Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza by Curtis Ide Read Free Book Online
Authors: Curtis Ide
Well, I did not want to give up my day job, so writing down what I do was the best way for me to share my passion with you!
Please do not feel restricted by the system. In the end, you get to pick what you do and how you feel about it. Use Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza as a guide like you would any cookbook; follow it when it helps you make better pizza, modify or ignore it wherever it suits you, and even thumb your nose at it when you want!
Planning Your Pizza
The Passionate About Pizza System
You will make great homemade pizza every time you try if you ignite your passion and follow a systematic approach to making pizza. PLANyour pizza-making activities, use the same equipment and high-quality ingredients each time, use proven preparation techniques, rely on your recipes, and work to make continual improvements.
Planning
Who wants to plan? Planning is a pain, right? Well, I would say that you should spend just enough time thinking out what you are going to do so that you will know what is going to happen. Planning lets you get comfortable with what is going to happen, ensures that you will have what you will need on hand, and lets you consider other things that will help make your pizza making experience pleasant. This chapter covers some of those things that you should consider.
How Much Time Do You Have?
As you make pizza, time can be your friend or it can be your enemy. If you have 30 minutes to mix the dough, let it rise, prepare the pizza, and bake it, then time is clearly your enemy (or is at least something that you must respect). On the other hand, thirty minutes to shape, assemble, and bake a pizza is much more realistic; at least it is realistic if you are making thin-style pizza.
So just how long is this pizza going to take you to make? The entire process should take you two to three (2 – 3) hours. The dough should take you about fifteen to twenty minutes to mix and knead. The dough will rise for about sixty minutes. Basic pizza sauce should come together in less than five minutes and cooks for about thirty minutes so it can be finished entirely during the time the dough rises. Toppings can be prepared while the sauce cooks and the dough rises. Shaping the dough and assembling the pizza will take five to twenty minutes, depending on the complexity of the pizza. The pizza will bake for fifteen to forty minutes depending on the style. Remember, the key is to do it all in the right order!
With a little advance planning, you can turn time into your friend as you make a pizza. The book describes the individual steps involved in making pizza in the order that makes it easiest to create a pizza from start to finish. If you overlay these steps onto the time that you have available during the day, you can usually come up with an arrangement that lets you make a pizza in whatever time you have available.
Plan Ahead
You can use the time-bake feature of your oven to preheat the baking stone for you while you are away. I sometimes set mine to turn on one hour before I am to arrive home, so that I can quickly shape the pizza and pop it in the oven. Alternatively, have your spouse preheat the stone for you.
Pizza on a Weeknight
Many people order pizza delivery or pop a frozen pizza into the oven when they want pizza during the week because there is so little time after work for cooking. Many times, I make pizza on a weeknight using the following system. I try to prepare ahead of time so that all I have to do is shape, assemble, and bake the pizza at dinnertime.
In short, I stack everything in my favor for quickly making a pizza when I am ready to eat. I freeze my Basic Pizza Sauce in one-cup containers when I have extra. I buy shredded Mozzarella cheese and store it in the refrigerator or freezer in eight-ounce packages and I buy sliced pepperoni in the delicatessen section of the supermarket. On the morning of the day I want pizza,
Please do not feel restricted by the system. In the end, you get to pick what you do and how you feel about it. Use Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza as a guide like you would any cookbook; follow it when it helps you make better pizza, modify or ignore it wherever it suits you, and even thumb your nose at it when you want!
Planning Your Pizza
The Passionate About Pizza System
You will make great homemade pizza every time you try if you ignite your passion and follow a systematic approach to making pizza. PLANyour pizza-making activities, use the same equipment and high-quality ingredients each time, use proven preparation techniques, rely on your recipes, and work to make continual improvements.
Planning
Who wants to plan? Planning is a pain, right? Well, I would say that you should spend just enough time thinking out what you are going to do so that you will know what is going to happen. Planning lets you get comfortable with what is going to happen, ensures that you will have what you will need on hand, and lets you consider other things that will help make your pizza making experience pleasant. This chapter covers some of those things that you should consider.
How Much Time Do You Have?
As you make pizza, time can be your friend or it can be your enemy. If you have 30 minutes to mix the dough, let it rise, prepare the pizza, and bake it, then time is clearly your enemy (or is at least something that you must respect). On the other hand, thirty minutes to shape, assemble, and bake a pizza is much more realistic; at least it is realistic if you are making thin-style pizza.
So just how long is this pizza going to take you to make? The entire process should take you two to three (2 – 3) hours. The dough should take you about fifteen to twenty minutes to mix and knead. The dough will rise for about sixty minutes. Basic pizza sauce should come together in less than five minutes and cooks for about thirty minutes so it can be finished entirely during the time the dough rises. Toppings can be prepared while the sauce cooks and the dough rises. Shaping the dough and assembling the pizza will take five to twenty minutes, depending on the complexity of the pizza. The pizza will bake for fifteen to forty minutes depending on the style. Remember, the key is to do it all in the right order!
With a little advance planning, you can turn time into your friend as you make a pizza. The book describes the individual steps involved in making pizza in the order that makes it easiest to create a pizza from start to finish. If you overlay these steps onto the time that you have available during the day, you can usually come up with an arrangement that lets you make a pizza in whatever time you have available.
Plan Ahead
You can use the time-bake feature of your oven to preheat the baking stone for you while you are away. I sometimes set mine to turn on one hour before I am to arrive home, so that I can quickly shape the pizza and pop it in the oven. Alternatively, have your spouse preheat the stone for you.
Pizza on a Weeknight
Many people order pizza delivery or pop a frozen pizza into the oven when they want pizza during the week because there is so little time after work for cooking. Many times, I make pizza on a weeknight using the following system. I try to prepare ahead of time so that all I have to do is shape, assemble, and bake the pizza at dinnertime.
In short, I stack everything in my favor for quickly making a pizza when I am ready to eat. I freeze my Basic Pizza Sauce in one-cup containers when I have extra. I buy shredded Mozzarella cheese and store it in the refrigerator or freezer in eight-ounce packages and I buy sliced pepperoni in the delicatessen section of the supermarket. On the morning of the day I want pizza,
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