Pizza Dough

I don't know why you believe that, but disagree in any case. A massive stone can make a very significant difference in a pizza, and in lots of other baked goods as well.

All the best,

I have an "unglazed ceramic tile" 5/8ths 14x14 (Sq.) It works every bit as good as my 18" round pizza pan with the "holes". Except when I use the stone, I have to not only have to heat up the oven, I have to heat up the stinkin stone. The people at "bed, bath and beyond" really wanted me to buy a pizza stone... I asked what the advantage was and they said " well, alls ya gotta do is heat the stone, take the pizza out of the box, and slide the pizza on to the stone" I'll put my pizza up to anyones! Stinkin' "pizza stone snobs"!

Aight. You're on. Come on over any time.

I upgraded from five 7" unglazed ceramic tiles to a 20x15x.75 Fibrament stone this week. I have one of those perforated pans, too.

The difference is more than noticeable.

The perforated pans trap too much moisture, and the bottom of the crust ends up being slightly gelled by the steam. Also, cheese gets stuck in the holes and i hate cleaning it.

The ceramic tile transfers heat very quickly, and the bottom of the crust is very well seared, but then it's pretty much done. The bottom of the pizza ends up being over-hard and the quality of the crumb suffers because of the drop in the rate of thermal transfer. The only way to compensate is to use a lower oven temperature, and then the quality of the browning on the top side suffers.

I get a more uniform bake with the fibrament stone. With the oven at

500f the bottom of the crust is not over hard, the crumb is well developed, and if i use the old tiles to lower the ceiling over the pizza, the top is very well browned.

I'm still experimenting with it. Made my third pizza tonight. I'm sure i'll get sick of pizza at some point and have to start making breads on it.

Do i have to preheat it? You betcha. It takes like an hour for my 70's vintage crappy Whirlpool oven to get it to 500f. But it's worth it.

As for BB&B, I've seen their pizza stone, and it's best used as a clay pigeon.

Someone here mentioned having a great deal of success with a slab of soapstone, and i imagine that works quite well. More likely to break than the fibrament stone, but way cheaper if you buy it as a scrap -- stone vendors often have likely shaped chunks left over after cutting out a hole for a sink in a counter top, for example.

Eric Jorgensen wrote: SNIP

SNIP

I'm curious, what is there about the fibrament stone that allows it to cook more uniformly than the ceramic tiles, the thickness? My old Saltilo tiles were about 3/4 inch thick and made the el cheapo Sears oven we used at that time fairly usable. They cracked, but I used them for almost 20 years that way with no problems.

The oven of the local pizza joint, Fuzzy's, is set to almost 600 degrees and has what looks like a thick brick-like floor. Since it is constantly being opened I assume it probably stays around 500 degrees. Excellent pizza BTW.

Raj V

I've never used saltillo in an oven, so I can't compare it directly.

The fibrament cement is a mixture of heat conductive materials and insulating materials that ensure a more steady rate of thermal transfer. Certainly more steady than my old ceramic tiles, which are admittedly denser than saltillo.

The pizza fascists from Naples mandate an oven temperature in excess of

700 degrees. At least if you want to call it Neapolitan Pizza (tm). At these temperatures, the bake time is less than 2 minutes.

There are probably a lot of good commercial oven floor materials. Fibrament is the only one that I know of available in a home oven product that can be ordered online and arrive at your door inside of a week, with a

10 year warranty.

With my ceramic tiles, I had this problem. The accepted wisdom is "as hot as possible" but at 500f the ceramic tiles were turning my crust into a cracker. I had to back it down to 425, and then the outer crust still came out crunchy.

With the fibrament slab, it takes a lot longer to get it up to 500f than it took with the ceramic tiles. My bake time is shorter than it was at

500f with the ceramic tiles.

There's a distinctive acrid stench of searing dough when the stone starts to dump heat into the pizza. With the fibrament stone, it's not as strong, and it doesn't last as long. I suspect that this means that the peak thermal transfer rate rapidly drops off after the initial contact.

But, the crust is cooked through faster, which has to mean that the curve flattens out and i get more heat over time than i did with the ceramic tiles.

The other great thing, the outer ring of the crust is crisp and browned on the outside, soft, fluffy, and chewey on the inside. This was a surprise. I did not expect this at all. It's also very nice.

It looks like the secret to bubbling cheese and browned toppings WITHOUT an overcooked crust at home is lowering the ceiling over the pizza.

If you go to Lowes or Home Depot you can get five 7" unglazed quarry tiles for about a dollar each, and if you *ask, they will grudgingly admit that they can cut one of them for free. Have them cut one of them squarely in half, perpendicular to the ridges on the underside of the tile. This will give you a 14x17.5 ceramic shelf on one of your oven racks. Assuming you can fit that on your racks. This is what i used to bake my pizza on.

With this 6" above the pizza, by the time the outer ring of the crust is browned, the cheese in the center is bubbling and the pepperoni has started to curl upward. This is probably true even if you're baking a frozen pizza on the bare rack.

You'd think that all the open air space above this suspended ceiling would kill the effect, but it doesn't. I should experiment with putting, I don't know, a pan of bread sticks up there.

It might be possible to get some of the same effect by putting a half sheet pan (cookie sheet? what's that?) on the rack above whatever you're baking your pizza on, but I'm not going to experiment with that until the next time i get roped into baking pizza at my parents house.

