Our friends over at my favorite pizza blog, SliceNY.com have raised a challenge to all pizza aficionados to test your knowledge of our favorite food. The Pizza Quiz is full of tough and tasty questions like “What year did the world’s first pizzeria opens its doors?” and “The Margherita Pizza was first created in what Italian city?”. If you consider yourself to be a pizzamaniac, it’s time to put your number 2 pencil where your mouth is…

Take the Slice-Serious Eats pizza test

This summer some friends and I have been enjoying a pizza tour of Carlisle, PA. With over 20 different pizza establishments (including chains) it’s been pretty interesting. We visit one restaurant each week. Here’s a map in case you would like to take your own pizza tour of the area. If I find any interesting pizza, I’ll be sure to report back.

View Larger Map

Well, after spending more on mail order flour than I have on pizzeria pizza this year, I finally had three wonderful dough balls ready to be stretched, topped and baked after a 24 hour rise in the refrigerator. It was time to bake pizzas using the dough made from King Aurthur Sir Lancelot flour rather than the hi-gluten Pillsbury flour that I have been using for almost three years.

The dough blanks looked great out of the containers and still felt like they had a very high water content. In fact, when I began stretching them, it was apparent that they were quite soft. I carefully avoided the crust ring and stretched by hand from the center. When they had reached 16 inches, I placed them on pizza screens.

The oven was pre-heated to 485 degrees. I had placed two pizza stones on the bottom two racks, forming a heat chamber between them. I topped the first pie with sauce and cheese only. The bake took around 10 minutes, which I think was longer than normal because of the two stones. It baked quite well and looked great when it came out. The tiny crust blisters that I love were present and the aroma was wonderful.

The second pizza was topped with extra pepperoni and allowed to bake for the same amount of time.

Both pizzas were cut and served to my hungry family. I have to say that I could tell the flavor difference with the first bite. The crust had a wonderfully soft texture with a crisp outer edge and slightly charred bottom. A friend who was visiting said that it tasted more authentic than other pizzas I’d made for him. I have to agree - the flour brings it’s own unique flavor which adds a great deal to the overall experience.

Now that I know that King Aurthur Sir Lancelot flour has lived up to the hype, it’s time to find a cheaper way to get it. I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve for that, so stay tuned and enjoy the pics…

After much hype from my friends at PizzaMaking.com, I’d decided to bite the bullet and order King Aurthur Sir Lancelot flour directly from their web site and pay what amounts to $5 per bag in order to do a test. Among other home pizza bakers, this is by far one of the most popular flour brands being used. Despite King Aurthur flour being common in my local supermarkets, I had never seen this particular high gluten mix on the shelves. My only choice was to order from the King Aurthur online store.

The flour arrived today with plenty of fanfare. I unpacked the box and noticed all of the auxillary junk mail that they send along (it appears from the marketing that they think I am a retiring woman who bakes constantly when not buying country furniture). The flour bags are small, containing about 7 cups of flour per bag and costing $3.50 each (plus lots of shipping) online.

I couldn’t wait to give this flour a try, so I tore open a bag and got to making a double batch of Bill’s Traditional dough. The aroma of the flour was immediately apparent. It has a very rich smell which made me quite hungry. The mixing process went well. The mix seemed overly wet which I blamed on my use of measuring cups rather than weight measuring the flour. Once it had mixed for 4 minutes I removed the dough and made two 20 and one 13 ounce ball. I placed the balls into the refrigerator for the 24 hour rise. The dough had a great smell while working with it as well.

I have high hopes for this flour based on the opinions of so many of my friends. It will be hard to justify the cost of this flour if we like it though. I am used to getting 50 pounds of the Pillsbury flour for $14 at the local bakery supply store. Stay tuned for the resulting taste test!

Imagine this… you come to work at the pizza shop you deliver pizza for, only to find a note asking you to run the shop for a day! Can you handle it? Ok, so I’m not talking about real life, but rather a great new online flash game called Papa’s Pizzeria. The goal is to see how well you can take orders, make pizzas to spec, bake them just right and serve them to your customers. Multitasking quickly becomes the name of the game as you are required to flip between the various stations to get your orders completed.

