New pizza dough recipe

So I decided to try a new pizza dough recipe.  This was made mostly out of necessity since I hadn’t made the dough the night ahead.  I have been using the overnight slow no-knead method for years and it produces a night sour-like dough that D likes.  I also haven’t used my new stand mixer for pizza dough and figured this would be a good time to try it out.  I tweaked the original recipe a little.  I had seen this recipe on one of my FB groups and it looked good – it’s a Martha Stewart recipe (https://www.marthastewart.com/332275/basic-pizza-dough).

Ingredients:

  • 2 tsp active dry yeast
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • (eyeballed) 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 4 cups AP flour
  • 1.5 cups of warm water
  1.  In the bowl I added the warm water with the sugar and yeast and let it bloom for about 5 minutes.
  2. To the bowl I then added the AP flour, salt and olive oil.
  3. Using my stand mixer, I mixed the dough for ~10 minutes (on the low or #2 setting)
  4. This produced a cohesive smooth dough that I placed in an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled (~1.5-2 hours) – this was a very active dough that more than doubled
  5. I punched the dough down and then divided it into 4 equal pieces and formed 2 into balls for the pizza (I saved the other half to make bread another day).
  6. After about 2-3 hours I formed the pizza into a large disc for baking.

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What I liked about this recipe is that it provided for a dough with good strength to it when working it.  The one I had been making was a little more delicate and harder to stretch into a nice round shape like the above.  Overall I thought it was a little light on salt and didn’t create the same depth of flavor as the overnight dough but it works if you have less time.

-StewsCat

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Sourdough (with wheat) bread #2

Sourdough (with wheat) bread #2

These won’t be full posts on making the bread but just documenting how they came out.  This time I did try to do normal kneading method.  I don’t know again if my starter was up to snuff – though I did get good air holes in the final result.  Also I’m running low on bread flour so used some AP flour as well as some wheat flour.

Ingredients:

  • 300 g AP flour
  • 100 g bread flour
  • 100 g whole wheat flour
  • 360 g warm water
  • 200 g starter
  • 12 g salt

I did do an autolyse of the flour and water for about 45 minutes.  I then added in the starter and salt.  I proceeded to knead (Richard bertinet slap and fold method) for about 15 minutes.  It came together some but was still fairly sticky.  I use my oven proof setting for an hour and fifteen minutes.  I then laid on a flour surface and formed it into a boule.  This I placed in a bowl that had a well-floured kitchen towel.  I ended up putting it in the fridge after about 30 minutes because I had to run an errand.  I returned, removed from fridge and let it proof another hour or so.  I preheated the dutch oven at 500F and then baked for 15 minutes covered and an additional 20 minutes uncovered.

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Sourdough Ciabatta

Sourdough Ciabatta

Aside from regular sourdough bread, I had been kind of wondering what else to do with my starter.  Luckily one of my FB groups are full of cooks and someone shared a sourdough ciabatta recipe they liked.  I figured I’d give it go.  The original recipe is here:  https://breadtopia.com/sourdough-ciabatta/

I didn’t have the requisite 550g of starter ready but had 300g of starter so adjusted the recipe accordingly.  When I was transcribing from the internet to a piece of paper (yes I’m still old school and typically don’t just look at a screen for my recipes but actually write them down on paper), I accidentally wrote my 2 so it kinda looked like a 7.  So when I was weighing out the water, I accidentally did about 50% more than I had anticipated using.  I then had to do a bunch of math to try to even things out.  I’m not even going to try putting the actual recipe values on here (just go look at the original recipe).  I’ll just go through my process and how it came out.

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Sourdough on top of rest of mixture
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After initial mix before adding in the extra water (after about 20 minutes of kneading)
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Added the extra water and tried to incorporate

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Banana Bread

Banana Bread

This is something I started making (really this is only the 2nd time I’ve made it) out of necessity.  Typically we buy bananas every week so I can take to work.  Occasionally I’m just too busy at work and don’t end up eating all the bananas.  When they start to get very ripe or over ripe, they’re not great to eat (the dog would beg to differ).  The first time I did it I didn’t even think about documenting it.  And then today when I wanted to make it again I had to google recipes.  I had started documenting my baking/cooking here so I had one place to go back to for recipes so I figured I should document today’s endeavor.  Banana bread is a lot easier to put together than making regular bread.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups All Purpose flour
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup softened butter
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 ripened bananas
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 large eggs
  1.  Combine dry ingrediets (flour, baking soda, salt) in one bowl.
  2.  Cream butter and brown sugar together.  Then add in mashed bananas, vanilla, and eggs.  Combine
  3. Most recipes say to add the wet ingredients slowly to the dry.  (I used a larger bowl for the wet ingredients so I did the opposite and slowly added the dry to the wet).
  4. Pre-heat oven to 350 F, butter a loaf pan (or can use parchment paper as well – we ran out so I didn’t use it and it has been hard to come by due to COVID-19).
  5. Pour mixture into loaf pan and put in oven for 60-75 minutes (until toothpick inserted comes out clean).
  6. (Optional)  Add in 1/4-1/2 chocolate chips +/- walnuts (we didn’t have any and I don’t really care for it).  Add to mixture after combining above.

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Sourdough bread (fresh starter!)

Sourdough bread (fresh starter!)

D found this recipe from the King Arthur flour web site about a no-knead sourdough.  Since I just made a starter again (see this post), I figured this would be a good first try.  I followed this site’s directions relatively closely and will put my slight alteration.

Ingredients

  • 225 g fresh sourdough starter (it wasn’t exactly fresh as I had fed it around 7 am and didn’t make the dough until about 7 pm…most things I read said you should start your recipe about 4 hours after feeding your starter)
  • 395 g luke warm water
  • 598 g bread flour
  • 15 g salt
  1.  I took all the ingredients and mixed them in a large metal bowl (I typically use a metal bowl for my baking…I know a lot of places say you should use wooden or plastic but I haven’t had any issues with rising).  I made it into a cohesive moist dough, covered it with my plate (that fits almost perfectly as a lid) and let it sit for 1 hour.
  2. Next I lifted the dough and then folded it over on itself (I just grab a piece from the edge and fold it to the center and then go around the edge of it to fold on itself).  I covered it again and let it rest another 1 hour.
  3. I repeated step 2 another 2 times (total of 3 hours) and folded it one more time after the last hour wait.  I then covered it and put it in the fridge.
  4. The King Arthur site says you can let it sit in the fridge for as little as 8 hours and up to 48 hours.  Since I started it on one of my work days, I was going to wait until my day off to bake.  I ended up letting it sit in the fridge for about 36 hours.
  5. On a well floured counter, I poured out the dough, formed a rough ball and let it sit for 15-20 minutes.
  6. I then shaped it into a boule and with seam side up put it in a well greased bowl.  The dough ball didn’t really rise much (which is what it said from the original recipe) but did spread out and relax.  I let it come up to temperature for about 3 hours (again it depends on warmth of your house…2.5 to 3 hours)
  7. About 1 hour before baking I preheated the oven to 500 F.  I put in my dutch over with the lid partially ajar to preheat as well (as this is my baking container).
  8. After 3 hours, I dumped the dough into the dutch oven, floured the top and made 4  cuts on top with a sharp knife.
  9. I replaced the dutch oven cover, put it in the oven and reduced the temperature to 450 F.  I baked it for 45 minutes covered.
  10. After 45 minutes, I removed the cover and allowed it to bake another 10 min (~10-15 min until internal temp is at least 205 F).

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