This year my family decided to celebrate Mother’s Day in the most relaxing way possible: pizza party. Come to think of it, we had pizza last year too! That’s right, my mom wanted to get a clam pizza from Lombardi’s. Dang, it was tasty! We decided to keep things a bit more low-key this year so my brother and his fiance had us over to their place and I brought some dough to get the party started.
I made the dough three days in advance (recipe below) so it would have time to develop. After all, this was going to be my first time making pizza for the family so the heat was truly on. I talk big game about pizza so I really had to put my mozzarella where my mouth is. Speaking of mozzarella, we picked some up from Alleva in Little Italy. They make great cheese but you really need to slice it and drain some moisture before you use it on pizza.
Mom loved the mozzarella, mushroom, onion and garlic pizza and I think it was my favorite too. I sauteed the shrooms and onions so they would handled the oven heat without burning or drying out. My brother’s oven isn’t exactly what I have in Brooklyn so I had to take a few chances. He has a broiler on top and I thought that would be good for some sweet top heat but the thing didn’t want to ignite so I had to ditch that idea. My home oven can get pretty hot with the quarry tile method I use, so I’m used to getting the bake zone up to 650 degrees F within 50 minutes. My brother’s oven got up to exactly 500 degrees F at its max so I had to leave the pizza in the oven for an extra 2+ minutes for each pie. This made a big difference in the end product and dried out the crust a bit more than I had anticipated. Oh well, it still tasted awesome!
The pie above has a pile of post oven arugula, chunks of grana padano, prosciutto di parma, mozzarella and a squirt of lemon juice.
Here’s one of my new favorite pizzas, which covers a layer of thinly sliced potatoes with strings of red onion. I should have put more potato and onion on there because they shrunk up a bit inside the oven. I also failed in topping distribution. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to make it again!
I was pretty nervous about making pizza for my family, but all the pies came out great and we had an absolute blast hanging out together. Hooray for Momma Wiener!
Dough recipe:
600g All Purpose flour
50g whole wheat flour
412g tap water
18g sea salt
1.5g dry yeast
100g Ischia starter
20 minute autolyse (resting period)
short knead, rest, short knead
split into 4 pieces at 291g each, balled and stored in the refrigerator for three days
room temp rise 2 hours pre bake
Bake until crust browns and cheese melts, usually about 8 minutes in a standard oven that has been pre-heated with pizza stone for 60+ minutes.
