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The Lunch Pizza Saga Continues.....
The latest experiment in the Luncheon Pizza Saga was to see if a 6 day old crust that had been sitting in a bowl in the chiller since kneading would still rise. I've taken to kneading the full batch of dough (makes 2 16in crusts) before cutting in half, half sits in the fridge for 2-3 days before cooking another Pizza. I pulled it out of the chiller this morning and within the first hour a large bubble started to form right off center of the bowl. Well after 4 hours quite a few bubbles were covering the top of the uncooked crust, things were looking good. I oiled up the large iron skillet and turned the crust into it, stretching the crust in the oiled pan. You can see after the time had passed the bubbles that have formed from the Yeast hard at work.
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Leaving the crust in this state for 1-1/2 hours allowed it to rise 3/4's of a inch before the oven buzzer went off letting me know it was at 450 degrees.
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While the oven was heating I thinly sliced leftover Italian Sausage links grilled earlier in the week along with some Purple Onion and lastly slicing up SuperDave's Kryptonite Button Mushrooms. The sauce was made by blending a can of the Red Gold seasoned diced Tomatoes along with a teaspoon of dried Oregano to boost the flavor.
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The crust was lightly sauced, the Italian Cheese blend & Mozzarella Cheese added.
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Now for a bit of Engineering! The last pizza retained too much of the moisture from the onions and mushrooms so Canadian Bacon was led off with to hold the onions up off the cheese for their initial water loss, same for the mushrooms. Then came the thin sliced sausage layer completing a serious amount of topping to a serious pizza crust.
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25 minutes later out of the oven the experimental Pizza Crust cooked up magnificently! Super light and airy, tender to chew but still retained the crunch desired.
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The second from the bottom rack was used in the oven. Stretching the crust using the Greek Olive oil to prevent the crust from sticking in the pan allowed the bottom of the crust to fry to a golden brown but tender as a Buttermilk Biscuit top. I hope you enjoy.
P.S. The Bananas in the photo is for Banana Bread with toasted Pecans later in the week or as soon as they are over ripe.
