Thursday, October 30, 2008

Who gives a toss? Daring Bakers pizza

Tossing and turning this month. Our lovely hostess Rosa over at Rosa's Yummy Yums put it this way: "As strange as it might appear, until now, there has been no DB challenge focused on learning how to make real “Pizza Dough”. So that's what she asked us to do; make pizza like a real pizzaiolo!

The recipe came from “Pizza Napoletana” from Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice” aiming for a beautifully tasty, thin, crispy, yet chewy pizza crust. Rosa had an extra surprise for us in store: we were to toss at least 2 pizza crusts, and capture the moment by either filming or photographing yourself while tossing the dough!


I tossed, I swirled, I threw my food high up in the air (don't let my mom hear that I was having a food fight in the kitchen) I had flour all over myself but taking pics while doing it... alas.. I have some very blurry pictures and believe me, two of my kids tried to capture the moment on film but that proved to be the real challenge. No throwing pics. Not much pics at all because the batteries went out while trying. Son nr. 2 managed this one:

My family enjoyed the pizza's very much (a bit smallish mam!) but I didn't taste an actual difference in crust from this recipe compared to the others I've used. Have to admit though that the dough was very soft and perfectly suitable for swirling into a disc. It's useful to clip your fingernails because catching the dough with outstretched cat's talons made nice holes in my pizza :-(

Sauce: tomato based, flavoured with fresh basil, ground pepper and a tiny bit of salt
Topping: simple salami, mozzarella for the twins, grown ups had fresh spinach, goat cheese, mozzarella, bell pepper and pine nuts. Yum!

Thanks Rosa for a nice, very tasty and daring challenge!
For the next couple of days I'll be off to Italy to study how it should be done.... heading to Rome tomorrow morning! YAY!

13 comments:

  1. I almost punched through my dough too, even without longer nails! Your one pic looks pretty tasty though, so no worries :)

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  2. I ended up with ring-holes too, in mine. Yours sound great!

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  3. hehe! you should have seen our dough. being so delicate we did end up with more holes than pizza. but it was still a lot of fun! great looking pizza!

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  4. Your pizza looks perfect. I had some trouble taking pictures as well.

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  5. Love your pizza! Very pretty and way too fun! I'm so glad you guys got to do this challenge.

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  6. Have a amazing, fantastic and inspiring trip to Rome!!! Buon viaggio!

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  7. What a great-looking pizza. Have fun in Rome!

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  8. I loved the description of what you did with your food .. hee hee..I'm sure my mom would have had a big reaction if I did that to her :) Great job on the pizza - it was such a fun challenge.

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  9. I think the tossing was the best part!

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  10. I'll totally agree with you. Between all the tossing and picture taking, the pizza was the best part. :D

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  11. Your description of "talons" made me laugh! I didn't have anyone to manage the camera, so I mounted it on a tripod, set the shutter for a timed release, then ran back and forth pressing the button so it could take one photo. If anyone had been watching I'm sure they would have thought I was insane! Nice job on your pizza. :-)

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  12. sounds good. I like your topping choices.

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  13. You had better success then I with this recipe, but I still have 3 balls of dough in the freezer, and I hope that my 2nd attempt works out better.

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