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've been a proponent of a low-moisture cheese for pizza making for a number of years.  A special cheese, specifically:  Chellino Scamorza Cheese .  It isn't smoked and is most-similar to the traditional low-moisture Mozzarella that you find at the Jewels or Marianos.  But, I've been experimenting with a different set of cheeses with my Bar Pies.   I took that class with the OG Pizza-online-guy Adam Kuban last year where he talked about his "KuBlend" where he talked about how he blends a couple of cheeses for Bar Pies.  For some recent Bar Pie experiments , I've moved away from the Chellino Scamorza and have begun to trial this 2 parts Whole Milk Mozzarella (low-moisture) and 1 part Fontina.   Fontina has been on my radar for a bit as the folks at Via Napoli in the World Showcase at EPCOT Center use it (see this post from 2017 that shows a few cheeses they use including: Robiola, Parmesan, Provolone and Fontina.) Below are the two products ...

I make exactly ONE "stunt pizza" at home.  It is a BBQ chicken pizza that I call the "Orange Bird" that features chicken and double application of a store-bought sweet bbq sauce.  First I apply the sauce to the chassis and then, post-oven, I squeeze on a drizzle (it is, I suppose, *more* than a drizzle, but less than a full slather) on top.  I've added this post-oven drizzle after I found the pice a little dry but that the sauce burns pretty easily when put on top pre-bake.  In this case, (once I de-pan the pie) I put down (first) a heavy hand of post-oven Romano scattered on top, then after waiting a beat, I put down this sauce which finishes with the heat off the top of the pizza.   Btw....you might be wondering what a 'stunt pizza' is?  Urban Dictionary has an entry that sums up the term pretty well , but that's not where I picked up the term.  It was from Pizza Blogger Adam Kuban - somewhere along the lines of following him online in various p...

Applying the formulation with a 51% hydration factor from last wee k and a 190 gram dough ball yielded a nice result.  Laying on a ring of Vermont White Cheddar lead to a nice frico.  Notes:  I used ZERO bench flour and was able to roll out the ball to a something close to 12".  Using Crisco as the sort of 'paste', I was able to stretch the skin out and it didn't snap back. This one has Roni cups and a heavy hand of post-oven Romano.  No baking steel involved, but I think I need to go back to putting the steel on the rack above to provide for that refractory heat in order to get the top just.right (well done).  

For the better part of 2021, I have been making (exclusively) Bar Pies at home to the exclusion of just about any other type of pizza.  I've made the occasional Detroit-style, but for the most part, it has been 12" round Bar Pies for 10+ months .  However, Bar Pies have a specific provenance - that of the east coast.  New Jersey.  Massachusetts.  Those places make "Bar Pie".  What do we make in Chicago?  Something called Tavern pizza.  Or Tavern-style pizza.  Or, just Chicago Thin Crust.   Bar Pie isn't too far from Chicago Thin, but it is a bit different.  So, I've decided that 2022 is going to be my Chicago Thin/Bar Pie hybrid year.  My maiden voyage down this path was this past weekend when I took a Chicago Thin recipe that I found on YouTube , modified it to be a little bit *more* like my base Bar Pie formulation in some ways, dropped the hydration down a bit and then, finally did a couple of downsizing from a 14" for...

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'...

August marks six-month mark on my Bar Pizza journey.  Started back in March and have posted a few times including my ' pockmark progress ' and how I've tried both pre-and- post-bake ricotta .  I've recently settled some of that (I'm now using Chellino Ricotta pre-bake on my bbq chicken 'stunt pizza'.  More on that in a future post).    Here are a few recent photos showing my progress.   First, with so little yeast, I'm surprised by this kind of structure: Below, you can see a sort-of edge profile.  I'm happy with the thickness, the ply-ability and the crisp on these pizzas.  I do, however, give them first a cooling-rack rest followed by a post-cut dimple pan.   Here's a little frico below.  I've recently moved away from using any sort of cheddar - as it oils-off differently than the other cheeses I'm using. And the full monty - below.  Cup and Char post-bake basil. Here's another profile below: And the top-down, cheese onl...

Yesterday I shared some of my Bar Pie progress shots and talked about pockmarks and what-have-you.  As part of this journey, I've been thinking about some of what Adam Kuban called "stunt pizzas" during the class I took with him earlier this year.  One of the pizzas that I've had in the back of my mind is this shot I posted on the blog back in 2015 .  It has a ricotta that I'm pretty sure is added post-bake.  And that's what I did recently; my first time with post-bake ricotta. Chellino Ricotta to be exact. I'll be working this stunt pizza out a little bit more because I think it has some promise.  'Roni cups, post-bake ricotta, basil and Mike's Hot Honey.  Just like the Spicy Bear from 2015 .  Well, almost like that.