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...

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'...

Earlier this week, I posted the photos of my new cutter pans for Chicago thin crust pizza making and here as you likely guessed, it didn't take long for me to try to put it them through their paces.  I grabbed a Aurelio's clone dough formulation from the PizzaMaking.com forums and dressed it with my usual set of ingredients: Chellino Scamorza cheese , pepperoni, hot Italian sausage and some red peppers.  Finished with some parm and basil after it baked. Consider this step one in a long journey towards my next pizza quest:  tavern cut, Chicago thin crust. We're living at Equation Boy/Man's house and thus, using their ovens.  I haven't quite gotten enough practice to know how they'd perform.  I put the pan on a lower rack and placed my baking steel on a rack just on top of the pie.  Thinking...that there would be some thermal mass baking the top.  That, indeed, worked great.  The top of the pie came out perfectly well done.  But the bott...

Whaaaatttt what!?!  After poking around on the PizzaMaking.com forums , I just learned that Aurelio's ( My pizza touch-stone ) is now selling their sausage retail.  I went looking for more details and found this story from a few years ago that shows where they're selling it : Aurelio’s has been manufacturing its famed sausage in Chicago’s South Suburbs for more than four decades. Aurelio’s only uses the highest quality, all natural ingredients. In addition to producing fresh sausage daily for its bestselling pizzas across every Aurelio’s location, in 2010, the company began selling the sausage links to over 70 independent grocery stores throughout the Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana, including Walt’s, Stack and Van Til, Berkots, Ultra foods, FreshLine Foods, Fairway foods, Rio Valley Market, Express Wholesale Grocers, Mario’s Market West, Central Market, Edmar Foods, Spring Valley Supermarket, Fair Share Fine Foods, Halsted Foods, Wiseway Food Center, Super Save, El Ray ...

Pasted above the paper towels in the bathroom of Aurelio's in LaGrange was this sign advertising a Soppressatta contest - which required contestants to bring two pre-sliced logs to enter. Tickets are $25 in advance and there are trophies and prizes.  I had no idea that there were enough home-made/DIY Soppressatta makers in the western suburbs to warrant a contest. With a simple Google search, it turns out Frank Balestri, the host for the contest calls himself the SodFather.  But...no not *that* SodFather .   Chicagoist has a video of his process .   Turns out, the Soppressatta is called "Sods". Guess I'll have to learn how to make the stuff?  April 17th will be tough, right?