pizza! (also OONI owners unite!)

[wanye]

Originally Posted by Smilesonfaces

I was looking at the pizza dough, it is now £31.99 for 24 balls. Works out at about £1.33 each with the discount.
Do people recommend them ? I honestly haven’t the time or inclination to be making dough, proofing and and all the rest of it !

See more...

personally i wouldnt bother, its cheap and easy enough to make your own, especially if you have a mixer (or large food processor)

try them, by all means, but vito's poolish above is stupidly easy to do, even by hand, and the skills learned by splitting and balling the balls yourself is invaluable.

i get 6x300g balls from 1kg of flour, which costs about £1.50, so for the price of one pre-made ball, you can get 6* 16" pizza dough balls or 8-10 ~250g balls for 12"

would be interested to see how you get on with them though, so please post results if you order!

[Beth_Disney]

Originally Posted by Smilesonfaces

I was looking at the pizza dough, it is now £31.99 for 24 balls. Works out at about £1.33 each with the discount.
Do people recommend them ? I honestly haven’t the time or inclination to be making dough, proofing and and all the rest of it !

See more...

I ordered some from Great Balls of Flour last year and they were good when they were fresh, but not as good when they had been frozen.

I tend to make a batch of dough when I get some time and it's a warm day and separate into balls to freeze. The fresh dough is much better, but frozen and thawed is okay. Having a mixer with a dough hook makes the process much easier.

[Smilesonfaces]

I do agree and the husband says no they are too expensive 😂
I will have one more attempt and follow the poolish recipe. My mixer isn’t big enough so I will need to do it by hand. If not successful I will stick to the Aldi ready rolled for 99p. I know you expert’s probably think they’re rubbish !

[wanye]

Originally Posted by wanye

so i'll be firing up the koda 16 tomorrow for the first time this year (i couldnt get propane for some time late last year so it went unused from late september till now)

trying vito's poolish recipe, see how i get on... although the first stage of it has been in the fridge for a week rather than 24 hours. i was intending to use it then, but ended up eating out instead.

whether or not this affects the rise/flavour, we'll see next time (when i try doing it to the letter)



300g caputo 00
300g water
7g yeast (it says 6g fresh, but i ended up throwing the whole sachet of instant dry in)
didnt have any honey (5g), so i used white sugar instead

mix, cover, leave at room temp for an hour, then overnight in fridge

the next day:
mix with 400g water to loosen it back out (i used 350g for a 65% hydration dough - a bit easier to work with as i'm out of practice)
700g 00 flour (the remaining 1kg bag)
a bit more sugar to feed the yeast
15g salt (says to use 25g, but personally i think thats a bit too much)
10g EVOO

and mix in the kitchenaid for 10-15 mins to build gluten. one mistake ive made in the past it to mix for less than 5 mins. you see a clear difference in the dough after about 8 mins, theres no more stuck to the sides, and it becomes one giant mass...


then its going back in the fridge in one big ball, and tomorrow i'll ball up into 250-300g balls for a 12-15" pizza (will decide tomorrow)

See more...

done another batch of poolish, ready for pizzas at some point in the next few days...

[wanye]

made 5 in a row last night using my pizza screens. i just need some way of stacking them now to save space!

testing out different sized dough balls this time.

300g is enough for a 16" pizza, but was quite a bit trickier than 450g, which was easy in comparison. i think i'd probably go for 350g in future.

made at 70% hydration, it was a lot harder to work with than 60-65%. especially with such large pizzas. if i was doing 9-10" i would do 70%, but for big new york style, its a nightmare to manage. ended up reballing 3 of the 5 because i'd left them out so long (2-3hrs) that they'd expanded so much, they were all stuck together

i made 3* meaty ones, one of which was par-cooked ready for tonight

one plain base with just tomato on for topping another night

and one sweet pizza, using pistachio cream (from costco) mixed with greek yoghurt and a little honey to thin it out, then milk chocolate chips, and a few dollops of maltesers spread (like nutella but with malt bits in) - the chocolate "burned" really quickly. i managed to save it by squishing and mixing into the pistachio cream, but for a first effort? i'm impressed. just need to tweak the recipe a little i think...

next time im going to cook the base with the pistachio cream on, take it out, add the chocolate toppings, and put it back in on ultra low supersecret mode...

[wanye]

looks like i'm doing a proper pizza party this weekend... having somewhere between 12 and 20 people over for pizza.

ill be doing individual sized ones, as well as some large 16" ones for the group. i'm a little intimidated by it all, i'm looking at making 3-4kg of dough!

i have a 25l food grade tub i use for making wine which im going to clean out and proof the dough in. i'll bulk ferment it, using a poolish recipe, and then ball it all up on the day

if this goes well, i may look at doing it for a proper event at some point.

but right now, i need to find some suitable collapsible tables to work on. i got one from costco like this a couple of years ago, i wish i had bought a few more, as they pack down really small compared to the folding ones that have a solid plastic tabletop area with collapsible legs... any tips/suggestions on how to handle all this?

[letty]

Just a question re pizza screens?

Can you prep a few pizzas at once on them ( so we don’t have to eat our pizzas alone like normal in this house )
There are 4 of us who all like different toppings

We have taken to making half and half so we can eat together

[wanye]

Originally Posted by letty

We have taken to making half and half so we can eat together

See more...

you could do two really small ones on a pizza screen i suppose, but yeah, i tend to do 50-50 large ones too. usually its the same, but with olives/jalapenos on one side

[LLamb]

I have one of those Costco tables Timber Ridge I think it’s called and they are great. I got a similar one from clas Olson but just looked and they are only trading via Amazon now.
I’ve done about 12 pizzas at one time once. For that I prepped and part cooked and then just reheated as I had a mix of vegans and veggies everyone had their own pizza. Ok but not as good as fresh.

Definitely get all your toppings prepared and your stone temp is going to drop so either turn it back up to high in between in each pizza or leave a gap after say three and turn it up again, or both.
Personally I would do larger ones and then everyone can have a slice at time otherwise people would be waiting a while to eat.

I do 50/59 normally so I get to eat as the same time

[wanye]

1kg flour, 1l water, 7g yeast, ~15g honey