What are you cooking today?

Westtown Willy said:
so I'm working on some alterations to my standard pizza dough I've been using for the past 20+ years, just trying to up the game. Also separating into a high temp outdoor Neapolitan style dough for 800+ degrees baking as well a lower temp 550 degree indoor NY style. Did a goodly bit of poking around & found some formats that looked good. With my girlfriend over for the weekend I did test batch 6 of the high temp '00' flour dough yesterday outside, and my first test batch of the indoor AP flour NY style in the kitchen today. Both came out very tasty, the Neapolitan in particular as I've been ironing out the bugs for the past few weeks, though for a first run of the NY version I think it was pretty respectable.

To the indoor end I picked up a new baking steel for the kitchen, I've heard a lot about them over the years but I have a few stones I've been using forever so it always seemed duplicative. I finally caved & grabbed the baking steel because I've just heard from too many sources that it's a better heat conductor than the stone. They generally run around $80-$100 online which seemed a bit ridiculous, but I ended up finding one on Amazon for $25, just straight up 16x16x1/4 inch thick, no frills, no logos, just a cheap hunk of steel, which by the way is a bit larger than most others which seem to mostly be 16x14 which limits you to a 14 inch pie - I'd prefer a full 16 inch banger so this was a no-brainer.

Anyway here are a few shots of the experiments:

First off we squeeze the tomatoes for the sauce

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first Neapolitan in the pizza furnace, didn't have the temp up long enough so it took nearly a full 2 minutes to finish

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finished Neapolitan, just plain tomato sauce, basil, fresh mozzarella & a bit of pepperoni

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along side a Lancaster Brewery Shoo Fly Pie Porter

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and today's NY, used the same sauce along with a 50/50 mixture of dry whole milk mozzarella and part skim mozzarella, and a pinch of salt. This peel is a full 16 so the pie stretched to the edge yields a full large pie

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this was after 6 minutes on the steel, probably should've left it another minute but it was absolutely delicious nonetheless

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then the second NY pie, same as the other with the roni, left this one in 8 minutes & got a bit better color

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some decent leoparding for an indoor pie, I attribute this to the steel

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now that baking season has begun in earnest, we'll be expanding the experiments. There are a few variations I want to try as well as a few regional variations I'd like to take a run at like New Haven pizza and there's another local (Delaware) place that uses cheddar in place of mozzarella with the sauce on top. The possibilities are endless. Pizza is life 🤤
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Sounds and looks amazing, I love pizza and those look delicious….well done.
 
2001slvrstntj said:
Sounds and looks amazing, I love pizza and those look delicious….well done.
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thanks, it's been a life-long quest, though I've been stuck in a rut for a long time without any experimentation with different dough techniques, of which there seems to be about a million. With winter looming we hunker down & hang in mostly, perfect time to play around with this. Fortunately my girlfriend's favorite food is pepperoni pizza so she never tires of the experiments. My kids will both be home next week for Thanksgiving weekend so they'll be my next guinea pigs, not that that's anything new :ROFLMAO:

I've been watching a ton of outdoor pizza oven review/comparison videos lately, trying to do a little advance scouting for my next purchase when my trusty old Blackstone keels over. It's amazing to me how that industry has exploded over the past 20 years. There wasn't all that much available outside of standard wood fired ovens, now there are dozens to pick from, wood, propane, gas, electric, combination fuels, it's amazing. I like the newish Gozney Dome though it's pretty pricey at around 2k, also like the Solo Stove at a fraction of the price, somewhere around $300. Both of those are static stone formats, I've become accustomed to the rotating stone on the Blackstone so I may stick with one that does that, just idiot proof. Blackstone made a comeback after discontinuing their pizza ovens for many years, their new updated version of mine looks pretty sweet, though I think it's about 3x the price of what I paid years ago. The Everdure Kiln looks pretty sweet for a rotating stone oven, I'll have to find one in person to check out.
 
