If you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to read Tami’s Day 3 post on Running with Tweezers. She talks about Project Open Hand, a local Atlanta charity which offers a variety of food related services, including meals on wheels. I’ve really enjoyed reading the posts from the other participants in this challenge, but not just for their buying strategies and the dishes they create. Many of the bloggers have touched on the hunger issues that affect us locally and nationally, and I need to give this more attention as it’s the basis of the Eat on 30 challenge. I would like to do some more research on this when I get back home, particularly in regards to how it affects people in Atlanta and the various ways to help. I will be sure to pass along what I find.

For now, I have to get to bed, I have another long day ahead of me, including waking up a bit early to cook my lunch for tomorrow. Below are my photos from today.

I had a banana for breakfast ($0.28) and hit the road. Before I left I printed a coupon for QT from coupons.com which offered a free sandwich or wrap with no other purchase necessary, not a bad deal at all for $4 sandwich.

For lunch I had chicken noodle soup, using the broth from yesterday. Nothing fancy, just some egg noodles, chicken breast, celery, and carrot. The cost came to $1.64. I had half the soup with lunch, along with my average, but welcome QT sandwich.

lunch 3: chicken soup + turkey/roast beef gas station sandwich – cost: $1.65

For dinner I ate the rest of the soup, then made some pot stickers. I had never made the wonton dough from scratch before, but it was technically easy, I can’t say I will be making them myself very often, as it’s fairly time consuming and the $1 packs of wrappers from an Asian market are pretty good.

The filling was a small amount of ground pork + blanched/chopped cabbage and zucchini.

They weren’t bad at all, but it was very sticky and I had a hard time getting the dough thin enough.

dinner 3: pork + zucchini + cabbage pot stickers – total cost: $0.72

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m quite the “list & series” type of person, which really fits my Type A (uptight?) personality. I keep lists for everything. You ought to see my car mileage, maintenance, and oil records.

Before I dig into this post (TWIST!), I thought it would be an appropriate time to pass along some quick pizza news:

• Varasano’s announced that for $12.95 you can try every pizza on the menu. All the pizzas. $12.95. No-brainer.
• There is an awesome video chronicling a day at Una Pizza Napoletana in NYC. They are one of the most heralded pizza places in the country, and though the video is short, it’s insightful and shows the love that goes into making great pizza.
• The Food Network did an experiment to try to find out for sure – does the water used in pizza matter? Some people claim the NYC water is the reason why the pizza is so good up there, but I’m of the opinion that it’s a load of baloney. In my post on Pizzeria Venti, I stated my opinion on this matter, and the Executive Chef of Pizzeria Venti commented on the post with some interesting thoughts on why water from a specific area can be important. Check out the FN video here to see the surprising results.
• The first coal pizza oven in Georgia is coming soon, to Max’s, a Concentrics Restaurant. In case you didn’t know, the first pizza joint in the country, Lombardi’s, uses a coal oven, so this is definitely not a new concept, but it’s slightly ground-breaking for our area. As Cliff said, the pizza wars are going to be in full effect.
• Finally – would you pay $100 for this? Bricks seem to do just fine.

Back to the post at hand!

I was stoked to see that the April issue of BA had a section on pizza parties, and they had a few topping/sauce suggestions that seemed worthwhile. Also, I just received a mixer for my birthday, so I’ve been eager to make some dough.

My dough recipe is a dumbed-down version of Jeff Varasano’s – I had a post about it last September. My pictures sucked pretty bad back then, and my dough kinda did too. One problem was that I was using a food processor with a dough blade, and I had to sit there for 5 minutes and pulse the dough/batter mix every few seconds. It’s a real pain in the ass and the dough doesn’t get worked properly. With the mixer, I create the really wet dough (seen below) and can just set the mixer on low for 7-8 minutes before it’s initial rest, followed by the addition of the remainder of the flour.

