This month's Daring Baker's challenge was a hand-tossed pizza crust from “The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread” by Peter Reinhart. I've made many a pizza crusts, but never had I attempted to hand toss them. And now I know why. I'm not ashamed to admit that I totally suck at it. I have a new found admiration for the guys in the Italian pizzaria down the street who toss thier dough and end up with perfectly circular pizza pies.
BEFORE AFTER
After I tossed the dough in the air it looked more like one of the Hawaiian islands than a pizza! I even tried singing "when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore" in a really bad Italian accent but it didn't help at all. But once my pizza was cooked it didn't look so bad, and it tasted really good.
I made a pesto sauce and then topped it with freshly roasted garlic, artichoke hearts, tomatoes and mushrooms. I added some fresh ground pepper right before I chowed down becuase pepper is yummy on just about everything and this is no exception. Yes, the dough takes 2 days to make, but it's worth it. The recipe yields six crusts, so I put the extra dough in the freezer so I wouldn't overdose on pizza. You'll see how those ones turn out over the next few weeks.
I tried to cut and paste the recipe here twice, and both times my internet window crashed :( But if you come across “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart, give the “Pizza Napoletana” recipe a try.
4 comments:
Very well done! Your pizza looks great!
Cheers,
Rosa
Ha ha, I think you island pizza looks great anyways! It has so much more personality than the plain old round types.
Yeah, our pizzas opted to be non-conformist and were free-shaped... we told ourselves they were more artistic that way! Ha!
A whole new meaning to Hawaiian pizza. I had some interesting tosses as well. The finished pizza looks awesome. Well done.
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