Another Saturday, Another Pizza - PICS

Oh Davydd,That margherita is making me drool....another masterpiece...e-mail me a piece!!!

Davydd

That sucker looks amazing. I'm glad that there have been some postings. I forgot about this thread. All sorts of great looking pies.

mark

Davy, you have inspired me to at least try to make a pizza, dough and all. Yours look great and  Saturday around your house would be something to look foward to. Thanks for the posts.

This entire thread is amazing.
 
Davydd, I'll see you this Saturday. What time works for you? ;)

How should I kneed my pizza dough?

I have read 2-3 minutes and 10-15 minutes.  Any advise I appreciate.   Thanks.

Davydd


Last night I was really prepared to make two pizzas but invitees bailed out on me. So I saved my second dough ball for tonight's dinner. This time I decided to make an "official" Margherita pizza. I say official because the ingredients were strictly to recipe but maybe not all that authentic. My base sauce was a cup of chopped cherry tomatoes, 3 garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a dash of salt and ground pepper. The cheese was 8 oz. of 100% mozzarella and it was topped with fresh basil after it came out of the oven. This one was baked on a stone. Simple but perfecto!

F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C !!! 

Bump to an epic pizza thread I was looking for.  This one is too good to allow lost to time. (And I want it near the top so I can refer to it again this afternoon.)

WarToad


Bump to an epic pizza thread I was looking for.  This one is too good to allow lost to time. (And I want it near the top so I can refer to it again this afternoon.)

Agreed.  I had forgotten about this one, too.

Maybe I should start making pizzas again.

Had a little bump in the diet road and kind of slacked off on rich eating.

Davydd,
    Sure miss those posts!!!!!

I've posted too much. My Photobucket bandwidth has been exceeded and photos will not come back until May 15 unless I upgrade to Photobucket Pro. With every new photo post I made I grew closer to the 10 GB per month limit. Finally I exceeded it.

OK, my photos are back. I upgraded for a year.

Oh well why not? I must tell you I've walked a total of 19 miles these last three days just so I can eat this pizza. I foraged 21 morel mushrooms out of my woods last week and decided I would make this Morel mushroom, Italian hot sausage, mozzarella cheese, black olive and onion pizza with whole wheat crust this Saturday night. I only sliced up two morels. In afterthought maybe I should have used more but those two had a local retail value of $8. You won't find a pizza like this in any restaurant.

I am all over this pizza...it looks to be as good as it can get!

Gorgeous pizza. The morels I've had have been rather subtle and delicate in flavor, so were these fairly strong? How did they stand up against the other flavors?

That is a work of art...and you,my man, are an ARTIST!!!

Just breathtaking Davydd

quijote


Gorgeous pizza. The morels I've had have been rather subtle and delicate in flavor, so were these fairly strong? How did they stand up against the other flavors?

You're right. That's why I mentioned maybe I should have loaded up with more. Morels are very subtle and delicate with an exquisite taste different than most mushrooms. The store bought, commercially cultivated button mushrooms have a much stronger taste in a pizza but are not as tasty. I've got more morels. I think the next time I will try them with a basic Margherita ingredient pizza with fresh basil.

Another Saturday, another pizza. Stay tuned. This will be a pizza unlike any you can ever hope to find in a restaurant. Hint. More morels, grilled pork tenderloin and a sauce like no other.

Anxiously awaiting your post! 

Can't wait to see what you've cooked up!!!!

I make my dough with a bread maker but with distilled water and honey instead of sugar, and kosher salt

This pizza turned out not much to look at but it was a major departure from a traditional pizza. The dough was a combination of all-purpose flour and 1/4 of whole wheat flour for starters. I hand mix and knead my dough and use nothing but flour, sea salt, yeast and water.

On the barbecue grill I grilled 9 ounces of sliced up pork tenderloin and then afterward cubed it. I then used about $16 retail's worth of morel mushrooms (4) I harvested from my woods and a scant 6 ounces of mozzarella cheese.

The difference was the sauce. I mixed together about 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise with an equal amount of a homemade hot and spicy BBQ sauce that I bought at the Excelsior, MN farmer's market. To me it tasted great. All the ingredients were simple and subtle to bland but the sauce pulled it all together and pretty much dominated the pizza except when you directly ate a piece of mushroom or tenderloin.

The sauce idea came from the restaurant, Dawson's on Main in Speedway, IN they called their Signature Sauce they served with breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches-a taste that stuck with me. In quizzing them and a little experimentation I've deduced it is about an equal combination of mayonnaise and BBQ sauce. It goes well with pork…thus the pizza.