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Apparition said:
Turkey pizza?
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ha, I've done that before, not so good :LOL:

Actually won't see either of the kids on Thanksgiving day, they're both working. We'll convene in the Tavern on Friday for our annual beer tasting, I've compiled quite a collection of seasonal brews for the event & the kids will each bring a few too

This one was the year's unicorn, I saw it on the 'Brewers of Pennsylvania' facebook group a while ago & have been searching for it locally, could've taken the half hour drive into Lancaster to grab it but figured I'd eventually stumble on it here & Friday was the day, it appeared at my grocery store. Had a couple of them on Saturday & liked it so much I went back & cleaned the place out of their stock. Big fan of Shoo-Fly Pie and Porters of all kinds, so this was a must, it didn't disappoint:

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2001slvrstntj said:
Habanero hot honey in the making

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What is your method for making this? I have heard use a sous vide @120 for 5 hours to steep the peppers. I had one of he guys on a smoking forum send me his ghost pepper honey. It is great on pizza, good back end heat but I want to make some with both up front and back end heat.
 
cliffish said:
What is your method for making this? I have heard use a sous vide @120 for 5 hours to steep the peppers. I had one of he guys on a smoking forum send me his ghost pepper honey. It is great on pizza, good back end heat but I want to make some with both up front and back end heat.
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Well I just winged it and while you can taste the habanero it is not really hot enough for us so will try again. I just put the honey in a small pot and heated it with cut up habanero in it. I might not have gotten it warm enough or not that long. Did not research it just tried this method. I did put it back in the original container with the habanero pieces so might get hotter with time.
 
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Other idea is to put dried pepper flakes in the honey. I have a ton of dried/ground up habaneros and others pepper types to use. I think that would give you good heat. They may not stay suspended in the honey though, not sure.
 
2001slvrstntj said:
Well I just winged it and while you can taste the habanero it is not really hot enough for us so will try again. I just put the honey in a small pot and neared it with cut up habanero in it. I might not have gotten it warm enough or not that long. Did not research it just tried this method. I did put it back in the original container with the habanero pieces so might get hotter with time.
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I am wondering if I could juice a few peppers to add the honey?
 
Daughter & son-in-law in town for the weekend for our annual beer tasting, they brought in some seasonal brews from Pittsburgh & I grabbed a few locals, all dessert types, once we finished the tasting we moved onto some basic Octoberfests


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for grub, rack of ribs rubbed with mustard & Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust & Jamaican Firewalk for a little heat, did Turbo ribs, 350 for 90 minutes indirect with Pecan then wrapped for another hour

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fired up the pizza furnace & did a few Neapolitans too, a margarita, a pepperoni & a fresh tomato basil

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forget the turkey, gimmie the ribs & pies
 
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Westtown Willy said:
Daughter & son-in-law in town for the weekend for our annual beer tasting, they brought in some seasonal brews from Pittsburgh & I grabbed a few locals, all dessert types, once we finished the tasting we moved onto some basic Octoberfests


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for grub, rack of ribs rubbed with mustard & Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust & Jamaican Firewalk for a little heat, did Turbo ribs, 350 for 90 minutes indirect with Pecan then wrapped for another hour

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fired up the pizza furnace & did a few Neapolitans too, a margarita, a pepperoni & a fresh tomato basil

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forget the turkey, gimmie the ribs & pies
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You are lucky we don’t live close and know where you live, looks great. Always great to spend time with your kids, as they get older gets tougher for them to make time it seems and I get that.
 
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This is from last Sunday. Huge pot of Creole Jambalaya and cornbread so we didn’t have to cook the rest of the week until Thanksgiving:

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For Thanksgiving we brined and smoked a 20 pounder, made sausage and cashew sourdough bread stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, sourdough dinner rolls and our son made a mashed roasted potato and onion “pudding” that was cooked in the smoker under the turkey to catch the drippings. From a 1777 recipe.
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Last night we made a pizza with leftovers. Gravy for the sauce, shredded turkey and mozzarella; dotted with stuffing, potato pudding and drizzled with cranberry sauce. All on a cold risen, hand tossed sourdough crust.
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