My Bodacious Pizza Odyssey

The Journey Begins

• The first pizza I ever made. I went online and grabbed a recipe form somewhere and gave it a shot. Tasted good, but zero rise in the dough. I used one of those round nonstick pizza pans you get at the grocery store to cook it, so zero crispiness.
  

  
  

• The second attempt was a mixed bag of utter disaster and edible. This time was a mix of recipes from youtube videos and what I could find online. The pizza on the top is a good example of shitty mozzarella. That one still makes me laugh. It was abysmal. The dough was rock hard, and the cheese was pre-shredded, hence the burning instead of simply melting. The other two were the edible ones. Parma ham and fresh mozzarella made up for a lot of mistakes. Damn expensive though!
  

  
  
  

• The third attempt went better. I watched some more youtube videos and read some more online blogs. The dough didnt rise so well, and I only let it ferment for 24 hours. I did not have the steel at this point, still using the non-stick pizza pan, so it was not crispy at all. Still, I was afraid to put the oven on max temperature. I did manage to get nice round dough though [gentle clapping]. You can also see the attempt at margherita on the right, the cheese didnt really melt much at the low temp. But its fresh mozzarella, so there were no complaints. The dough on the right was made from whole wheat flour, which I did not go back to, as there really is no point in trying to eat healthy when you want delicious pizza.
  

  

• The next try I went for a four cheese pizza and got good melting, but still the dough lacks that char and not crisp due to the low baking temp. This dough was some NY style recipe that adds sugar to the dough. I was also still making the dough in my food processor with it’s dough hook. The dough gets too overheated in there and produces a tougher chewing crust.
  

  

• This attempt was a carbonara on an NY style dough. It was damned delicious. However, I overcooked the cheese, and under cooked the dough. For a loooong time I was afraid to ruin the dough by turning the heat up too high or leaving it in too long. Did I mention that?
  

  

• At this point, about a year in, I stumbled onto Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough recipe and book. The improvement on the crust was dramatic. His recipe is excellent, and you can find it here. Super simple and makes a solid pie. For a long while this was as far as I went down the dough rabbit hole.
  

  

• The next pizza is another good example of several mistakes. I did not cook the sausage before putting it on the pizza, so all of the oil collected in the middle. Another swing and a miss with the block mozzarella. This one ended up in a gloopy mess, which then hardened and then had no stringiness to it. Dough still solid, though no points awarded for roundness.
  

  

• This one is a family favorite toppings combo of Eggplant, chilli, and ginger from Jim Lahey’s book My Pizza. However you can see the mozzarella for this one is still not right. It took me a looong time to find a maker of block mozzarella that melted well.
  

  

• I finally worked up the courage to bake the dough at a higher temp and got some decent browning. At this point I was cutting my mozzarella balls into slices which is ok, but the best way I have found for the home oven is to cut them into french fry strips. This helps so the whole chunk of cheese doesnt come off at once when you take a bite.
  

  

• At this point I found The Pizza Bible, and it was a revelation.
  

  

• I was on a bit of a margherita kick for a while. But at least I was starting to hone in on a good process. I let the dough cook for longer and under the oven grill here and got some good color. You can also see the “french fry” technique to cutting the mozzarella balls was on display here. I find each bite gets a nice stringiness to it.
  

  

• Jim Lahey’s Eggplant pie again, this time topped with bonito flakes.
  

  

• I had a lot of problems with oily/wet pizza making the crust soggy. Sometimes it was wet cheese balls, sometimes it was under cooking the dough, sometimes it was not pre-cooking the sausage, sometimes I cut the pizza too soon and all the oil drained under the pizza. This one was juuuust right.
  

  

• I was too lazy to make a starter at first, but when I finally did…wow. Everything is better. This one is spicy sausage with butter fried sage and block mozzarella. At this point I finally found a really good block mozzarella. I literally bought all 6 brands the grocery store offers and tried them all until i found the best one. They say high fat is the difference, but all of them are around 22%. So, I think it just depends on how those bastards make the cheese. At least if you live in the US its simple, just use the cheese Tony recommends. (You don't know how good you have it you American bastards.)
  

  

• I took a trip back to the US to see my family and snuck some pepperoni back to Singapore (shhhh). Damn, there is just nothing like some great pepperoni (cheers to Applegate Farms). This was on a sourdough crust. I made a sourdough starter from scratch, growing the yeasty goodness in a jar on my counter. Also the cheese here was perfect. Truly, I never could have imagined what a mind-numbingly difficult task it would be to find the right mozzarella cheese. Its mozzarella! How different can it be?!? A LOT!
  

  

• This is the latest pizza. Made with a barm starter, it was the best I have made to date. Sausage and pepperoni with extra cheese. The only “error” was that I over cheesed it...because I was in the mood for extra cheese! Otherwise I dont think I fucked anything else up. Hooray! Two years of playing around and I have started making consistently good pizza. The dough is the foundation, but good toppings make the pizza imho. The whole pizza making process is fascinating to me, as there are so many things you can screw up that have a big impact on the final result. Luckily I still end up with pizza, which means that most of the time its just different levels of deliciousness.