I have been making pizzas using Peter Reinhart's "American Pie"
recipes since the book came out and we like them very much. They are
better than most anything that you can buy. I also make breads from
his "Bread Baker's Apprentice". I recently made his Pane Siciliano,
the semolina bread with sesame seed topping that uses a Pate'
Fermente as a starter ("old dough" in Joe Ortiz's "The Village Baker"
terminology) and noticed that it contains a bit of honey and olive
oil, just like the pizza dough I use most often from American Pie. I
scaled the semolina recipe to my pizza dough recipe and gave it a
try. It is delicious, with a crust that retains a light tan or beige
color and a firm but not "bread-crusty" outer rim.
Old dough is exactly what it sounds like. Originally the village
baker would save a piece of dough as a starter for the next day's
bread. It is a complete salted dough, not a biga. Why go through
the trouble of making a pre-ferment just for a pizza? Because it
tastes good! Besides, you really could set aside some old dough from
a bread baking session and make pizza a day or two later.
Semolina Pizza Dough
makes two 11" by 17" thin crust pizzas (2+ lbs of dough)
old dough
3/4 cups bread flour
3/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 tsp fine sea salt (1/2 tsp table salt)
1/4 tsp instant yeast
1/2 cups water
Mix it up, let it rise until 1 1/2 times, punch it down, seal it in
plastic but leave room to rise, put it in the fridge. Use the next day.
Do you really need both all purpose and bread flour? I don't know
but the texture came out exactly the way I think pizza dough should
feel. We always have both flours in the house so why not use them.
semolina dough
2(approx) cups old dough (all of above)
1 1/4 cups bread flour
1 1/4 cups semolina flour
1 1/4 tsp fine sea salt (3/4+ tsp table salt)
7/8 tsp instant yeast
4 tsp olive oil
2 tsp honey
1 cup + 1 or 2 Tb warm water
Give the old dough a chance to warm from the fridge and rise a
bit. Mix the flours dry, dissolve the yeast in the warm (80 - 90 F)
water, add the honey and olive oil to the yeast mixture. If you use
sea salt, add and mix it into the dry flours. Pour the yeast mixture
into the flours and mix using the flat beater, or by hand, until all
the flour is wet. If you use table salt, hold back 1/3 of the flour,
mix in all the liquid, add the salt slowly while mixing the wet
dough, then add the remaining flour and mix until all the flour is
wet. Let the fresh dough hydrate for 15 to 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, cut the old dough into walnut-sized pieces. Shift to the
dough hook or prepare to knead by hand. Add the old dough while
kneading for the usual 5 to 6 minutes by machine or 15 minutes by
hand. The dough should be soft, it should clean the sides of the
bowl but still have a small tail to the bottom (not a puddle). (If
kneading by hand, it may be necessary to be more careful about mixing
the old dough by spreading the fresh dough out until very thin and
adding the old dough pieces on top, then rolling it all up and
kneading. I've never mixed it by hand.
Let rise to 1 1/2 original size, divide into two pieces, coat the
inside of sealable plastic baggies with olive oil, leave room to rise
and put in fridge for at least 8 hours. Use both pieces within 2 or 3 days.
This procedure assumes that you have a baking stone larger than 11"
by 17". If you don't you will have to adapt the following procedure.
I use an 11" X 17" cookie sheet (only one raised edge) as a peel. I
also use parchment paper to prevent sticking. I even put a bit of
corn meal between the parchment and the cookie sheet to be sure it
slides off. (Be careful, it might slide when you don't want it
to.) After the dough warms from the fridge (1 hour) use a rolling
pin to get it to about 12" x 7". Then drape the narrow dimension
over your two fists and stretch the width slowly, while lifting the
dough to let gravity stretch it in length. Switch to the opposite
end and stretch again. The dough should thin mostly in the center
where the toppings will be, leaving a thicker uniform edge. If you
get holes, patch them; if parts get too thin, overlap them. Only the
baker knows what goes on under the toppings and, of course, you'll never tell.
I also brush a thin layer of olive oil on the dough before the
toppings go on, excepting the edge. Reinhart doesn't seem to do
that but I think it separates the water-based sauces and veggies from
the dough and helps the top surface of the crust bake, not boil.
I bake fast and hot. Preheat the oven to 30 deg less than its
maximum temperature and slide the pizza onto the stone. Watch the
dry edge of the pizza crust; when it has risen a bit and started to
form bubbles (1 or 2 minutes) turn on the broiler and set the
temperature to max. The idea here is to simulate the "hot roof" of a
wood-fired pizza oven. The larger bubbles will get dark and the
full-fat cheeses will caramelize beautifully. However, semolina is a
coarse flour and will prevent the edge from forming a hard "bread"
crust. Instead it firms up and, except over large bubbles, it will
remain a light tan or beige color and be firm enough to hold a slice
together but not "bread-crusty". The bottom will be fully baked and
the same color as the edge, with darker spots. My oven goes to 550 F
so it takes only 5 minutes to bake one pizza. A 500 F oven will
probably take a bit longer.
This old dough semolina pizza crust has excellent flavor and
texture. Even those who normally leave the crust edges on the plate
will leave less (You can't expect miracles!) If you are not going to
make a second pizza with the other piece, remember that it is still
Pane Siciliano. Roll it out like a baguette, roll the baguette into
a spiral (or a traditional double spiral), spray on a little water,
sprinkle on some sesame seeds, let rise and bake.
Words to live by: "Never trust a round pizza." (Todd English's Figs
restaurant tee shirts.) Besides, why would you put a round pizza
into a rectangular oven? You didn't put the square pegs into the
round holes during the IQ test did you?
Werner