Pizza Dough Recipe, Best Taste - Clean and Supportive

For years I have held off on making my own pizza dough.  I tried a couple of times, but I didn’t like the taste and time it took to make the dough.  So I would use pre made dough from Whole Food or Trader Joe’s.

Over the past few months I have gone back to trying to make my own pizza dough, using Woodstone’s pizza dough recipe which is the same company that makes my pizza oven.  I like this recipe because of the taste, clean and supportive for toppings.

Yield: Makes 6 ea. 7-oz. dough balls

 

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Ingredients

1/2 tsp. dry instant yeast
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 cup water, 65 degrees
1 cup semolina flour, Bob’s Red Mill is great
 4 1/2  -5 cups all-purpose flour, we prefer King Arthur for this dough
Olive oil

Writing this post I discovered this dough tip page that gives you great information to modify the recipe.

Three Styles of Crust

1. Crispy Crust (thin or thicker crust): Lower gluten (as low as 7.5% is available), a wetter dough (without being sticky), protein content can be the same or lower (for less chewy dough), and oven temperatures between 550-600 degrees.
   • Lower temperature for thicker crust (needs to cook longer, 5-7 minutes)
   • Higher temperature for thin crust (quicker bake, 3-4 minutes)
   • Minimal toppings and sauce: the more “stuff” you have on the pizza the longer it will take to cook and the less crispy it will be.
2. Cracker Crisp Crust: low protein (10.5-11.5) low gluten flour, longer mixing time (12 minutes) better developed dough.
3. Thick and Chewy Crust: Gluten in the range of 12-13% and a bit dryer dough, higher protein as well as a lower oven temperature (525-550 degrees) and longer cooking times (6-9 minutes). Use a larger dough ball if using our dough. This is a good style if you like more toppings and sauce on your pizza.

Woodstone Ovens in the home

I just chatted with one of the folks at Woodstone Corp and we had a nice discussion on using the Woodstone oven.  I enjoy cooking and some other chefs who like their woodstone oven at work have one at home too.

Wood Stone is the oven of choice for hundreds of world-class chefs in their restaurants. Of course, they love them so much that they naturally want to have the same oven to play with at home! You too can cook in the same oven favored by the likes of Bobby Flay, Tom Colicchio, Wolfgang Puck, and Michael Mina with Wood Stone Home!

I work from my home office so I guess I could say I use my oven at work and home too.

Tonight’s menu is roasted chicken, pizza, and roasted broccoli.

What did you do Yesterday? Lunch at Facebook's 6th annual Sam Choy Luau Lunch

I headed down to the bay area yesterday, and there were probably 20 people on the plane who were heading to Uptime Symposium.  We all landed from SEA to SJC at 9:10a and everyone was off to Uptime, except me.  I had a meeting at Facebook and was able to go to  6th annual Sam Choy Lunch.  

The food was awesome pork, chicken, fish, beef, and the long long line for the Poke

Hey Everyone!
Today, Tuesday May 20th we are having our 6th Annual Sam Choy Luau at Hack Square!

Coming Soon, Home Meal Planning Service - Gathered Table

A New Home Meal Planning Service is coming soon called Gathered Table.  Geekwire covers the soft launch.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz backs Gatheredtable, a new way for families to plan menus for the week

by John Cook on 3/26/2014 at 5:51 pm | 0 Comments

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Former Starbucks exec Mary Egan is looking to change the way Americans plan family meals.

If you’re like me, family dinner time is usually a mad scramble to find something to eat, typically resulting in a trip to the local Thai restaurant, burger joint or pizza parlor. And I’m not alone. About 60 percent of families don’t know what they’ll put on the dinner table that night.

Former Starbucks executive Mary Egan feels your pain. And she’s here to help with a new startup called Gatheredtable — an online service that automatically generates a menu of weekly meals, tailored for your families’ preferences.

I can think of a lot of people who could use this type of service with these benefits.

I enjoy cooking and cooking faster is not an objective.  By 7a in the morning I have already figured out what I want to cook for dinner and whether the kids will be around for dinner. The only thing really stressful about cooking is when other people are in my kitchen.  As long as people stay out of my kitchen stress is low. :-) I spend so much of the day on the computer and creating software services, the last thing I want to do is spend more time on the computer to figure out a meal and a recipe.  I like cooking because it is time when I am not looking at a smartphone, tablet, or computer.  Just have a beer or glass of wine and my pizza oven.

Got a new Pizza Peel for my Woodstone Oven

On my way to Vancouver last week for the Wavefront Wireless Conference I was driving by myself and getting close to Bellingham.  Bellingham is where Woodstone Oven’s are made that are the same ovens you see in Whole Food, California Pizza Kitchen, many corporate cafeterias, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants, and my kitchen.  I go to Serious Pie at least twice a month given a construction project I am working on is right next to it, and was able to have bfast with one of my Apple friends who was in town for vacation.

Below is one of two ovens at Serious Pie.  I usually try to talk to the cook’s to get a few tips on how they use their oven.  I am trying to bump the temperature of my over from 550 to 600 to get a better crust on the pizza.

Woodstone Oven has a training room right next to lobby.  And, I went in to check out the latest gear.  My oven is the same as the one on the left which is a 4’ chuckanut model.

One of the changes Woodstone made is to replace the stainless steel pizza peel (left) with an aluminum one (right).

What’s wrong with the stainless steel one?  Even when you put corn meal or semolina flour down, the pizza tends to stick too much.  And I would swap to a wood peel to make the pizza.  The aluminum one is a rough brushed finish that makes it much easier to slide the pizza.

I’ve only made one pizza with the new peel, and it is so much better than the stainless steel one.  Problem is aluminum will dent and bend much easier than the stainless steel.