an example of a marketing lie. 12 grams out of 14 should give a butter fat percentage of 85.71% But the box clearly says it contains 82%. Which would make it 11.48 grams and that would mean that they would have to round down to 11. Since they only have whole numbers (creating a whole lot of confusion, I say).

Grrr… Damn you, H.E.B.! I really want to only shop at one store!

I tried cooking English Toffee today. And it was fun. Doubly so trying to juggle camera equipment and cook at the same time. Of course, I had to buy the toffee flavored almond slivers!