Let's make Pizza!

Happy Monday everyone!  Can we say it is H - O - T ??  It is as hot outside as it was in the kitchen today making pizza's. :)  I hope you had a nice weekend. Of course it flew by way too quickly.

We got right into it this morning with a demo on how to make the pizza dough. Same 12 steps again.  If you want to give it a shot and you have a mixer, here is the recipe:

Water                 17 oz
Instant Yeast        .25oz
Bread Flour        1 lb 12 oz
Malt Syrup          .25 oz  ( we substituted honey)
Olive oil               .75 oz
Sugar                   .25 oz

Place all your ingredients into the mixer. Remember to make sure not to have the yeast come into direct contact with the salt. In this recipe, you also want to make sure to put the olive oil in LAST.  Start the mixer on its 1st speed and let it mix for TWO minutes. Scrape down your bowl and then mix it at your next speed for 4-6 minutes. You want to check your dough's elasticity after 4 minutes.  If you think its not elastic enough, mix for another minute. Make sure you do not over mix as you are creating gluten when mixing and you want to control it.

Once you feel your "baby" is done, as my group calls our dough, :) take it out of the mixer and place it on the counter and cover with saran wrap for the first fermentation process. This is where you eat your Snickers bar or chat with the girls :).  Once your dough has doubled in size, fold and pound your dough and then cut your dough into two batches so you can make 2 pizza's. We second scaled ours and got 5 equal batches out of this recipe and made personal pizza's.  

Round your babies by creating your dough balls, squeezing out the air as you roll and shape them. Once they are all rolled out smoothly, like that of a babies bottom, cover them with the same saran wrap for 5 minutes.  When the time is up, roll out your pizza doughs into discs, ensuring to take out the air as you roll. Stretch your dough's out by using both hands and stretching the outer circles and squeezing.    Place Semonila flour onto your baking sheet pan, place your dough on top and dock your dough. This is an instrument that creates holes into the dough. It has a lot of spikes on it and you roll it on top of your dough. Doing this ensures no air bubbles forming when you bake the pizza. :)  you are now ready to start creating your pizza's. :)

Here is a picture of our chef placing sauce onto the rolled and docked pizza dough at demo:

The spiky tool you see next to the sauce can is what we  used to dock (create holes) on to the pizza dough. At this point you can put anything you want onto the dough. I first placed my sauce, and I was not shy. I love extra sauce on my pizza! If it was up to me, I would skip the cheese :) :) But today, I used mozzarella cheese and added on pepperoni, fresh yummy amazing basil, green peppers and red peppers.  Here is my before picture:

Ta da!! I was my own crowd going wild!! Yes, this is my first time making pizza :) 

We then want to place our pizza in the cooler for about 5 minutes.  This is where you take another mini break and drink some water. The kitchen gets hot with 42 people in it and ovens at full on heat!  Take your creation out of the cooler and place it in the oven on your pizza stone at 400 degrees F. Bake until you see the crust and ingredients are to your liking.  Here is my silly little guy:

There you have it! Pizza making broken down simply for you.I think I did good! Now I just need to come up with a sexy Italian baking name, in case I ever try to make this again. Yes?? No??? Anyone??  Fine! 

My little baby would have looked cuter but I like sauce and apparently I didn't put enough mozzarella in the beginning so I added some at the end and my pretty colors disappeared :(.  But you get the gist of it. :) It still tasted delicious!

The fun didn't end there though. We also made Pita's today.  :) I love Hummus with Pita and now I am craving it!  Nothing a run to the store cant fix, except I'm kind of tired and getting into my car isn't an option.  Especially since gas is $3.80!!!  Hello? America? Obama? Where are you? 

Sorry, back to baking.  Good Hummus is hard to come by, especially if you have been to the Middle East and tasted THEIR hummus. I died and went to heaven during my trip to Jordan. I went with my handsome better half and our first breakfast consisted of ridiculously AMAZING  hummus and fresh pita. I could have eaten it morning, noon and night.  Ahh I do miss that place. Some of my best memories are from there. Oh shoot! Sorry, I was going off on a tangent again. I think its time for me to sign off!

Not before you see our babies though :)

Arnt they just darlings?!  :) I barely want to eat them, well, until I get hungry of course. ;)

We make Pumpernickel tomorrow! I do not think I have ever tasted that before so I am curious.  We will work in two groups tomorrow because we are going to make a swirl. Fun! Love Swirls. Reminds me of my Icebox Cookies. :) Looove Cookies!!

If you have any questions, please let me know! Today's pizza party was really fun and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I will see you here tomorrow I hope! Enjoy your evening!

Ta Ta for now...