After the 7-8 minute mix, the dough rests for 20 minutes. Then I start the mixer back up and slowly add the rest of my flour over the course of 6-7 minutes. When it’s barely workable, but still very wet, the dough gets dumped out onto my well-floured counter and worked into two dough balls.

Here’s what it looked like right before I put it in the refrigerator.

Now compare that dough with the picture above, which is from the last time I made pizza. See how much smoother it is when I use the mixer? My new dough was dreamy.

My brother Thomas was helping out and got started with the Arugula-Pistachio Pesto from BA.

Meanwhile I roasted some Roma tomatoes with fresh oregano, salt, and pepper.

Here the pesto is done and looking mighty green.

The other sauce we made from BA was their Roasted-Tomato sauce.

With our sauces ready, we were off and running. I used too much pesto but hey, worse things have happened.

This pizza was topped with the pesto, olive oil, sliced/steamed potatoes, and mozzarella. The dough was thin, crispy, and it even held up pretty well considering the extreme amount of pesto.

Next up – roasted tomato sauce, fresh jalapenos, mozzarella, and smoked Boston butt from Patak.

Weil called this “gumbo pizza”, and I have to agree with him. The sautéed red sauce plus the smoky flavor of the Patak’s meat was definitely reminiscent of gumbo. It was interesting…not my favorite ever, but actually not too bad.

Finally, the next day I created my last pizza. The remainder of the pesto, mozzarella, sliced onions, scallions, and sliced radish from The Local Farmstand. Yay for freshness.

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In another effort to shift your mind away from the fact that I haven’t actually reviewed a new spot in the Atlanta Pizza Days in a week or so, here’s another home-made pizza for your eating pleasure.

But wait! First I have some topical links to share:

1) About.com has a video on how to make Chicago style pizza. Chicago style pizza is a different kind of animal: fun to try, but not great for every day consumption. Kind of like acid.

2) Writer Kenji Alt of Cook’s Illustrated came up with a new way to try to get a good char on your pizza. I don’t have a gas stove because my neighborhood is stupid, but I think it’s worth a try if you don’t want to go all Jeff Varasano on your oven.

3) There is now a microwave that has a pizza toaster built in. For serious.

OK back to my pizza. I had another ball of dough left from last weekend, and it was going on day 3 in the refrigerator. This dough was actually easier to work with than the day before (which was from the same batch).

I had some leftover cubed potatoes from my breakfast the previous morning, which I lightly fried and doused heavily with salty Greek seasoning. I love having steamed potatoes ready for any use – breakfast burritos, tacos, corned beef hash, pizza, really whatever my heart desires.

My basil plant is long dead, so here I’m using Costco pesto. It’s decent and comes in a huge jar for a fair price. I recommend taking half of it and freezing it as soon as you buy it. There’s too much to use before it goes bad. I used a lot of pesto here, I could have gone less.

Cheeses from left to right: Fontina, mozzarella, and parmesan.

All loaded up and ready to go in the oven. I added sliced garlic to it as well.

It cooked for 6 minutes at 550 on a stone that had been preheated for about 40 minutes. I cooked it about 1 minute to0 long.

The dough was a little on the over-chewy side, but the pie was fantastic. I think the excessive amount of olive oil from the pesto helped create a crispier upskirt, and the flavors worked really well. I could have gone a little lighter on the pesto and on the Greek seasoning (it was pretty salty), but that’s the worst I can come up with.

For the dough I’ve been creating lately, I think day 3 is really when the magic happens. The endcrust had better structure, it was softer, it didn’t deflate, good flavor.

However, this does not mean I’m giving up on pizza, I just plan on going back to primarily making my own. With that thought, I whipped up some dough on Saturday and had some pizza for lunch today. I’m still using a modified version of Varasano’s recipe, the main differences being that I don’t have a good mixer so I don’t mix it for nearly as long as he does, I don’t use live yeast culture, and my oven only cooks at 550.

