Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Daring Baker's Challenge

This was my first month participating in this fun event.
The challenge was pizza crust from scratch, flipping it an everything!
I was very excited because the recipe allowed you to put whatever topping on it that you wanted. I was having people over for football, so I was going to do a basic pepperoni pizza and a garlic pizza with colored bell peppers.

I don't have too much to report because I failed. I hate to admit that, b/c I generally have good luck with everything that I try... but I made it up to the point where I was trying to stretch it out and it just kept getting holes in it. I am sort of "yeast challenged". That's why I was so happy when I got my breadmaker. Plus when I preheated my stonewear in the oven, my house filled up with smoke. haha!

aww well... I'm anxious to see what the next challenge that awaits is... hopefully I'll have better luck.

2 comments:

Eat4Fun said...

Welcome to the Daring Bakers! The pizza challenge was my 4th challenge so I'm relatively new too.

Sorry to read about the challenge, but there's always a next month!

Renata said...

I use the pizza crust recipe from Tyler Florence (you can find it on food network site). I watched his food 911 pizza episode many years ago and finally learned how to make it right (or right enough). I make the dough in my bread machine, but it works well by hand too (his instructions are for a stand mixer). I have also done it with a whole wheat/bread flour mix that has turned out well too. Two things that help: After the dough has risen, punch it down then divide it however you wish. Then you let it rest for 10 minutes. Then it easily spreads out (I don't do the stretching and tossing thing. I'd fail at that too). The other really useful "tool" is buying Reynold's nonstick foil. You can spread out your pizza crust on that, then put it right in the oven. It makes it easier to do several pizzas in series and it slides right off the foil when it is baked. And you can wipe the foil down and use it again later.
Well, I didn't mean for this to be a treatise on making pizza, but it has been pretty much foolproof for me.