Valentine's Day Pizza

It's been a long time since I've made pizza and I really wanted to try out some new bread techniques.  This dough recipe used a poolish starter, which is a highly liquid sponge starter made by making a batter of flour and water with a small amount of commercial yeast.  You let this get bubbly and ferment for 5 hours or more. It can be kept in the fridge for a couple days before using, and Reinhart actually prefers to ferment it overnight.  I didn't have time for this, so after the poolish was out for about 7 hours, I made the dough, which is made with bread flour, yeast, cool water, olive oil, honey and salt.  After mixing it until smooth, it rises for about 3 hours then goes in the fridge overnight.  The next day, the dough is divided up for individual pies.  I made seven.

1.  Margherita: tomato, fresh mozz, basil, parmesan and olive oil.

Pretty good char.  The dough turned out well, but it didn't have the pillowy tenderness that I was hoping for.  It was crispy and buttery rather than chewy or tough, but it didn't achieve the balance of crispness and yielding chew that I'd really like to get to.  

2. Pear, gorgonzola, some caramelized red wine onions and greens.

 Shot of some dough getting spread on the parchment paper.

 3.  Fresh local Italian sausage, roasted red and yellow peppers, red wine onions, mozz, tomato and basil.

 4.  Pork rillettes, red wine onion, parmigiano and raddichio.

 5.  Crimini and portabello mushrooms, roasted peppers, onion, tomato, mozz and basil.

 Even more char

 6.  The rest of the mushrooms and onions and pepper.

 7.  Another margherita - good for breakfast or lunch.

Very unnecessary chocolate fondue to finish.  That's a "sweet rustic bread" coming out of the chocolate pot, which will feature in the next post.