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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Kneadful Things




I could have titled this Check Out My Big Balls, but my better judgment won out for a change. Sort of, I guess if it had really won the fight, I wouldn't even be mentioning it.




More experimentation with pizza dough. My antique Kitchen-Aid lacks a dough hook, and the modern dough hooks won't fit the bowl, so I'm left using the paddle attachment.

Trouble is, my doughs tend to climb all the way up onto the upper housing, and it's a pain in the ass getting them back off. Super-wet doughs like Jill Santopietro's don't climb as bad as dryer doughs like Alton Brown's, but they all do it.



Except I noticed last time I made dough, cutting the recipe size down kept the dough down. I can get away, it appears, with 2 cups of flour. Which isn't quite enough to divide to make two crusts, and turns out to make a real whopper crust I can barely fit on my stone if I don't divide it.

SO, my new dough recipe requires making just enough for one pizza at a time:

1-1/3 cups bread flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. bread machine yeast
1/2 cup tepid water
Knead in the Kitchen-Aid on high for 13-15 minutes. Form into dough ball and coat with pan spray in a covered bowl, refrigerate for 24 hours to 6 days before use.




How do you know when you've kneaded your balls enough? When you can take a little pinch of it and stretch it out like a mini-pizza you can almost read through, you're there.

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