Posts Tagged ‘avalanche pizza’

A Year in the Pizza Life, 2010 (Part 2)

Here are some more pictures of people, places and pizza from my life in Athens, Ohio and around the world, 2010. I hope you enjoy them.

Four different types of schiacciata, all delicious

Team acrobatics during the World Pizza Championships

Local freshwater scampi pizza

Bruno di Fabio with his pizza that won "Best of" at Pizza Expo

Domenico Crolla's Chanterelle pizza (I couldn't just let it sit there)

Italian pizza competitors, World Pizza Championships

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Chorizo Pizza

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Joe Carlucci, winner of 2010 Pizza Pizzaz at the North American Pizza and Ice Cream Show, Columbus, Ohio

Stuffed spingtime fougasse with Amish asparagus, mustard, ricotta, pistachio

Chicken Yakitori Pizza

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The Goon preparing six appetizers in the Heinz Beck Trophy competition, Italy

Pizza romana in Rome, Italy

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Kids love pizza, and the Goon loves being very, very uncool!

Tomato and squash fresh from the field (note the floured pizza shoe)

Where we stayed in Positano, Italy

Loads of Turkish-style Pide (Pi-DAY)

Eric Corbin, expert pizza acrobat (Placed third in the world with a broken foot)

Mid-summer organic schiacciata

Late fall meaball pizza with Alto Cucina tomatoes, basil and local chorizo-peppered bacon meatballs

The Goon and his soldiers foraging for woodland edibles

A boat-load of Amish aspargus fresh from the field

Bruno and an Italian autograph seeker, World Pizza Competition (Nice shirt)

Local ham and bacon bialy with cilantro and aged cheddar

The winning pizza (pre oven) at the International Pizza Challenge

Joel Fair, General Manager of Avalanche Pizza, with his curry fougasse

Pizza a due chef at the World Pizza Championship

Three Sisters pizza (Yes it's cooked; the light was tremendous)

Me and Gigi, my Italian pizza oven judge

Giuseppe with our "Alici Marinati" or marinated anchovies, Positano, Italy

Probably the greatest pizza chef in the world, Tony Gemignani

Big ass bread, my Flinstone Wheel

Pete Shew from Shews Orchard with late season persimmons

Springtime aspargus and prosciutto pizza (With a nod to Tony Gemignani)

What a small-time pizza guy sees when he looks down.

Cilantro Cassidy and the Sundance Ham

For the bread of the week I’ve got an outlaw guaranteed to turn heads, with a taste that will make you smile. You’ll love the melding flavor profiles of lemon, smoky ham and fresh cilantro of this fougasse.

Avalanche General Manager Joel Fair showing off one of these great fougasse.

First, I took a butt-load of cilantro (stems and all) and threw it, unchopped, into a mass of 30 percent high-gluten flour, 40 percent poolish (made with 80 percent spelt flour), and 20 percent of my  Levain (or starter) that I fed for a week prior.

All I needed to complete this already wet dough was the 10 percent water, salt, commercial yeast for the kick, olive oil and a little help from an organic barley malt  to make this an Avalanche bread thrill.

The ham is from my friend Rich Blazer at Harmony Hollow farms. He’s got some awesome Heritage pork and hams and is an Athens Farmers Market stalwart, especially here in winter.

Okay Mr. Goon, so what does this bread taste like?

The first bite sends the spicy cilantro off his horse and into the mailcar.

Then the lemon zest blasts the safe into smithereens.

These strong flavors have the loot. The salty Sundance ham rides beside the railcar, with its meaty texture, and saves them both. Dag, whose shoes are those?

Altogether this bread releases a broad range of flavor: spicy, steely, salty and refreshing, all in a heavily-hydrated dough I’ve aged for two days, affording the gluten net to strengthen around the ham, zest and cilantro. This time also enables more gas to form, thus producing a killer crumb structure. (Joel’s checking it out below.)

Stop on by sometime to try this bodacious fougasse… but please don’t bring the Mexican Army.