Pizza: Wet Dough, Hot Stone

Ah, pizza! For pizza-baking to be successful, there are three important rules: olive oil in the dough, baking/pizza stone in the oven, and heat. Lots of it. The hotter the better, in fact; your oven should be as high as it can go. Mine unfortunately tops out at about 500, though I've heard there are more extreme measures one can take. I've been reasonably satisfied with the results, so I'm not planning on constructing such a monstrosity in my apartment, but if I ever have access to a brick wood-fired oven, pizza will be atop the list of things to do with it.

For my pizza recipe I decided to use a very wet dough, largely as an experiment. The first attempt was at about 75% hydration. It was way too wet; the only way to hand-knead it (I don't have a stand mixer) was to kind of stick my hand in it and squeeze, and it was impossible to shape. I ended up sort of spreading it out on parchment paper and sliding it onto the hot stone without any toppings. Tastewise it was excellent, though, so I decided to do nothing for the second attempt but remove some of the water. This cuts it down to 70% hydration. The straight-mix method rather than an intermediate starter works well here, because, well, it's faster - you can make and bake the dough on the same day. Subtleties of flavor in the crust are also less important because of the toppings, though I do like this crust by itself too. Quantities listed make 2 pounds 10 ounces of dough, enough for three decent-sized pizzas.

Sourdough Pizza

Barm 85.5 (15 oz)
Bread flour 100 (17.5 oz)
Water 46.5 (8 oz)
Olive oil 8.5 (1.5 oz)
Salt 2 (0.35 oz)

Combine ingredients and knead. Note that 70% hydration is still rather wet; it's about at the limit of kneadability by hand, in fact. The dough is sticky and difficult to manage, though it isn't impossible. If you have a stand mixer, you'll probably want to use it. I don't. When the dough is smooth and elastic, put it someplace warm to rise. After an hour or two, preheat your oven (with a baking stone in it) as high as it will go.

Let rise until double, then punch down and turn out on a counter for dividing:

Throughout this process I recommend lots of flour for dusting, to keep the dough from sticking. Dust frequently and liberally: it absorbs the flour fast. Take the piece you're baking first and round it (for this you'll want a small patch of unfloured counterspace, in my experience), then dust it again, flatten, and start stretching.

Rotate frequently so it stretches evenly. When it gets large enough, you can stretch between two fists, again rotating frequently:

If any holes appear, just pinch the dough together to close them, and continue. Leave a little bit of a lip around the rim (I tend to put too much there, though). You can do some fine-tuning with the pizza set on a well-floured surface:

Sprinkle your peel liberally with cornmeal. You may choose to put down a sheet of parchment paper under the cornmeal, which will avoid any risk of the dough tearing as you load the oven and depositing your toppings directly on the hot stone. Or, work fast and hope for the best. The shaped (and well-floured!) dough goes on the peel next.

Then top as desired. In my case, this consisted of caramelized onions,
fresh figs,
and blue cheese.
Then deposit onto the stone and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Remove from oven with peel, slice, and enjoy!

This is a good dough for thin-crust pizza (and is there any other kind?); it crisps nicely on the bottom and is very stretchy during shaping. The olive oil makes it taste like pizza, not just flat bread. Although as you can see I could use a little more practice with the lip around the circumference, this was one delicious pie. I may in the future replace some of the bread flour with whole wheat and/or semolina, but this will probably be my standard pizza-dough recipe for a while. These toppings are also fantastic, though a bit on the pricey side*; if you have the means, I highly recommend them.

* This may not be true if you live somewhere that figs can grow.

Rosemary Sourdough, or "Lack of Haste Makes Funny Shapes"

One of the things I learned during my stint as a baker was that rosemary spreads through a bread dough and infuses it with a delicate flavor and aroma. The resinous taste goes especially well with the acidity in sourdough, and so, having an overabundance of starter after not baking much for the past few weeks, I decided to use some of it to bake a bit of rosemary sourdough.

Since the dough itself is not the only source of flavor in any herbed bread, it's fine to skip the creation of an intermediate firm starter and mix the dough directly from the barm. The flavor is less rounded as a result, but that works quite well with rosemary. This dough is about 67% hydration, about where I usually work. The quantities listed will make 2 pounds and 12 ounces of dough, all of which will vanish in fairly short order.

Rosemary Sourdough

Barm 70 (14 oz)
Bread flour 100 (20 oz)
Water 46 (9.2 oz)
Salt 2 (0.4 oz)
Rosemary 0.5 (0.1 oz) (or to taste)

I used fresh rosemary, because I happen to have a rosemary bush that looked like it needed to be cut down to size. I'd encourage you to experiment with the quantity to find a balance you like. Chop the rosemary, then mix the ingredients and knead well. Let the dough rise until almost double, then refrigerate overnight (or longer). The refrigeration lets the flavoring oils in the herb spread through the dough, as well as developing sour flavor. After a night in the fridge, this is one of the most fragrant doughs you'll encounter. Here it is, in terrible lighting:

I'm sorry you can't smell it. Divide as desired; I made four half-pound boules and a 12-oz bâtard (not pictured). I do recommend making smaller loaves with this, since the thicker crust from a longer baking time will most likely obstruct the flavor balance; I haven't tried, though, so by all means experiment if you like. Shape each piece and roll it in cornmeal:

Place seam-side-up on a piece of cloth, cover, and let proof.

