Phoenix Pizza

 

Phoenix Pizza 

We have been having hankerings for pizza and have not found a pizza in our area that we like.  Not that we are pizza snobs…….We just haven’t found the right one.

It so happened that I had some odds and ends that I needed to use including a disk of frozen, hybrid sour dough, for pizza.  I am not trying to say that pizza is a catch all, but it is pretty ambidextrous. 

Everything started out perfect.  No fuss, no muss.

The dough thawed nicely.  It was easy to stretch and shape.  It felt good.  Mise en place was easily accomplished and building the pie was under way.

I had the oven running at 550°f.  The resident pizza stone was hot, all was good.

I should explain that my oven has three racks in it.  The pizza stone stays on the top rack on a permanent basis.  One the 2^nd rack is a pan I use for ice when baking some breads.  It also resides in the oven on a permanent basis.  The 3^rd rack is used primarily for heating plates.

Because the dough was slightly soft, I planned on par baking it on parchment paper.  This is something I have done many times.

Time to par bake the dough.  I used my bakers peel to slide the dough, on the parchment paper, onto the pizza stone in the oven.  When I did so, the dough ended up being a little further back on the stone than I wanted.

No big thing I thought……….I will just use the peel to pull the dough forward………As I have done many times in the past.  I went to pull the dough forward with the peel and it slid off the back of the stone and fell onto the bottom of the oven!

I almost could not believe it.  There was my dinner on the bottom of the oven!

I could not get to it with the oven set up as it was.  So………..after pulling out the hot, water pan and two racks I managed to get the dough out with the peel.

It is a good thing we have a tile floor in the kitchen because that is where the hot racks ended up.  Remember they came out of a 550°f oven. 

At first glance the dough seemed beyond salvaging. It had lain on the hot oven floor for almost a minute.  It was covered with black crispy things off the of the oven floor.

Luckily the as the dough slid off the stone and fell to the bottom of the oven, it folded up on itself and was partially protected by the parchment paper.

I was able to spread the dough out to a degree and see that some parts were in good shape.  Of course, some parts of the dough had already started baking and some was full of “crispies”.

In the end, I was able to salvage about two – thirds of the dough. 

Where the dough had not started baking and was covered with “crispies”, I was able to brush most of them off using a pastry brush.  Of course, there were some areas beyond redemption.

The area where the dough had already started baking presented a different challenge than the area with the “crispies”.  Luckily, I have sharp knives on hand.

After brushing the dough, I performed a never before attempted (by me) operation of pizza dough amputation and pizza dough splicing.  We went from having 3 pieces of dough to one piece that had the gluten fully developed and active.

A ten-minute rest allowed me to roll the dough out into something resembling a rough oval.  From there the rest of the process went smoothly.

Even the though the dough was smaller than originally planned we used all the prepped ingredients.  The end result as actually quite nice!

The pie was nicely crisp, flavorful and truly quite delightful

So “Phoenix Pizza”.  It was “Pizza Pizza” that rose from the ashes.

A good example of the phrase “never give up.”

#LifeLongLearning #LifeLongTeaching #FamilyFood #Pizza

 As always, your comments or questions are welcome.

Until next time,

Bon Appetit Y’all

Leslie Bartosh