Home Bread-Bakers v098.n005.16
[Advanced]

Pizza Hints

Pjranney <Pjranney@aol.com>
Mon, 12 Jan 1998 00:11:05 EST
v098.n005.16
Pizza dough is enhanced by being left to sit for several hours on your kitchen
counter in a plastic bag.  If your recipe calls for any perishable
ingredients, eggs or milk for instance, I would put it in a plastic bag and
leave it in the refrigerator.  I think this is known as "over-proofing".
Over-proofing results in a much more relaxed dough that is easier to roll out.

I have a wooden peel, but I prefer to use several flat edged baking sheets as
I usually make more than one pizza at a time.

As for transferring the prepared pizza to the stone, the best way I have found
is to use lots of cornmeal and to check with a broad spatula to be sure the
pizza isn't sticking just before you put it in the oven.  It's helpful if you
have two people so that one can hold the pan with the pizza and the other can
use two spatulas to slide the pizza onto the stone.  

The very first time we made a pizza to bake on the stone, we didn't use enough
cornmeal.  As we were nervously trying to get the floppy pizza onto the stone,
it slid off the peel and into the crack between the oven door and the oven.
It was a terrible mess, and some of that pizza remains deep in the internal
caverns of my oven to this day!

I'm sure you'll have better success than that.

P. Ranney