I’d like to address these problems soon, probably starting with the mixer, then the yeast, then possibly breaking the latch on the oven. Regardless, today’s pizza was some of the best that I’ve made in a long time. The dough had been in the refrigerator for about 48 hours. I used less salt in this batch but all the other quantities were pretty much the same. You can see some past dough attempts here.

My dough never looks as smooth as Jeff’s. It is all wrinkly, it’s more dense, and it doesn’t expand as much. I’m hoping the mixer + yeast will help with this problem.

I used the Trader Joe’s Roma tomatoes to make the sauce. The tomatoes didn’t look very good – I had to remove the exterior and the cores from all of them and I threw a few tomatoes out altogether. The sauce ended up tasting really good though. I used the immersion blender to make it and it ended up slightly chunkier than usual. It was the normal raw Roma sauce of tomatoes + sugar + salt + oregano + parmesan.

For the toppings I used cubed mozzarella, green onions, and some Italian country ham that I picked up from Whole Foods yesterday. This stuff is great and it’s on sale right now for $10.99 a lb.

I preheated at 550 for about 45 minutes, cooking the pie in about 5.5 minutes.

I was really happy with how the dough came out. It had some nice color (not a char, but at 550 I’ll take it), it bubbled up a bit on the endcrust, it was chewy, flavorful,  I used the right amount of salt, and used the right amount of sauce because it didn’t get soggy despite how thin it was.

Lately my dough really reminds me of the dough at Shorty’s, which was one of my favorite spots during the Pizza Days. I guess I’m just partial to this style, but now I’m ready to take the dough to the next level. Expect to see some more posts on this during the coming months.

If you try making some pizza yourself, I’d love to see some photos and if you’d like I’ll throw them up here so everyone else can share in the pizza love.

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The Thai Lime & Chili Cashews sounded intriguing. I figured it would be good for salads, stir fry, and snacking. 

They are pretty good actually. The lime and chili is fairly subtle up front, with a fair amount of heat on the finish. I chopped some up to put in a salad for lunch. 

The salad was TJ arugula, carrots, and a salad dressing of Ken’s Soy Ginger dressing mixed with sambal oelek. Garnished with the Trader Joe’s 3 cheese flat bread. Good stuff. 

I also gave their pizza dough another shot.

While their dough was easy to work with, and appears to have risen nicely, it really didn’t do anything for me. I liked it less than last time. It had very little flavor, plain and simple. Also, it was too “doughy” if that makes sense.

I used the same fresh mozzarella and the same sauce, but this time I used about 1/3 less sauce. 

Here’s what the dough looked like right of the fridge. 

….and right out of the oven. I went for a more circular shape to appease my critics. 

Another angle. I was happy with the crust. I didn’t stretch this one out as thin, especially on the outer edge. 

The “flop”. 

Great chewy crust with more bubblin’ dough than I’ve had in the past. 

Another shot where you can see how thin it stayed in the middle, while rising significantly on the crust. 

You could say I am happy with how things are going. Am I ready for the leap to live yeast cultures???

If you read this site regularly, you know that I’ve been steadily developing my pizza skills (see: Oct 24, Oct 09, Sep 24). 

I’m not going to rehash everything regarding the dough technique I’ve been implementing, so go back and read those posts if you are interested (I discuss the method in detail in the Sep 24 post). 

Previous Shortcomings: The last time I made the dough, I was quite happy with the texture and with it’s workability prior to cooking. The downside was that it was lacking in flavor. My main focus was to address this blandness, and to also let the dough hang in my fridge for a longer period of time to see how that affected the outcome. 

What I Did Different This Time: As mentioned, I let the dough sit in the fridge for over 24 hours after the autolyze and rest period. This period of time is the “cold rise”. Also, in this batch I used waaaay more salt. Probably 1/2 tablespoon in two pizzas worth of dough. After being in the fridge for 30 hours, the dough had a great smell to it and there were small bubbles starting to form inside the dough (but not too much). 

I pulled the dough out of the fridge roughly 1.5 hours before I was ready to cook. This is a longer period of time than the last time I made the pizza, so I wanted to see how much it would rise during that span. 

