Why I Oughta...

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'?  Along with pre-ove

We are right in the midst of gardening season and that (usually) means that pizza season begins to head towards a downswing.  But, that doesn't mean that I haven't made some real progress with my bar pizza work.  Back a month ago (beginning of March), I posted how I was able to achieve some of the pockmarking that I was after and today I'm sharing a couple more progress photos.  I'm happy with the way this basic cheese came out, but I used a little bit too much traditional cheddar (didn't have white) around the ring. In the month of March, I also started to take my bar pizza act on the road and baked off a couple of road pies including this pepperoni 12-incher that was (maybe??) the best bar pie that I've made to date. It was (below) crispy and well done and the undercarriage showed the right bit of char/doneness while the top came along just about where I want the final product.  Of note, the oven I used for this one has NO convection function, but does go to

Back in  this post from October of 2015 , at the very end, I mention that in a video , the franchisee of the Aurelio's in Geneva "points out that they roll/sheet their skins out ahead of time and let them kind of dry out. They don't want the top 'sticky'. Not 'doughy'."  I thought that was interesting.  They pan their doughs ahead of time.  That kinda makes sense in terms of a production environment, right?  But, I wasn't sure if that was just unique to the Geneva franchise.   Welp, over on their Instagram handle , the folks at Aurelio's pizza confirm for me - as fact - this pre-panning of the dough that I've been thinking about for years.   View this post on Instagram A post shared by Aurelio's Pizza (@aureliospizza) I've been making Bar Pizzas the past few weekends and this is something I'm going to incorporate into my tests to see what impact it has on the finished product.  Also, note...they use cutt

Via Adam Kuban on his Instagram handle (story) For years, I've been poking around this thread (and the various sub-threads ) on PizzaMaking.com that focus on Chicago-style thin crust (aka Tavern pizza) and in various places, posters have occasionally mentioned using diastatic malt powder - or sometimes non-diastatic - in their dough formulations.  And while I've been intrigued, I've never gone out and procured the stuff, let alone find out where I could buy it locally.  But then, this happened over the weekend on Instagram.  Slice (RIP) Head Honcho and "pizza influencer" Adam Kuban posted this upskirt and description in his recent stories .  I screenshot it above.  ( You can follow Adam here on Instagram .  Or you can learn more about his pop-up Margot's Pizza here .) He called out that he added diastatic malt powder for oven spring and color.  Color, people?!?!  That's one of the things that I've been working on over the years is a consisten

Well, well, well.  Look at what showed up over the weekend at our house.  That's three brand new, pre-seasoned, permanent-coated 14" cutter pans for Chicago-style thin crust pizzas.  If you are looking for your own set, you can find them here .  I will caution you that they actually manufacture your pans and don't have them in stock.  Really.   Like it took a month to get them.  I first heard about Lloyd Pans and their cutter pans on the PizzaMaking.com forums .   Same place that I sourced my Detroit-style blue steel pans that I've put through their paces over the past four-ish years. This is part of the email I had with the Lloyd Pans customer representative - who couldn't have been nicer. We are the manufacturer of the pans you see on our website. We build them here in Spokane, WA so these will be "hot off the press" for you! :)   We are booked heavily in production right now, but are running extra shifts to get the work out sooner if possible