Pizza Pizza

Pizza. It's my specialty, and today's class was just about that. We were also feeding parents, who were coming to school to fill in some sort of survey, so the production of enough food to feed about 50 mouths were also on the agenda.

Alas, this was the lesson for bread in general, so I began by speaking a little bit to yeast and gluten. Yeast are these neat little bacteria that can be stored stably at room temp, but when you give them a combination of water, warmth and food (the sugars in flour or, umm, sugar), and they eat and poop out CO2, the gas that makes things puff up when baked. That which is puffing is defined by the proteins in the flour called gluten -- the more gluten you have, the firmer, tougher hole structure the bread will have. Less gluten, you have more tender, looser hole structure like for cake or wonderbread.

The lesson was rather straight forward. Make the dough, let it rest and rise for an hour while prepping the toppings. Stretch dough, top, bake, serve. It was nice that there was a good variety of tasks to keep every one hopping, and cleaning. I brought in two pizza stones for the convection oven, but the pilot lights on the two conventional ovens were out so we had a bit of a pinch point in our production. We produced about 30 pies, some of surprisingly good quality, some of pretty laughable  looks. One student could not get the hang of stretching, and bungled 4 in a row and wanted to give up. I told her we made extra on purpose, and that she should just keep going. And she did, and the 5th was fine. I told her I wanted to smack her hard, in a good way. 

I went on a bit about how less is more, how a properly stretched pizza skin can not accept too many topping without it becoming a soupy mess when it hits the plate. I also stressed the importance of keeping the pizza peel dry, or the pizza would stick and create an ungodly mess. A few times they left the pizza on the board too long and I showed them how to lift up an edge and blow, unsticking the raw skin. Funnily enough, no one's pizza died except for the very last one, where the student built her pie on a damp peel.

Undecided what to cook next week. On the sign in sheet, got some nice feedback, tho: 

Introduction to Yeast (Bagels and Briochies and Croissants and Pretzels OH MY!)

Today was a fun day, starting off with a bang with Dirty Kim and I setting up mise for four items: two pre-fermented items and two blanched quick-risen items.

Chef G gave an interesting lecture about the basics of baking bread. Baking is effected by the quality of the flour, water and the environment, specifically temperature and humidity. Below 60 degrees will retard yeast growth, 140 degrees will kill year, and the ideal zone is 75-78 degrees. In a professional mass-produced bakery, the temp of the environment, the flour and the water will be measured precisely and adjusted so when the dry and the wet come together, it'll be at the 75-78 degree spot where the yeast will be maximized.

The pre-fermented items were brioche and croissants. Brioche is kind of like a cross between cake and bread. Pre-fermented means you make a starter (or 'levain' or 'sponge' or 'sour dough', there is a name for it in every culture) in which you get the yeast in liquid and wake it up. For the brioche, yeast was dissolved into warm milk, then flour added. Once fermented for about a half hour, a pate was made in the mixer -- creamed butter, sugar, salt, eggs with extra egg yolks and more flour. Once both were put in, it was beaten with a dough hook for a good 15 minutes. Fat prevents yeast from growing and gluten from developing, hence the pre-ferment and the extra time in the mixer.

Croissants is part of the 'laminated' group, such as danishes and puff pastry -- the dough if folded with butter into creating layers. Unlike puff pastry, croissants have yeast and a single fold, rather than puff's multiple double folds Today, we made the croissant and brioche doughs, and were put on ice by the end of class to take them up again Monday.


Bagels and pretzels are blanched and quick-risen, surprisingly similar and shockingly easy to make. Our bagel recipe called for a dough made of bread flour, salt, a little sugar, warm water with yeast dissolved. Once the dough was made, it was allowed to rest for about 5 minutes, then rolled and shaped into rings. Dropped in boiling water (with a little sugar in it), the dough rings immediately rose to the top, due to the gas let off from the yeast. After about thirty seconds, scooped out, laid out and sprinkled with sesame seeds and salt. Into the oven, about 20 minutes later nicely browned bagels, with a nice crunch on the outside and a satisfying chew in the middle.

Pretzels aren't hell of a lot different. The dough has some butter and no sugar, with a dash of Tabasco. After making the dough, it rested for about 10 minutes, then rolled into about 20 inch tubes, then twisted into the pretzel shape. Dropped into plain boiling water for about 30 seconds, floating from the yeast's gasses, then laid out and sprinkled with salt (and in our case, sesame). Into the oven, puffy and brown.

Next week, we whip out some brioche forms, croissants and pain au chocolat. Midweek....what I've been waiting for...PIZZA!

ADDENDA:
Bagels are shockingly easy to make. There are so many great bagel joints in NYC (in fact Kossars, one of the best in the word, is on my block) that I guess it seems silly to take the time and effort to make your own, when in the end the price per bagel will be a wash -- still, there is something satisfying about eating such a familiar item....that you made yourself.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Good milks and yogurt, banana, blueberries, cherries, grapes, flax, salt, ice, YUMMY!

AM TASTINGS: 10:30-11:30, half a sesame pretzel, two small (4oz) sesame bagels with cream cheese, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

PM WATERING: 1pm, 1 quart water

LUNCH: 2:30pm, school made mushroom risotto, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4:30, part of a school made pretzel, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5pm, large green salad with olive oil & balsamic, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 6pm, piece of white chocolate, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
White chocolate is puerile- vanilla chocolate, it's like dry water or an atheist God, it just doesn't work or make sense. It was lying around the house from the pizza night with fellow students.

DINNER: 7:15pm, spag & meatball, one small slice of pizza, water, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5
Isabella's Oven's pizza tonight was a little underdone and the sauce a little over tangy, fneh.