Some Things To Chu On: Pizza, and a puzzle!

I recently purchased the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I tried out the first basic recipe, and it really couldn't be simpler. I bought a large plastic container (around 5 qt., or 1.25 gallons), and took about 3 minutes to add the four ingredients and mix them all up. I let it rest on the counter, then threw it in the fridge.

I've been using this batch all week for dinner bread, and even made some rolls for lunch, baked the same morning! But that's for a different post. Today we're going to talk about pizza!

I started out making pizza several months ago, and like everything else, there was a learning curve.

a tough, dense crust.

It took a while to figure out how to get the crust (or "cornicione") to puff up the way I wanted. Turns out, you want to keep the air bubbles produced by the yeast inside the dough, instead of obliterating them with a rolling pin. Who knew? Once I figured that out, they started turning out a little better. I pressed out my dough from the center, leaving the edges alone.

Now, with the dough from the book above, my pizza dough is coming out great. I made some last night, from the same batch that I used for the roll for today's lunch. First, I stretched the dough thinly (maybe a little too thinly this time, because there are a few holes that I had to patch up).

I put it on my awesome new Superpeel, and topped it with tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, scoops of Ricotta cheese, ground sausage, and some pepperoni slices.

I put a baking stone at the lowest point in my oven, and heated it to 500 degrees (that's about as high as it will go). Slide the pizza onto the stone, cook for about 10 minutes, and voila!