Far be it from me to turn down any form of charcuterie, but all I see is pepperoni. Delicious pepperoni.
Very impressive crust. Are you doing this in an oven? Temp? Pizza stone? Right up against the broiler in an electric? I can get pies like that but not without either adding the cheese much later or reducing the cheese down to an oily mess from overcooking. Neither is very satisfying, but I don’t really want to drop $700 on a pizza oven.
This is just a normal oven, using a baking steel. It’s high up on the top rack, a few inches from the broiler.
Preheat the steel at 500 (which is Max for the oven) on bake for a while, at least an hour usually.
Once i put the pizza in there, i cook it for around 3 minutes, then turn the broiler on to finish it for another 4 minutes.
Mine actually goes up to 550 but it’s still not enough. I have a baking stone (CI recommended a long time ago), not steel though. Maybe that + broiler would make the difference.
So… go $100 in on a new steel or just go nuts and get a pizza oven which I know will perform.
If I could make pizza half as nice looking as what Timex posted, $100 would be spent in a flipping heartbeat.
It’s honestly not hard. Once the dough’s made, the rest of it comes together pretty fast.
The baking steel was a very good investment. I have the half inch one, but in retrospect I would probably recommend the quarter inch one.
I gotta figure it’s gonna hold plenty of heat to do the work, and it’d heat up faster, and it’d be easier to move around.
For me, the weight isn’t a huge issue, since I rarely use my oven for anything other than the pizza… but when I do have to move it, the thing ain’t light.
If your oven goes to 550, then I can’t see how it could fail to be hot enough, based on my experience.
The most key aspect is transferring the heat to the crust fast and even, which is what the steel does better than anything.
Beyond that, it’s just the broiler doing the work of browning the top, and getting that right ends up just knowing when to flip to broiler on to get the right level.
At 550, you’d probably be able to cook pizzas in less than 7 minutes, although probably still around 6. A ton of the cooking is just being done by the steel.
Yeah, the steel vs stone is probably the issue. When I bought the stone it was the highest rated by CI and the only one, including steels, that made an appreciable difference. Since then thicker, better steels have come out and obviously do a better job.
It’s really just a matter of having enough thermal mass and the ability to get it into the dough.
However, the issue you describe with cheese seems odd to me. I’m not sure that’s a steel problem. Likely more a factor of not being close to the broiler, since you presumably keep the stone at the bottom of your oven like normal people, not dominating the upper rack.
The quarter inch baking steel is a good buy though, I’d think.
I’ve seen articles where people made pizza in cast iron pans also. You preheat on the stovetop until hotter than the fires of mordor, plop in your pizza, then immediately put it under the broiler. Stovetop can get much hotter than the oven, so it finishes in 5-6 minutes.
Beautiful! I bought the baking steel griddle, but haven’t actually used it much. I found that the lack of sides meant making a holy grease-spattery mess whenever I tried to use it.
It’s a race to finish the dough before the cheese dies, and the cheese always loses. Sticking it closer to the broiler just seems like it wouldn’t help the dough before the cheese expires, but I can try it.
Ah, if it’s taking too long to cook the dough, then putting it closer to the broiler would make it worse.
That likely is going to be fixed with a steel then, since that will cook the dough faster.
For me, I use the broiler because the dough is cooked in 7 minutes, and without the broiler the cheese wouldn’t brown as much. And if you make super thin crust, it’d be even faster.
Ok, i made some Kung Pao tonight.
It started by processing some Szechuan peppercorn. This involved toasting it in a frying pan a bit, then grounding it up in a food processor. It’s not actually about grinding it, as much as it’s about separating out the inedible hulls. You don’t technically need to do this, and can just put the peppercorn into some oil then remove before cooking, but after processing into actual powdered peppercorn you can more easily get it into food at the level where it numbs your mouth.
Final result:
And all the hulls:
Kind of a pain, but this much ground peppercorn will last a long while. A good sized pinch is all you need for a whole dish.
Anyway, after doing that, i velveted some chicken, and then made some Kung Pao. The flavors are pretty on point in terms of authenticity. The make up of the dish is very American, in that I put way more vegetables into it.
Dude, that is a CRAPTON of Szechuan peppercorn! I’d never had the stuff until my wife gave me some in a spice kit for Christmas (she picked out the individual items in it and it’s one of the best gifts ever) and it has become a huge favorite of mine.
I’ve never done anything like that, though. They look like this:
I just mash them up with a mortar and pestle. I’ve never separated anything out.
Yeah, if you toast them a little, then whirr then up in a food processor, you get a powder you can use.
Hmm. Could you bake with Szechuan peppercorn? I’m wondering how they’d taste in a hot pepper-cheese biscuit, or a cheese straw.
Don’t see why not. I’ve used them in bbq rubs, pickle brine, and other tasty things.
Yessssss. Cheese and pesto-y. I like where you went with that. Home grown tomatoes?
This is kind of only marginally cooking, and not much to look at, but:
As I’ve alluded to in a couple other threads, I’ve been playing with shaved ice this summer. My daughter loves it, and it’s a relatively low-guilt frozen treat. Store bought syrups are kind of, well…bad, so I’ve tried making a couple of homemade syrups. Pictured is a homemade strawberry and black cherry syrup (also, condensed milk, straight out of the can).
Shaved Ice differs from its more common and pedestrian relative the snow-cone in a couple different ways. Rather than being crushed ice chips, it’s actually shaved with a sharp blade, resulting in a powder-snow like texture. You then pack the shaved snow with your hand, making essentially a snow-ball. The density of the snow-pack, along with the greater surface area of the snow “flakes” make it hold the syrup better, so you don’t just end up with ice chips followed by straight syrup, there’s a flavor all the way through.
Depending on how August goes, I may experiment with a couple other, less red syrups. I’ve found directions for banana and pineapple, so I may try those next, although I’ll probably make another batch of the strawberry as well, because the kids love it.