Very different...creative....and yes, I'd love a slice!!!!!

Davydd - you were the original inspiration for our posting this week of homemade pizza, and once again you have broken the mold. That is a bea-u-ti-ful thing!

Bump - Making pizza tonight and need this most excellent thread for info.

Stop it. You're killing me!

I might as well get back in the groove. This past year my efforts had slowed down considerably. In October we flew to Rome, Italy and took a cruise that eventually got us to Naples. In Italy I got to sample a half dozen pizzas in Rome and Naples. I think I learned a lot. Simplicity and quality in ingredients makes all the difference. Since Naples I've been on a pursuit of wood-fired Margherita pizzas and have sampled quite a few in restaurants.
 
I'm still missing a brick wood-fired oven in order to match the best. However, I did find a source in Minneapolis for Italian tipo 00 flour and started buying San Marzano tomatoes grown at the base of Mt. Vesuvius. This pizza crust is 00 flour, sea salt, yeast and water only at 65% hydration hand kneaded. The sauce is nothing but San Marzano tomatoes blendered lightly. I used about 7 oz. of whole milk mozzarella cheese diced in chunks. Fresh pepperoni. Seasoned the pizza with oregano, basil and chopped fresh garlic. Also spritzed a little extra virgin olive oil on top of the dough. Baked at 550F for 8 minutes on a pre-heated stone.
 

Davydd...that's the perfect recipe.....yes, simplicity is best...I just used San Marzano tomatoes for my sunday gravy...that's all we ever use...and it does make a difference...another masterpiece, my man......wish I had a slice!!

Davydd,  I just love your attention to detail.
 
 

Another work of pizza art, Davydd. I will be looking for the San Marzano tomatoes as well as the flour when I visit my favorite Italian deli. Bob and I enjoy making pizzas, and this looks and sounds fantastic.Simplicity at its best!

Davydd, Just beautiful! Wish I had a slice of that right now!

The San Marzano tomatoes in a can from Italy can be found in lots of stores now. I bought mine at a Lunds just up the road from my house. The tipo 00 flour is a different story. I had to drive 25 miles to Northeast Minneapolis and scour a working class residential neighborhood to find a side street that had this tiny market...

I have 2 wonderful Italian deli's in mind-Gloriosos on the east side of Milw., and Tenutas in Kenosha( about 40 minutes away from me).I dont mind driving for good food or ingredients for such!!

I probably shouldn't do this. It is not even Saturday yet. But I had this left over dough reaching three days in the fridge left over from Sunday so I decided to make pizzas again tonight. I split the dough and made two thin crust personal size pizzas. The first was a prosciutto with whole milk mozzarella cheese, the San Marzano tomato sauce, fresh chopped garlic and onion, extra virgin olive oil spiced with ground basil and oregano. I'll spare you the lip lickin' photo. I didn't take one because I was busy prepping and loading the second one.
 
The second pizza I made tonight was a faithful production of a Margherita pizza. This time I used di Bufala mozzarella cheese (that's from water buffalo milk), the Italian tipo 00 flour described in an earlier message, the San Marzano tomato sauce, extra virgin olive oil and fresh basil leaves. That's it - a perfect combination in taste bringing home Naples.

Another classic...Oh is there anything better than fresh basil!!!!

Gorgeous, just gorgeous.

Davydd


I probably shouldn't do this. It is not even Saturday yet. But I had this left over dough reaching three days in the fridge left over from Sunday so I decided to make pizzas again tonight. I split the dough and made two thin crust personal size pizzas. The first was a prosciutto with whole milk mozzarella cheese, the San Marzano tomato sauce, fresh chopped garlic and onion, extra virgin olive oil spiced with ground basil and oregano. I'll spare you the lip lickin' photo. I didn't take one because I was busy prepping and loading the second one.

The second pizza I made tonight was a faithful production of a Margherita pizza. This time I used di Bufala mozzarella cheese (that's from water buffalo milk), the Italian tipo 00 flour described in an earlier message, the San Marzano tomato sauce, extra virgin olive oil and fresh basil leaves. That's it - a perfect combination in taste bringing home Naples.

 
Gonna make some of these in May, Davydd?!?!?!!?

May is breaded pork tenderloin sandwich pursuit primetime.

Way to go Davydd.  I appreciate a man of diversity.  Don't get stuck on the same thing too long
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN