Why I Oughta...

Thanks to John Carruthers at Nachos and Lager  (and Crust Fund Pizza ), I've made some progress on my thin crust Tavern pizza the past few weeks.  I call it "Chicago Thin", but it seems that "Chicago Tavern-Cut" has been the most widely-adopted in the pizza-making regions online.  I've been playing around with this on-and-off for about a year.  That includes cold curing.  And room-temperature curing.  The post that featured John and his recipe on Wordloaf was really good as it provided me with a few tweaks and some additional details.  It was also scaled down for two dough balls. I've settled into making a batch of dough for 2 14"(ish) tavern pizzas that first ferments in bulk in the fridge, then the day prior to baking, I ball and stick back in the fridge.  The morning of my bake: I roll out and cure the dough in between pieces of parchment paper.   They dried out and started to get a little-bit brittle along the edges this time, but I...

I have just recently (in the past three-or-so months) started to utilize hot giardiniera on my bar pies.  Here's a photo of my "Nice Cups" pepperoni pizza that is half-topped with olive-free hot giardiniera .  A funny thing has happened with my ability to handle hot/spicy foods recently - my tolerance has dropped significantly.  But, in an interesting coincidence, Nat's tolerance has only grown.  So, I've gone from "extra hot peppers" at Potbelly's to "light hot peppers".  With that going on, I mostly make my giardiniera pizzas for a crowd and not ones that we eat at home by ourselves, but I still want to take the time to get my utilization dialed in.  Here, below, is a photo of the latest tip that I picked up:  draining the giardiniera in a colander to remove the excess oil.   I mean...the idea is simple and logical.  In order to control the top-oil level, the right thing to do is to remove as much of the giardiniera oil as possible....

A week later and another Bar Pie shot below.  Last week, I showed a photo and talked about my Bar Pie Progress with a sausage and giardiniera 12-incher (well done, of course) where I talked about what I've been working on since early Spring this year.  This is a 12" bar pie loaded with cupped pepperoni.  I didn't run out for the *right* cheese, so I used what was on hand.  Learned a little bit there - and will go back to my traditional blend.  This one, however, created a little bit of frico that you can see on the bottom right of photo below. Nice Cups. Loaded with Pepperoni. Base chassis of: Crushed Tomatoes, cheese blend. Finished with a heavy hand of post-oven Romano and basil .  Hot Giardiniera added (pre-oven) to half. Menu-wise, I haven't quite figured out how to talk about adding giardiniera to the base bar pie names.  Does it become a different pie? Or should all the base menu pizzas be offered with giardiniera as a 'plus-up'?  Alon...

With Fall here and Winter coming, that usually means that I do *even more* pizza making than I do during the Summer.  The arrival of our Ooni earlier this year changed Summer pizza-making, but I've also been making a little bit of progress on my bar pies.  Here's a shot post-oven/pre-cut of fennel sausage across the whole thing and hot giardiniera on half.  Olive-free giardiniera, of course.    I was talking to Equation Boy/Man about this particular bar pie recently and he mentioned that (for some reason he can't quite explain) the little "orange spots of carrots peeking through make his mouth water".  Dare you to look at this and not have the same reaction.   Last time I posted about my bar pies was in August - when I showed a cross-section and a little bit of the undercarriage .  Back then, I was using a cheddar for the frico edge, but I've moved away from that (for now).  Feels like a Winter thing to bring back at Dorianell's , doesn'...

In lieu of the typical under-performing bell peppers that I plant in the garden, this year, I picked up a Serrano hot pepper plant from Bonnie Plants at the ole' Home Depot.  As you can see from the photo, serranos are described as: 'Hot, pungent, candle-shaped fruits.  Top choice for making pico de gallo.  Very productive." While that's well and good, I'm only interested in them for one reason: The possibility of making my own giardiniera . I've tried making it in the past and most recipes call for fresh vegetables/peppers including serranos, but the output wasn't quite right.  Comparing those results (which included bright colors) with the typical store-bought jar of giardiniera (which has far more muted colors) was a disappointment.  It seems that the professional-made stuff pickles their peppers before putting them in the jar with oil? Just compare how the 'homemade' version looks in this photo compared to what the stuff in the jar looks...