Pizza and Beer, The Anticipation

Before I begin, I want to thank the one responsible for creating/duplicating the recipe for Napoletana Pizza dough, Peter Reinhart —He wrote the book on breads and doughs, literally. (See image). If you like bread, want to make it and make it well, you need this book.

For my entire life, as long as I can remember, I have listed pizza as one of my favorite foods whenever asked. At a very young age, I had drawn pizzas often, and I had made mini pizzas using muffins for the crust when I was old enough to help in the kitchen. Now that I am older (Happy Birthday by the way Jeff) I have set out to finally make great pizza starting with the crust.

To make a long story short, my pizza quest taught me that different crust recipes were used for different styles of pizzas. Chicago deep dish, the classic European crust are to name a few, but the one I like is that of the Napoletana crust. The former crusts mentioned are not inferior by any means. They are simply created differently in order to accommodate the unique style of the pizza sought after. And, for lack of a better description, the Napoletana is a crust of medium thickness with a thin, crisp, outer crust that envelopes the moist, moderate airy crumb inside. It bubbles a bit along the outer edges but the moisture stays inside.

My first pizza dough attempt was a disaster. It looked similar to an over sized, very thin, tough, chewy crumpet, if there is such a thing. Determined and driven by both my love for pizza and my tenacious nature, I pursued. I researched and discovered among many things the cold fermentation process of the dough. Hmmm... This sounds familiar to the fermentation of a lager beer. Intrigued, I delved into the very long and fastidious recipe of Reinhart's Napoletana pizza crust dough. In a relatively short amount of time, I got it.

In fact, in the next blog, I will show you my home made pizza oven and how it can be made for cheap.

So, for my birthday dinner, I will be sliding the pizzas in the pizza oven and enjoying them with my family. Can you guess what beverage I will be having with that? Right! Beer.

I work until beer o’clock.--Steven King