Daring Bakers Challenge – The Accidental Pizza

A yummy 'accident' indeed!

It all started out with M announcing that she'll be joining her friends for a celebratory dinner. The question on everyone’s mind then: 'So what are we gonna have for dinner tomorrow?' As I work and usually come back home late every night, its hard without rushing to prepare dinner during the weekdays. Since we just had take-outs yesterday, I wasn’t keen for a repeat so soon.

Flipping through my printed pile of recipes, I came across Pook’s post on Daring Bakers Challenge #23: Bake Your Pizzas Like A Real Pizzaiolo. Looking at the recipe, it requires the dough to be refrigerated overnight – great I thought. I’ll prepare the dough and get M to roll out the dough and viola, we can have our family favourite pizza for dinner. Like most gourmet home pizza makers, I found this recipe a little different as I usually prep the dough and bake it all within the same day. I mean its pizza, its hard to have leftovers!! But then I also like cold pizzas too, do you?

Sipping my coffee the next morning, I was browsing around the other Daring Baker Challengers for ideas on pizza toppings. I noticed that the recipe was all the same, then it dawned on me that it is ‘THE RECIPE’ for the DBC itself hosted by Rosas Yummy Yum. The light bulb pops, what did I stumble into?

And so….I did what any other self respecting food loving, novice baker / blogger would do – join in the fun challenge!!! Ha ha

The original recipe for Pizza Napoletana is taken from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. For the detailed recipe including a gluten free version, please refer to Rose’s blog.

Rushed back home during lunchtime to toss out the dough. Coincidentally it was perfect timing as M was totally OUT and bedridden. Looks like she’ll be joining us for pizza tonight instead!! Poor girl, hopefully she’ll feel better by dinner time.

Must confess that I was a little disappointed that the refrigerated dough still remained tacky. I mean this would be the tackiest dough I’ve handled so far for a pizza.

For quick and easy clean ups, I usually roll out the pizza dough between two plastic sheets. But it proved to be a challenge with this tacky dough.

Abandoning my 'trade-secret' *Lolz* rolling out technique, I decided to toss the dough by hand. No I didn’t do the high mid-air throw like a pizzaiolo. *though I secretly wished I did* But the nightmarish flashes of bits of flour all over the kitchen, dough hanging from the ceiling or worse, lying on the floor, all but deterred me. Didn’t want too much mess and probably take way too long to clean up. Remember I’m on my lunch break and still need to whiz through traffic to get back to the office on time. Besides this is MY dinner you are talking about and I’m not too keen on messing it up!! Lolz

Here’s what worked for me. Flatten the dough out as much as possible (palm of your hand will do). Dust a little flour on the dough so that when you pick it up it will not stick, do the same with the other side. Then with the dough in the centre between both floured hands, flip the dough onto one hand and then flip it to the other hand, turning and shaping the dough as you go in a circular motion. Yes mine was full of flops – lots of left right left right left right left right, etc. Technically, I think it could squeeze in as a mini-toss from one hand to the other, yes???? Ha ha ha – who thinks making pizza can’t be fun!! As the dough stretches, you may need to dust the palm of your hand to keep it from sticking. Keep a small handy patch of flour nearby for this.

Flatten out the dough.

Lightly dust the dough and flour both hands.

Its impossible to take a picture of me tossing the dough especially since I required both hands for my hand-toss and so without a camera crew on toe, here’s a picture of the dough in transition with my better albeit floury hand. :)

Dough's done, now to wait for it to double up.

**************The moment of truth****************

It would be an absolute abomination in my household not to be overly generous with the toppings. So staying true to our home tradition (and without risking a revolt), here’s what we plated for dinner last night.

Got Master Prince to help me on this one. As I guessed right, he loves his pizza with lots of cheese with handful bits of pepperoni, crabsticks and mushrooms.

And for the other, I decided to try something different – an ‘Aussie Pizza’. No, the pizza does not have Vegemite but rather an interesting sunny side-up egg!!! I’m guessing that the egg is supposed to symbolize the hot and dry Australian summer sun! Ha ha I've never tried it myself but seen it in some pizza restaurant menu.

I drizzle the egg centre with some garlic oil (though I'm sure some hazelnut or white truffle oil would be just fantastic if you had some handy :) ), a little cracked black pepper and a light garnishing of parsley.

Viola, presenting my 'Aussie Pizza'. I understand that for others it is also known as a 'Florentine pizza'.

Trick is not to overcook the egg. Since the egg cooks faster than your cheese can brown, my tip is to grease some foil or parchment paper and gently cover the yellow centre (until it almost reaches the consistency you like) and continue baking until your pizza is ready. Alternatively, crack the egg in the centre after the dough is in the oven for a couple of minutes (depending how hot your oven is - for my under-powered oven, probably about 10 min) and continue to bake until the pizza is done or the egg is just set.

I actually love runny eggs which I think would have been great and sloppy, slurping the gooey soft eggs with the pizza bread!! But since I wasn't sure about my family's reaction, the powdery soft alternative was just as good. :)

Verdict? I liked the pizza bread - thin, crunchy and yet with a light tender crumb. Its a little different from our usual dough (probably due to the higher olive oil content and deeper flavour with the longer resting time). I'll definitely make this again.

Thanks Rose for hosting this fun and interesting challenge. Look forward to more accidents - only the edible type of course!!