Healthy Pizza is easy!

Fresh Avocado and Spinach Salad Pizza.

Dress fresh spinach and sun gold tomatoes with Olive oil and Balsamic, and put on the pizza right out of the oven so the spinach wilts on the hot pizza. The fresh avocado it cooked with the pizza.

Everything is better with Bacon !

Whole Wheat adds a rustic ( and healthy addition) to your pizza .

This pizza is 50% Caputo 40% AP, and 10% Whole Wheat . 68% hydration

Toppings - Dry cured apple wood bacon diced with onion and fennel, Fresh garden tomatoes and garden basil.

cook time - 3 min

temp  ~ 700

Something for everyone

Some of my Faves, made for a potluck party

Boule : Organic Honey Orange with Polenta , semolina, Sourdough  starter with overnight cold ferment

Front : Fresh Onion and organic brown rice - overnight cold ferment - 

Skinnies : Ficelles with 24 hour cold ferment straight dough 

Last but not least,  Challah, Ala Peter Reinhart formula with double rise.

I came home from the party with my knife and a few remnants - otherwise all was consumed !

Lots of other good food was had from NW fresh salmon prepared three ways, Brazilian Couscous, and salads galore. Washed down with local wines, beer, and good conversation. 

Before and After

#Poblano Pepper and Onion

First , fire roast a Poblano pepper , and caramelize some onion. Top your pizza , and add the fresh tomatoes, and Basil right after you remove it from the oven. ( This pizza was 50% caputo and 50% AP at 60% Hydration)
I experimented a bit and let the fire burn out so it took longer for this pizza to cook ( ~ 4-5 min) but the result was a crispier crust.

Local Grains: Taking Back Our Wheat

A nice article on grains

http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2012/12/local-grains-taking-back-our-wheat/

McQuade kevin

kjmcquade@gmail.com

My big Fat Greek pizza !

Feta with fresh onion and tomato makes a tasty pizza. 

This one was made with 50-50 Caputo and AP flour at 65% hydration  and cooked in 90 sec at 750 deg

WoodFired Orange Honey Polenta Bread

#Orange Honey Polenta Bread

I modified this recipe from one I got from George De Pasquale of Essential Bakery in Seattle. They sell an Orange Honey Rosette #Bread.  My version uses 100 % hydration Levain, much less Semolina, and some Spelt flour, Fresh squeezed orange juice instead of concentrate, and it is baked in a #Woodfired pizza oven
The semolina and polenta gives it a nice chew . The orange flavor is distinct. Awesome Toast

Using the BBGA template the basic formula is here but some of the amounts are only estimates. I am sure the final hydration was more like 70%.

			Total Fermented	13.77%	Total hydration%	68.87
Total Dough Weight		1.272 kg
	TOTAL FORMULA		LEVAIN		FINAL DOUGH
Ingredients	%	kilograms	%	kilograms	%	kilograms
Total Flour	100.00	0.726	100.00	0.100	100.00	0.626
Bread Flour*	55.10	0.400	100.00	0.100	47.92	0.300
Semolina	4.96	0.036			5.75	0.036
Polenta	12.40	0.090			14.38	0.090
Spelt	27.55	0.200			31.95	0.200
Water	39.45	0.286	100.00	0.100	29.78	0.186
Orange juice	15.65	0.114			18.15	0.114
Salt‡	1.65	0.012			1.92	0.012
Yeast	0.83	0.006			0.96	0.006
Honey	15.69	0.114			18.19	0.114
Vanilla					0.00	0.000
Levain					31.95	0.200
Totals	173.26	1.258	200.00	0.200	200.94	1.258

How Long Can you keep your Pizza Dough in the Fridge?

The answer is : It depends 

Here is a test of some dough I thought would be getting a bit funky. I made  4 dough balls on a friday night . Cooked 3 pizzas on Sat then left one in the fridge until the following WED ! That is 5 days !  I made a prosciutto Pizza on day 5. Dough was Caputo 00 flour , 60% hydration. I took it out of the fridge 2 hours before and stretch and folded it once , and shaped it into a ball about 1 hr before. 

The result : more chew than a fresher dough - but not in a bad way,  quite tasty and still had a good rise around the rim and toasted up in 2 min.

