Quote:
Originally Posted by wet work
are you going for something with the awesome rustic crust around the outside? i make a ton of homemade pizza...mind sharing what you're doing?
Getting a good crust has been pretty easy for the most part. I've been using a 4-qt cast iron dutch oven @ 475F, preheat with lid for 30 min, bake with lid for 30 min, bake for another 15-20 with lid off.
I've chosen to work with pure levain doughs, i.e. sourdough starter with no commercial yeast. My procedure has been this: autolyse for 20-30 minutes, mix with levain and salt, bulk fermentation over 10-15 hours that involves folding the dough 4-5 times, shape and proof in a banneton/brotform for 4 hours, then bake. Because wild yeast isn't as vigorous as commercial yeast, I've been trying to figure out if there's something I can do better to help the internal structure of the bread. Really what I'd like is fewer big bubbles and more small bubbles. I'm going to try a few different techniques out, like this:
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/vide...net_sweetdough
Also, slapping out some of the larger air bubbles before the final shaping/rise.
I want to master handling a wet dough and baking a good loaf before moving onto pizzas, since pizza-making will require some more expensive equipment. I'm planning on getting a baking steel and a wood peel, and I'll be starting with hand-kneaded doughs so that I don't have to buy an expensive stand mixer before discovering that I hate making pizzas.