Try Charles Van Over's "The Best Bread Ever" for THE WAY in your food processor. Also highly recommended are Peter Rineharts's fine works on breads.

Three cheers for thick stones. The only way to go.

Run your over up as HIGH as it will go; typically this will be only about 550 but with a thick stone and at least an hour preheat you will get closer to the real thing found in the brick ovens.

Weigh your ingredients, stick to maybe 68% hydration on pizza dough. Skip the oil. Go easy on the yeast, and no sugar. Forget about tossing.

We spent 3 weeks in Italy last fall and I was pleased to visit quite a few pizzerias. I talked my way into the back room of several just to witness exactly how they do it. The best pizza we had there came from a place in Tuscany where I watched the guys grab balls of dough, slam 'em down on the counter, give 'em about 6 or 7 quick rolls in several directions with the french pin, and whip out a ready to go pizza in about 20 seconds. Into the hearth oven and no more than about 3 minutes later out comes a smoking hot beautifully cooked pizza.

Nirvana.

By the way, is there a general consensus that the Fibraments are pretty much the way to go? This stuff is actually in many commercial ovens as the decking, I believe, yes?

I'm also a tea snob, and an unrepentant arguer that volkswagens are superior to hondas. I also believe that it's entirely appropriate for a convicted felon such as Martha Stewart to have to wear a cumbersome tracking device while under house arrest - just to remind 'em that they're still being punished.

Wanna make something of it? I question your right to use the name of a Stephen Root character, and challenge you to a bake-off, provided you can pay my nominal travel and hosting fees . . .

Tea... That's a Chinese drink isn't it? Aren't they a seven or eight thousand year old society that still use sticks to eat with? And the VW and Honda thing? We fought both Japan and Germany in the last "Big One" and now If you're driving an American made car, "Yer sum kinda idiot!" I DRIVE A TOYOTA! MADE RIGHT HERE IN THE GOOD OL' USA! Martha Stewart?!?! I alllllwaaaayzz hated her... ("Hate?... That's some mighty strong language there, "BIG BOY"...) But that's plenty to fill volumes and volumes on another day.... Anyway... I think that both OJ and Michael Jackson are completely INNOCENT! And the name? It's my "given" last name... My full name is James J Jimmyjames. James James Jimmyjames IV

Oh yea... As an experiment, Last night, I made a pizza using "Pillsbury Pizza Dough" I even used the stinkin' Pizza Stone. I used Italian Sausage, Manzinilla olive slices, Sauteed Onions and Mushrooms, pepperoni and a little more than a lb. of mozerla... It was better than frozen, better than boboli... but not nearly as good as Good ol' homade crust on my perforated pan...

How do you feel about conticted and released sexual preditors?

The Fine Art of Cooking involves personal choice. Many preferences, ingredients, and procedures may not be consistent with what you know to be true. As with any recipe, you may find your personal intervention will be necessary. Bon Appetit!

I'm not sure what either of these have to do with baking.

In Martha Stewart's case, she hasn't finished serving her sentence. She's on probation, and the tracking device is part of her sentence.

In the case of sexual predators, there are some real issues. If they are out on probation, they should be tracked like any other parolee. However, should a person be marked for life because of something they did and served a sentence for? Should they have another chance at a normal life. Registration has caused some real problems for people who are trying to get their lives back together. Some people have made independent copies of the sexual offender lists and put them on-line. And, while you can get off the government's lists, you can't get off the independent ones - there are just too many of them. Which doesn't seem at all fair.

So, I'd like say yes, they should have a chance at a normal life, but the recidivism rate on sexual offenders is shockingly high. Until we have therapy that really, really works, until we have therapy and analysis that can accurately predict which offender will return to their illegal ways, registration is the least of the evils.

Mike

On Thu 28 Apr 2005 04:19:29a, Ida Slapter wrote in rec.food.baking:

I say if you "contict" them, then you should relase them!

When their attorneys successfully argue that they should commute half their sentence to house arrest, they should wear 'em too.

Ok...there was an error with one finger between a "T" and a "V".....and I know you know the meaning of one finger!

The Fine Art of Cooking involves personal choice. Many preferences, ingredients, and procedures may not be consistent with what you know to be true. As with any recipe, you may find your personal intervention will be necessary. Bon Appetit!

On Thu 28 Apr 2005 12:58:44p, Ida Slapter wrote in rec.food.baking:

LOL! I do indeed.

Someone suggested your dough is too wet. I agree. I use a bread machine to make my pizza dough. Only 1/2 cup water for 1 1/2 cups bread flour. Sometimes an extra teaspoon or two to get the machine mix started, but that's it. Usually make it in the morning; let it rise in the fridge; take it out late afternoon and work with it around 7:00. It can still be cool and slightly elastic but workable.

Sticky dough may also be caused by humidity. The variation is amazing. I've used same formula with same ingredients on different days and gotten entirely different doughs. And as unpleasant as it is to work with, the stickier dough seems to make a better pizza crust.

You haven't kneaded the dough long enough to develop the gluten. Double your kneading time. The way to tell is take a golf ball size of dough and you should be able to stretch it as thin as a balloon without it breaking. If the dough snaps and shrinks...your kneading job has not been completed.

The Fine Art of Cooking involves personal choice. Many preferences, ingredients, and procedures may not be consistent with what you know to be true. As with any recipe, you may find your personal intervention will be necessary. Bon Appetit!