NY Style #SourDough #Pizza in two hours

I had an old batch of dough that was in the fridge for 5days, usually the max time limit of usable dough, so i was not sure it would be any good. I wanted a back up.  In a flash with out any measurement, I  mixed up some all-purpose flour (KA) and a small palm pinch of yeast, and salt,  and to spike the dough with some flavor, I grabbed my sourdough starter from the fridge and dumbed some in. I just mixed everything by hand until I got a reasonable consistency - to me it felt like it was at about 70%. I had about 2hrs to show time. It was a warm day so I put the dough in a bowl and set it in the Sun at about 80 deg, for 1hr - did a stretch and fold then another 45 min. then brought it in the house , shaped it into a ball and let it rest some more on the counter. It did not have the best gluten development, but I did my best at stretching it out into a large Pizza one of the largest I have made ( the peel it is sitting on is a large 16 inch peel) .  I went for a plane cheese and used a combo of cheeses,  more than my usual Neapolitan style to get closer to a NY cheese slice that I remember from living in NY.

Surprisingly it worked : The crust puffed well and had an nice chew.  Took an extra minute of 2 to cook. If i had some pepperoni, that would have been just right :)


So it is possible to crank out a pizza from scratch on short notice .

Wood fired Roasted Potato Bread

The first one is a little toasty , the Boule came out perfect.  I cooked these after pizza in a very hot oven ~ 650 dome and ~ 550 degree floor. So it is possible - mostly I was to impatient to wait another 1-2 hours for the temp to go down , and, my bread was ready to go!  So what to do?  My tip - put a diffuser on the floor of the oven - to absorb some of the heat, and cover the bread with anything that will fit - just the way you use a dutch-oven pot in a regular oven.  In my house I preheat the dutch oven or pot cover - but in the pizza oven i don't because its so fricken hot . Leave the cover on for the first 20 min or so. This way of course you don't have to deal with trying to add steam, you get plenty from the dough.

Also I know most recommendations say to sweep out the oven floor before baking - but  I don't feel like clearing out a bunch of hot coals and worrying about dropping one on my foot ! . I just diffuse the coals by spreading them around the perimeter of the oven. Also, this way you really don't have to rotate your bread.  

The recipe comes from Jeffy Hamelmans " Bread" book Roasted Potato . But I substituted Spelt Flour for the WW, and I used my SD starter for the preferment which I changed from its usual 100% to 65% stiff preferment using my starter changer spreadsheet.

Saturday night Pizzas , Prosciutto with 70% hydrated AP flour and one of my favorites;  Caramelized onion and fennel with 60% hydration Caputo flour.

I tried this experiment twice now and surprisingly , people preferred the extra chewiness of the AP flour compared to the Caputo Flour.  Next time I think I will try a  50:50 mix  - that might provide the best of both. I also added a little Olive oil to both batches this time , and noticed very little difference in cooking or taste, so might as well leave it out.

Tale of Two Flours for Wood fired Pizza

Caputo 00 vs Morebread for Pizza

Both Pizza were cooked in a ~ 700f deg oven and cooked in 2-3 min

Caputo 00 Results

More extensibility - soft lighter crust - more puff . pairs well with lighter toppings

MoreBread AP Results

Still performed well but with a definite "chew" to it that Caputo did not have.  I could see making a larger pizza with this, more NY style . Could support heavier toppings. 

Weber cast iron grate holder for pizza oven

One side of my old weber cast iron grill grate was a perfect size for my pizza oven.  I had enough scrap metal to fabricate a little frame to hold the grill grate. It had to be the right height so I would have room to pull it out to check food on it. I put little sliding feet on the legs so that when it is slid across the oven floor it would not gouge or scratch the floor, I can't help it , it's just a holder for the grill grate so it you want to use the grill grate with your weber you still can.  I am always coming up with some feature to modify or customize , maybe someday I will make some money with one of my creations:)

Grilled Pineapple with cinnamon after Pizza

Pizza Oven Baked Bread

This is the first Bread I baked in my Pizza Oven.
It is made with sprouted Faro wheat, and a mixture of AP and Spelt flour.
I put in in and covered it with a pot for 20 min then removed the cover for the last 20-25 min.
the floor temps were about 425 F and the dome about 500 F