Preheat oven to 450 about an hour before they're ready to go in. They should about double in size; since the dough is on the wet side they'll mostly spread out rather than up:

Transfer the loaves to a peel, flipping them over in the process so the seam is on the bottom. Slash the tops with a sharp razor, and load onto the baking stone:

At this point I learned two things. For one, because I had polenta in my kitchen instead of cornmeal (polenta is a coarser grind) I used that for coating the loaves; this turned out to be a bad idea because it didn't stick to the dough very well. For another, the amount of time necessary to set up decent camera shots of me loading the oven is about equal to the amount of time it takes for the dough, having lost its protective polenta coating, to stick to the peel. As a result, the oven-loading was less than ideal, and I had to make some adjustments by hand right after the loaves went in. They ended up rather uneven because of it, though still tasty.

Right after the oven is loaded, I put a healthy squirt of hot water on the oven floor for steam. After 10 minutes I rotated the loaves, and they came out about 5 minutes later. Small loaves bake fast.

So, yeah. Kind of uneven, with patchy polenta coverage... but soft and chewy, with a textured crust and a delicate rosemary-sour flavor. Now I just need a camera with a faster shutter speed.

Sourdough Sandwich Bread

I generally prefer crusty hearth breads, but some people apparently have an aversion to crust. In order to rescue them from the horrors of store-bought, pre-sliced, industrial "bread" (okay, it's not that bad...) I've been tinkering with a sourdough sandwich bread. Here's the most recent iteration, which is just about right.

I should mention that this is not a bland sandwich bread. It's rather robust, actually, and if you put weak ingredients on it they will be drowned out. I recommend, for example, a strong cheese, mustard, and a sour pickle, and maybe a pint of good beer with it.

This dough is a little drier than my hearth breads, and contains vegetable oil as a preservative so it'll stale more slowly. The lower hydration and specifics of baking make for a tighter crumb, which is better for sandwiches and shelf life. The dough is a little sticky, but otherwise well-behaved. The recipe below makes two 26-ounce loaves in standard loaf pans, or scale as desired.

Firm Starter

Barm 233 (10.5 oz)
Bread flour 100 (4.5 oz)

Sourdough Sandwich Bread

Firm Starter 70 (15 oz)
Bread flour 50 (10.7 oz)
Whole wheat flour 50 (10.7 oz)
Water 57 (12 oz)
Honey 7 (1.5 oz)
Oil 7 (1.5 oz)
Salt 3 (0.6 oz)

Start out by making firm starter, one or two days before the complete dough. Knead until it comes together, and let rise for about 4 hours before refrigerating. You could skip the refrigeration for a milder flavor.

Combine all dough ingredients in a large bowl and stir until they come together, then turn out to knead. Knead until smooth and elastic, passing the windowpane test, then return to the bowl and let rise, covered, for a few hours (until doubled).



Lightly grease your bread pans. Punch down your dough and divide into 26-ounce pieces. (More if you want a larger loaf, but for bread pans I wouldn't suggest more than 28 ounces.) Form them into rounds:


Then press them flat and roll them up into even cylinders. This is similar to shaping bâtards but without tapering the ends.



Place them seam-side-up in the pans and rotate so the seam-side ends up on the bottom; this gets a light coating of oil on the top crust to soften it. Cover with a cloth and place in the oven (which should be off) to proof. If you have a pilot light this will decrease proofing time; otherwise it's just convenient.


When the top of the loaf has risen just above the edge of the pan (or a little higher for larger loaves), turn on the oven to 350. Remember to remove the cloth covering the loaves first; that's not a surprise you want. The loaves will finish proofing while the oven heats up, combining it with oven spring.


After 10 minutes:


After about 25 minutes with the oven on, depending on loaf size and how quickly your oven heats up, remove the loaves from the pans for even crust formation.


Let bake another 20 minutes or so, until done (loaves will sound hollow when you knock on the bottom).


Let cool, and enjoy! This stales more slowly than most hearth breads if stored properly, but it does stale; if you're not going to eat all of it within a few days I'd recommend slicing it and freezing. You can either warm the slices in a toaster or make lunch sandwiches in the morning on frozen slices, which will thaw by lunchtime (or so I'm told by my tester).

The flavor is balanced and complex, pretty much exactly what I was looking for, and the keeping time is about as good as I expect from something that isn't a cracker. My only complaint about this batch was that the loaves were a hair too small. There will be more of this coming out of my oven in the near future. One variation that I'll try at some point is replacing the honey with maple syrup; I did that once with a whole wheat loaf and it imparted a delicate maple aroma.

Happy baking!