Daring Bakers Toss Dough!! Pizza Time

For the very first time, the Daring Bakers have taken on the challenge of making pizza! Specifically, “Pizza Napoletana” from Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice” which Rosa, of Rosa's Yummy Yums, says "yields a beautifully tasty, thin, crispy, yet chewy pizza crust" - and it did! By the way, did you know that Mr. Reinhart has a blog?? Probably, but I didn't! Now I do. How fun!

Anyway, I have wanted to try making this kind of pizza crust ever since there was an extensive article in one of my copy of Cuisine at Home several years ago. The longer fermenting period and the idea that I could toss pizza at home was too fun. For some reason though I just always never found the time. Now I don't know why. The actual 'active' time that this recipe takes is so minimal. I think the problem for me is that when it comes to meals I haven't always been very good at planning ahead. Now, I am working at that more, and with the nudge from the DB challenge - the time of the tossing of dough in our house had finally arrived! I can't wait to see how the other Daring Bakers fared with tossing their dough.

As part of the challenge we were given the task of providing a photograph of our dough tossing experience and were challenged to try it with at least three of the dough balls. Well, I was determined to try it so I actually tossed all of them (especially since we didn't get much lift-off until the third round). It will be really fun to practise my technique and get better at this. My five year old thought it was the coolest thing he had seen me do in a long time. We usually make homemade pizza a couple of times a month so it would be really fun to incorporate this tradition into our routine.

After two not so good attempts at tossing the dough - it just stretched over my knuckles - I finally got my third dough ball into the right texture to give it a few tosses. It was a kind of giddy feeling and experience.

The only piece of specialty equipment I didn't already have was a pizza peel. I have wanted to get one for a long time, but just never have. I thought about trying to get one this time, but they were almost $30 and that just wasn't happening. So, I spent $1.50 instead on a nice, rectangular, clean piece of cardboard - a big sheet cake board. It worked perfectly. I just set the parchment onto the cake board and put the cornmeal on the parchment. I would still like to have a peel, but in the meantime, this works just fine.

For our toppings we didn't really get creative, because, well, this is what my son likes and it was just the two of us - cheese and pepperoni (aside from our usual bbq chicken and bacon topping) and this was a quick to put together dinner the other night. I did try to be a little creative though and I made my own 'stuffed crust' pizza. I used some pieces of string cheese, pulled into about three pieces so they weren't super thick, and wrapped them in the edge of the crust (sorry, no pictures of the how-to). It turned out really good and helped solve the problem for those who don't always like the crust edges (I do, but the five year old doesn't).

Thanks as always to Lis and Ivvone for creating this dynamic group and letting us all be a part of it. I know I don't get around to comment much, but I am seeing how you did and it is alot of fun! Anyway, I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did this month! Thanks to Rosa for a great challenge - you can find the recipe and directions for your own toss worthy dough on Rosa's blog and of course in Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice”!