It’s great fun and has the potential to waste lots of productive time, so be careful! Check out the game here: Papa’s Pizzeria Game

Here’s a tip - pay attention to where the customer wants the toppings on the pie! It’s not just half and half, they actually tell you top, bottom, left or right. Keep you eyes on your oder slip! Enjoy…

My family and I spent a few days in a rental cabin last week. Since no trip is complete without pizza, I packed my gear and ingredients. As I began preparing to bake, I noticed that the oven was a gas powered one. I hadn’t baked pizza in a gas oven before, but I didn’t think it would be much different. I was wrong! Being lazy while packing, I did not take a pizza stone, so the baking took place on pizza screens. I placed them on the bottom rack at 475 degrees for 8 minutes each. The bottom of the crust cooked much faster than normal and one almost burned (gulp)! The top crust edge remained very light and the cheese hadn’t completely cooked by minute 8. I learned a hard lesson about gas ovens that I won’t soon forget. If you use a gas oven, let me know if your experience is similar. I’ll be taking my stones next time for sure.

We still enjoyed the pies, one cheese, one pepperoni and one buffalo chicken. Yum.

Read more about Foraker and his campaign [via: delawareonline.com]

For a long time I’d been wanting to recreate the original style pizza in all of it’s classic glory. One of the experiments I did during my break from blogging was this beauty, the Margherita Pizza! As the story goes, famous “pizzaiolo” Raffaele Esposito was asked by Queen Margherita to present his flatbread delicacy. He created a pizza to represent the colors of the Italian flag, red sauce, green basil leaves and white cheese. It was a great combination then and it still rocks now.

For my variant, I stuck with what I know for the crust - a nice batch of fresh traditional. However, on top I spread blended roma tomatoes very lightly salted and teased with oregano, slices of mozzarella cheese and large fresh basil leaves. After sprinkling the pie with romano cheese, I baked it at 480 degrees for 8 minutes. The result was a quite refreshing change. The simple combination of the fundamental ingredients made for a terrific treat. I will be doing this pizza again - squisito!

I may go back and write about some of the pies that I made in past months, but for tonight I thought I would just post this lovely photo of the Chicago style pie that we enjoyed. The recipe has not changed much, but this time I doubled the recipe. When I did that, I doubled the yeast amount as well. I think that was a bad idea as the dough really seemed to rise more than normal overnight.

The other thing I tried was to press the dough into the pan a bit more to make the crust thin. I tried for about 1/4 inch throughout. I pressed it in and trimmed the edge that hung over the pan sides. I topped her with sliced mozz, sliced provy, pepperoni, Neapolitan sauce and mushrooms on my side. The pizza baked for about 22 minutes at 450 degrees. This photo was taken just before cutting it. Yum.

Sorry to all of you that have been wondering where I’ve been!

  

©2004 pizzamaniac.com

I got to unwrap a new Kitchen Aid 600 series professional mixer for Christmas this week! The mixer has a spiral dough hook designed for large batches of dough. It’s supposed to be able to handle 14 cups of flour, which by my rough calcualtions, would be about 8 full-size pizzas! I’ve already used it to make a double batch of Bill’s Traditional dough and you can bet I’ll be putting this baby to the test in the months to come. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Hmm, I wonder how long it would take to bake 8 pizzas in my oven…

Read the full story

  

©2004 pizzamaniac.com

It was a good day for another tray pizza experiment. Today I wanted to see how it would effect the flavor and texture to allow the pizza to rise in the tray for an hour rather than just 30 or 40 minutes as I had done in other trials. My hope was that more voids would form and that the crust would get taller and lighter.

After mixing, rising once and then spreading it into the tray, I sprayed the top of it with olive oil to ensure that it wouldn’t dry out. Then I placed the whole tray in the oven at about 100 degrees for one hour. The dough rose, but I shouldn’t say there was a noticeable difference from other times. After topping and baking the pizza, there seemed to be even less of a difference. I suppose if I am going to get more lift out of this dough I will have to modify the ingredients. Sounds like a project for another pizza day.

We’ll keep this recipe in the experimental list for now.

  

©2004 pizzamaniac.com

  

©2004 pizzamaniac.com

I had some friends over for pizza tonight and decided that it had been a while since we’d done the ol’ buffalo chicken pizza. After stretching a ball of Bill’s Traditional dough, I broke out the Texas Pete’s hot sauce and grilled some chicken so we could toss one. I was out of red onions, so I substituted bits of cooked bacon, naturally.

The flavor of the bacon went very well with the buffalo chicken. Everyone enjoyed the flavor and said it had just the right amount of kick. I’d forgotten how much I like this recipe. I’ll have to make more of these bison cockerel, er, buffalo chicken pies.

Here are the pics …

View the Buffalo Chicken Pizza Recipe …