In Summary: The pizza came out wonderfully. It was extremely easy to work with; I was actually able to give it a toss and I could stretch it close to being translucent without it tearing. It was the largest pie I’ve ever made with that amount of dough. I topped it with some jarred marinara (gak, I know, but it is tasty Trader Joe marinara!) and topped it with some fresh mozzarella slices (redemption!) and slid it perfectly off the peel onto the stone. It cooked for about 4 minutes at 550. 

The pizza was very thin on the inside, and the outer crust rose beautifully and had an audible crunch to it. In the blurry picture below you can see some of the nice bubbles that formed on the crust. The whole thing was almost too thin, especially because I used too much sauce. Some slices weren’t able to hold up to the weight and the flop broke, but others were perfect. The salt must have really helped because it tasted fantastic. 

Progress has been made!

Now I can’t wait to try the other batch of Sunday dough later today to see if 48 hours makes a difference…

You may have read, pizza has been my love-interest as of late, and the experiments continue. As I’ve mentioned, Jeff Varasano (my pizza spiritual guide) has a site which details his 6 year odyssey into perfecting pizza making technique, particularly in regards to making the pinnacle of all dough. My latest attempts at using his techniques continue below…

But first, I wanted to give you a heads-up on tomorrow’s forthcoming post. I just heard about Pizzeria Fortunato in Creative Loafing’s Best of Atlanta, and I ate there last night. I promise the post it will be one of your top 10 time wasters tomorrow while you are pretending to work, and you will find out the official results!

Oh, also, I emailed Jeff Varasano and he responded on Friday, telling me the tentative open date for his pizza place at 2171 Peachtree is December 9. I will be the first reporter on the scene, I guarantee you this. 

Once again, I used the “wet knead” method that Jeff recommends. I mixed all the ingredients, using only 75% of the flour, then mixed it slowly while the dough was still more like a batter. After mixing, I let it rest. The yeast is working at this point. Then I slowly mixed and added flour until the ball formed. At that point I split the dough in half and put the two balls in gladware and into the fridge. 

I decided to try making my own mozzarella again, and once again, I pretty much failed. The mozzarella wouldn’t form a stretchy, shiny ball and resulted in ricotta. I am still trying to determine the reasons for my poor results, and Rebecca from Foodie with Family has been great in trying to help me figure that out. 

I just wanted to post this picture because I will admit it when I suck at cooking. Though, the dough came out better than ever. I did overcook it some because I kept waiting to see if the cheese would melt (which it clearly did not). The dough lacked in flavor, but had a great consistency. It was crispy on the outside and nice and chewy/airy on the inside.

Also, It was also much easier to work with. Last time I didn’t put it in the fridge and it wasn’t dense enough and tore apart when I tried to shape it. This dough was a breeze – it didn’t stick too much, it didn’t “pull back” onto itself, and had a suberb consistency. 

The next day I took out the other ball from the refrigerator and made a pizza for lunch. This dough was even better in terms of shaping/working! I took it out of the gladware, flipped it over, punched it down, and quickly shaped it.

This time I used shredded Sargento mozzarella. :-(

Oven had been at 550 degrees for 1 hour – that stone is brutally hot!

The final results! This cooked in about 4.5 minutes. 

Pros: The dough held together perfectly, it was chewy, thin in the middle, with a nicely sized crust. The cheese browned nicely and Jeff’s uncooked tomato sauce was stellar, once again. 

Cons: The dough was lacking in flavor (more salt and active yeast cultures will hopefully do the trick), and I used a poor excuse for cheese. Also, I need to remember to knock off some of the excess flour before I cook. I don’t like that flour taste on the dough. Lastly, the oven isn’t hot enough to get a good char on the bottom of the pie. 

I am very happy with the progress and will continue to report back to the waiting masses. 

Ate the pizza with the last of my dad’s tomatoes. :-(

Drizzled olive oil, balsamic, and hit it with some salt and pepper.