Posts Tagged ‘avalanche pizza’

Big fat Turkish Pide with Grapes and Pancetta

September 15th, 2010 by John

Don’t you just hate when bloggers apologize for not doing a post? The excuses can be endless and they usually lose me at “Sorry, but my cat…” So I’m just gonna just shut up and show you some stuff I’ve been doing instead of writing blog posts:

I made about 30 of these pides last Saturday, including the Turkish pide with grapes. Not to mention the the Nectarine/Stilton pizza (right) and the Brie Boat with pear.

Along with the Ohio University students coming back, I’ve been scrambling to accomodate my bread lovers at the Athens Farmers Market. Here are  just  some of the 300 breads, pizzas, flatbreads and other weird stuff  I did on 9-11-2010. (Take it easy on a critique of my presentation, dudes. I just finished 12 hours of baking, plus my customers were breathing down my neck.)

You’ll notice the Turkish Pide with the grapes. That’s what we are gonna make today. But first let me take you to where I got the grapes: Neil Cherry Vineyards and orchard in Crookville, Ohio where we visited last year for the Schiacciata Con L’ Uva or Tuscan Grape Harvest bread.

The skins of these heavenly grapes are thick and chewy and exude the brightest of grape flavors, along with watery flesh that explodes in your mouth. They are best described as “That’s what grapes tasted like in my youth.” Yes, these three varieties of seedless grapes have a grape quality that only local, unsprayed, real grapes have .

Here are some other grapes we are gonna use.

You may laugh at this recipe, but I don’t care. I love cumin with grapes, chevre and bacon! This baby’s got the fatty, salty pancetta (Italian cured-but not smoked-bacon), the creaminess of local Integration Acres chevre’ (creamy French Goat cheese), the sweetness of these killer grapes and the unexpected crunch of walnuts.

Let’s go.

Preheat a heavy cookie sheet placed upside-down in your oven at 475 degrees F.

Using the Easy Dough Recipe on this blog, cut a 7 ounce dough ball and freeze the other for later use. For this recipe,  use bread flour. It  has more protein iand therefore will stretch better when “tying a knot” with the dough.

3-4 slices of pancetta (bacon will do but will leach more liquid than the pancetta. I will cover that later so don’t worry.)

1 teaspoon plus 1/2 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 heaping teaspoon cumin

1 quarter cup walnuts, pounded into small tooth-like pieces

1 inch thick piece of chevre

1-2 cups of seedless grapes

1 egg for eggwash

Place the pancetta in a saute pan under medium high heat with the teaspoon of olive oil and sweat the juices. Toss well for  2-3 minutes. (If using bacon, cook longer but avoid browning it.) Add the cumin and the 1/2 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil. (If your pancetta created enough oil to soak up the cumin and still leave oil, do not add the extra oil. This will probably happen with the bacon.) Cook for 2 minutes more.

Add the walnuts and saute for only 1 minute. Set aside for the pizza.

Take the round dough ball and pull on opposite ends to form a football shape. Using you fingertips, press out into an even larger footabll shape, measuring 12 to 14 inches across. This will be your Pide base.

Place the dough on parchment, then place the pancetta, cumin, and walnuts on the dough and spread it out. Place the chevre on top in small dollops, all around the dough.

To tie the knots, start on the middle of the boat-like dough. Pull up from the middle to the end. The dough will slacken when you get to the end. Grab this dough and start spinning or twisting the dough, gabbing any slack that may make the middle of the boat fall back down. Gently pull the twisted end and tie in a knot.

Place the grapes all around the top of the pide. Some may fall off. Press down but not hard.

Crack the egg and scramble with a fork or whisk. Brush this eggwash all over the outside edges of the pide. Dab enough egg on each end knot to sink it into the folds.

Place the pide on the preheated cookie sheet  and bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until the bottom is dark brown and the top is golden brown.

Pull out and enjoy with your dining partner. Woof!

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Posted in Fruit Pizza Recipes, Local Ingredients, Pizza Goon Videos, Pizza Recipes, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Pizza Margherita using wild yeast pizza dough

August 30th, 2010 by John

This second post about obtaining yeast the old fashioned way, it deals with making a dough out of that starter. Simply put, it’s a great no yeast pizza recipe.

This will entail gently coaxing more and more yeast cells to take an active role in the feast of the sugars in my flour thus creating the gasses I need for the dough to rise. Then I will hit it with the heat for a nice tasty crust. Here’s my goonish explaination during a weeknight rush at Avalanche Pizza.


Recipe:

1 Cup starter from the Wild Yeast Pizza recipe. (last blog post)

1 Cup Bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil (optional)

**This recipe works best if you feed your starter the night before and leave it out to proof. This will enhance the feeding frenzy of the yeast and speed up the development of your dough.**

Mix one cup of the starter with one cup of the bread flour.

add the oil and the salt after mixing with your hand. If the dough is too stiff, add water. I prefer a stiffer dough but many bakers and pizza guys think a sticky, soft dough does a better job as it rises faster.

You now should have a 12-13 ounce dough ball, either cut in half (for 2 small 9-10 inch pizzas), or one do not cut (for a large 12-14 inch pie crust.)

Cover with a wet cloth and let sit for 1 hour. Then refrigerate for 4 hours. This will slow the yeast activation giving it time to slowly eat at the sugars. This aging process is what I use for all of my pizza dough the, making a better taste and a more consitant rise. ((*if you are impatient, and the dough is rising fast, please feel free and form your pizza round.))

It’s at this point that  I must remind you that you are working with all natural yeast now and it takes some time to get the intense rise as you experience with commercially bought yeast. This is why most bakers will add a small “Kicker” of store-bought yeast to boost the rise of the dough. If you are a purest, or just a masochist-like me, don’t do it. As you pass the months by, conducting the feeding process of your starter, the flavor will intensify and the rise in your dough will be more immediate and predictable. Now only after only 8 to 10 days, the natural yeasted experience is still in it’s infancy.

After the 4 hours in the fridge, let the dough balls sit out over night covered with a damp cloth to keep it from forming a crust.

By the next day, the dough should have risen. The gluten strands should be stretching now with the gasses. This is your proofed rise.

If you see holes or pits where the dough looks as though it is cracking where gas has escaped, your gluten strands may not be strong enough to keep the gasses in from either your flour not being strong enough or because your kneading was not consistant enough. Don’t despair, you can re-knead the dough and wait for at least 1 hour before continuing.

Preheat your oven at 475 degrees

Take the dough and form a pizza round from the easy dough recipe in this blog.

Top this pie with anything and everything you want. I started out simple because if I messed this up, I didn’t want to have to make all my toppings up again. I put a large spoonful of organic tomato sauce, some fresh basil, whole milk, fresh mozzarella, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil. (Here I put the pizza on parchment and on a pizza screen because I was using a pizza oven.)

After 12 minutes at 475 degrees, the dough, although a thinner crust, rose nicely, showing a fine cornicione (corn-e-CHON-aye). This is the crust around the edge where you can see the cell structure formed by the gasses. Alot of Italian judges in competition will press down on this crust to test for a bounceback- a sign of a great cornicione.

Well, now that I have a great starter, I’m gonna grow this monster to make some bread. Maybe, if I get good at it, I’ll do another post on it.

Semper Pie

jg

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Posted in Bread Recipes, Dough Recipes, Pizza and Bread Stories, Pizza Goon Videos, Pizza Recipes, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
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