First Post-Pizzamaking.com Pizzas

I recently joined the Pizzamaking.com forum. The depth of information available there is astounding. I took some of the flour out of my 50 pound bag (a slight exaggeration - I broken the 50 pound bag down into lots of 4 to 5 pound vacuum sealed bags and one big jar) and made some dough on Monday night and put it in the fridge. The recipe was developed by a guy whose screen name is Glutenboy. How bad could the dough be? Tonight I put the homemade pizza steel in the oven and fired it up.

I don't know if it is the mixing technique (all the yeast and water and half the flour get mixed first) or the high protein flour or some combination of both, but this is the first time I felt like I was able to work with the dough and shape a pizza. I can't tell you how many video's I've watched only to tear the dough. No problems tonight. I even tried to flip the dough between my hands and kind of got the hang of that. I wouldn't have ever tried to do that before because the result would have been more like a donut once my hand went straight through. I used Scalifini crushed tomatoes for the sauce and Trader Joe's mozzarella for the cheese. Once again, the olive pizza is for the kids. I'll eat it, but doubt I would ever pick just a black olive pizza.

I've still got to work on how I use the oven. For the most part, these were baked for 3 minutes at 550 and then broiled for 1 minute. I'm probably more excited than I should be. Hopefully hanging around that website continues to assist in making improved pizza. Progress...