Taking Dork To New Levels: Pizza Jam

I went on a kind of spending rampage. Feels like one after how tight my money's been lately, anyway.



After the $20 KitchenAid, I got to thinking about how long I've been holding off buying a pizza stone and peel. I've priced them many times, looked in the usual suspects, Bed Bath & Beyond, Pier One, Function Junction. Come close to buying a few times.



Then I found Webstaurant Store, and the prices were just too good to resist.



Here's the catch, though. When you enter your shipping info, when they see it's not going to a restaurant, they come up with a big warning that they'll happily sell consumers their wares, but things won't be as pretty as what you'll find in Williams-Sonoma or whatever.



I got the peel, the stone, and a marble mortar & pestle, including shipping, for less than the last mortar & pestle I priced in a retail store. There was a 'heavy duty' pizza stone I could have gone with, but it was expensive and the plain ceramic one I went with was dirt cheap.



So I had my dough rising in the fridge when the FedEx truck came today with my goodies. I guess I should have paid more attention to dimensions. I went with the biggest peel they offered,thinking it would be better to have a few extra inches than not enough. Fortunately, the Mother of All Peels will fit in my oven. Has a long handle, too, which I may bob a little shorter to make it less unwieldy to work around on the counter.



That disclaimer about how the stuff isn't finished like consumer goods? The peel had visible wood filler on one side (the bottom, I decided, since other than that the two sides are identical), had a ding in the handle and a knot in one of it's ribs. It's rubberwood, which they get from spent rubber trees, and made in China (where they have a lot of spent rubber trees I'm told).



The pizza stone is also no frills and had a chip in a corner, but what would a frill be on a pizza stone? I guess if that kind of thing bothers you, you have to dig deep and buy the composite stones.



I made a Alfredo, prosciutto & black olive pie for the girls. I had trouble getting the shape to be round, hand-stretching and attempting to 'toss' it. I managed to get flour everywhere, though.



Then I had trouble getting it off the peel and onto the stone, because as I shook the toppings wanted to come off. It ended up draped off the stone on one edge and all the toppings were on the far half of the pie. It ended up shaped like an alien head with all the prosciutto over the nose, eyes and forehead.



For the other pie I followed the recipe Jill Santopietro shows in the video on this page. It's black mission figs, bacon, gorgonzola with caramelized onions.



The main things I did differently from Jill's recipe: I drained my bacon on paper towels, and when the pie was out I didn't drizzle it with olive oil. It already had two tablespoons of butter to caramelize the onions and all the fat in the bacon, no need to add more, even if it's 'healthy' fat. Also, I didn't have a yellow onion, so I used a red one. This treatment, I doubt it matters much. A white onion might not have enough sugars to get the right effect, but if I'd only had a white onion I'd have used it. And with all the other things going on here, it would have been all good I'm sure.



Also, the bacon I used was uncured. Not sure how much difference that makes to the flavor, it still tastes like bacon. It just isn't as loaded with nitrites.



I love this pizza. The dough is much more what I've been wanting to do. It's a wetter, softer dough. As a finished crust, it's bubblier and lighter, too, with a crispy outside and chewy inside.

The sweetness of the figs and onions, the salty bacon, the tang of the gorgonzola, this was like Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins having a little jam session in my mouth.



I tried to get the girls to try it. Em even took a bite and then pronounced it 'disgusting.'

I despair of ever getting her to try good food sometimes...

Anyway, while I was waiting for the second pie to cool enough for slicing, I mixed up another batch of dough to start this whole mayhem again. I still have enough bacon and figs to do the second pie over, though I'll need some sort of bleu cheese. Wouldn't have to be gorgonzola, that's just Italian for moldy. Maybe next time I'll use a piece of Maytag.



And after a few dozen pies, maybe I can get the stuff on and off the stone in one piece a little better.



The peel was too big to clean in the kitchen, so I took it to the driveway and used the hose. Drilled a hole in the handle so I could hang it in the kitchen (after puzzling over how the hell I'd store this monster).