Still working on gluten-free pizza - my first attempt a year ago was with the Bob’s Red Mill packaged mix and it was… not fit for human consumption. Today’s was so much better!
This crust is based on the recipe in Baked to Perfection which is one of the most reliable sources I’ve found. The pizza dough recipe (pg 294) uses tapioca starch, sorghum flour, and millet flour, as well as psyllium husk for structure. I’ve made this a few times now and keep tweaking the recipe, and today’s iteration might be the one I stick with. I have instant yeast so it doesn’t require activating - I mixed all the dry stuff, added all the wet stuff, and let it roll in the KA mixer for 5-8 min. One rise in the bowl, then transferred to an oiled sheet pan and shaped, and let it sit/rise for another 30min. I added sauce and baked for 18 min at 450, then added cheese and baked for another 4 min.
Several of you mentioned sometimes using the broiler. I am gonna do this on a stone on top shelf with convection at 500-550°F.
Now I have only used my oven’s broiler on high (for things like charred veggies), but it has six more settings from medium-high to low. Would high still be best or would it be better to tone it down a bit?
Depends on your broiler - do you have gas or electric? Mine is gas and tends to shut itself off if I use high heat with a pan on the top shelf - I think steam or grease splatter triggers the safety shutoff. If that’s not a concern, high is probably fine - just watch closely to make sure nothing burns, and adjust downward if necessary.
Safeway was out of their pizza dough so had to do it from scratch… intial proof (90 minutes) is happening now, and the final will be in the fridge overnight.
We’ll see how it goes tomorrow… so tonight it is soup and salad. (c;
Edit: good news is that my yeast (dated 2022) is still good!
1.) Too Salty: Brian L. says one of the secrets of great pizza is to salt the top before cooking. I lightly salted the top with kosher salt… big MISTAKE.
2.) Sauce Not Sweet Enough: I thought my sauce was pretty sweet, but on the cooked pizza there wasn’t a hint of sweetness. Of course this may be due to Brian’s damn salt, but next time I will make it sweeter.
3.) Dubious Cheese: I used Tillamook whole milk low moisture moz, and while it had that beautiful, drippy, stretch I was looking for when cutting/separating pieces, the chew was really rubbery. I think I need to find another cheese.
4.) Improper Cook: In my oven… top rack convection is a no-no. The fan blows on the back top of the pizza. While convection says to me “no need for turning”, it actually accelerated the need. Cheese got done way too fast and crust was not cooked enough to be crispy anywhere, and soaked up the sauce (should I oil the top of the crust to help prevent this?). Next time stone is going on a lower rack without convection.
5.) Need to Work on My Crust a Bit: Too fat around the perimeter.
That still looks really good, especially for a first attempt.
For point one, Nancy Silverton is the first person I can think of who popularized salting the crust, and it’s good on really high hydration doughs like hers, which is more like a Neapolitan crust, but I don’t do it 99% of the time. A lot of pizza dough recipes are already over 2% salt, so they simply don’t need additional salt.
Level of sweetness is going to come down to personal taste, but I think you might like the Chicago style sauce I used following Kenji’s recipe in the NYT. It is nicely sweet. Salt in tomato sauce is really important to balance the acidity, too, so I like to make sure it’s at 1% salt (based on weight of tomatoes), though it can be as low as .5% if using salty toppings like pepperoni.
I also love Kenji’s NY style pizza sauce on Serious Eats.
The cheese being rubbery could be from getting over-cooked, but I haven’t tried Tillamook, so perhaps it’s not great as you say. I’ve used Polly-O, Sorrento, and Galbani with no issue. And now I use whatever is sold here.
I don’t like convection when baking almost anything made from dough, but I don’t have a convection oven here so I couldn’t tell you how it fares with pizza.
Every oven is different, and most of us came to our particular oven configuration from experience, so it’s pretty normal to have to make adjustments. I’d try the same rack but no convection first, but it’s possible the bottom rack will work better for you.
66.6% hydration is a little high for pizza dough that is going to be baked in a home oven - you’re in Neapolitan-style territory there, where you really need to stretch it thin and bake it at 800+. I would back off to 60%ish hydration for your next attempt. This should also prevent the sauce absorption issue - it sounds like your dough was wet enough that the sauce and dough sort of melded into soup before the dough had a chance to set.
Also, did you use all 800g of dough for one 12-14" pizza? If so, you had way too much dough, especially at high hydration. Half that amount would be more than enough (I typically use 325-340g dough for a 12").
Totally agree about salt - I never add it to the top of pizza. My crust is 2-3% salt and cheese/toppings provide the rest of what’s needed, particularly if I finish with parmesan. I salt my ricotta if I’m making a white pie.
Hm. Well, could have been overcooking, as Shelly mentioned, or maybe just a characteristic of that particular cheese. Every brand is a little different.
