My Baking Handicap Revealed

Tonight we ate pizza; however, it was not the pizza I had intended for us to eat. Ever since I started getting into baking I developed a nemesis in the form of yeast. It just doesn’t like to cooperate for me by activating and rising like it should. It likes to die on me which leaves me with a major baking handicap. I have had a few successful incidents with yeast with yeast which gave me enough of a false confidence to give it a try tonight. I had some fresh mozzarella in the fridge and tons of fresh basil in my garden, so I decided to make a Pizza Margherita like the one Russ and I have had at local Italian restaurant and love.

I originally picked a recipe out of my King Arthur Whole Grain cookbook for an Overnight Pizza Crust… but I never got around to making it the night before, so then I found two other recipes to try that didn’t have to sit overnight. The first recipe is from an old CL for Quick-and-Easy Pizza Crust and the recipe that Smitten Kitchen used for pizza dough. You might wonder why I decided to try two recipes…. Two reasons: 1. Russ and I have tried other recipes in the past and haven’t found one we love, so why not try two since they use basically the same ingredients and are easy to put together 2. It gives me more chances that the yeast will work in at least one of them. So, I put all the dry ingredients for each in their separate bowls (CL’s had bread flour, salt, sugar, yeast and SK’s had regular flour, salt, and yeast). You then add the lukewarm water and olive oil to each and form a ball. You then knead it and put it back in the bowl to let it rise. I did everything exactly as the recipe states… except I think my water was more than lukewarm. I let both balls of dough rest and waited on them to rise…. Only to come back later to find that neither had really risen much at all. At this point I was still hopeful that one would turn out, so I decided to go ahead and try to use the dough. So I rolled it out and started to pre-bake the dough. The toppings for a Margherita don’t need to be baked for very long, so I wanted to pre-bake the crust. Hang on for a second and I’ll come back to the dough.

The sauce…. I didn’t follow a recipe because I knew I wanted my sauce to taste like the one from the restaurant and I didn’t find a recipe that would yield that result. I wanted a fresh, simple, clean tasting sauce with flavor, but not spice to it. So, I minced three garlic cloves and sautéed them in a little olive oil. Then I added 1 can of petite diced tomatoes (14.5 oz) and 1 can of tomato sauce (8 oz). I let this simmer and added a little salt, pepper and dried Italian seasoning to it. It was just the taste and texture I was going for… it was perfect for a Pizza Margherita!

I sliced the fresh mozzarella and the basil. Once the crusts pre-baked for a little bit I pulled them out and added the sauce. I let this bake for a few minutes and then added the mozzarella and let it bake until it was just about to melt. I then took it out and added the basil to the top. It was beautiful and smelled wonderful… but I knew that the dough while cooked through was too doughy and light and little crisp as it should have been. So….we tasted it and the sauce was perfect and the mozzarella and basil were fresh and yummy and the crust was doughy at best. The yeast had died and the dough consequently was very dense and doughy. Russ offered to eat it for dinner because he is super sweet like that, but I had him go ahead order Papa John’s. This is not the first meal I have made where we ended up eating take out instead and I am sure it won’t be the last. It also won’t be the last time that I make homemade pizza dough. I’ll try it again and when I do I will test the water temperature with a thermometer before adding it to the dry ingredients and keep my fingers crossed.

Russ rates the sauce a 9 and the crusts a 4.