The Daring Baker's Challenge: Pizza

The Daring Bakers are at it again, this month attempting to be pizzaiolos!

The recipe Pizza Napoletana from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice served as the inspiration for the dough while the toppings were left up to our imaginations.

The Dough

I passed on chilling the flour -- as called for in the recipe -- and went straight to work. I used unbleached all purpose flour and Lucini olive oil for the dough. After blending all the ingreidents, I kneaded the dough by hand and then separated it into six balls.

After letting the dough sit in the refrigerator overnight, I set to getting the pizza made the next day. I attempted to toss it in the air, but failed miserably. Thank God for the extra dough!

The Toppings

Making homemade pizza is not new to us. Our standby toppings -- mozerella cheese, bell pepper, onion, red onion, pepperoni, ham, spaghetti sauce, jalapenos, garlic -- were on hand for everyone to top their individual pizzas.

Joshua made a cheese, jalabeno, ham and pepperoni pizza.

Anna decided to have cheese... and then she decided to put her cheese on her pizza... and then she decided to start eating her cheese pizza before it ever made it to the oven. Ew!

Our other pizzas were mozerella and pepperoni; mozerella, pepperoni and onion; mozerella, ham, garlic, bell pepper, onions and red onion.

Baking the Pizza

The recipe called for putting the oven on as high as it goes, which is 550F on my oven. I opted to bake the pizza on parchment paper on top of the pizza baking stone. After putting the first pizza in the oven, the oven started smoking. The parchment paper was burning. I later read that parchment paper is "rated" for a maximum temparture of 420F. That's what I get for not reading the box before hand. ;)

I wanted to cook the next pizza on the pizza stone itself, but we were pressed for time and I didn't have the patience to wrestle the unbaked pizza onto the stone. That would be a challenge for a later time.

I lowered the tempertaure to 450F and increased the time by about ten minutes for the subsequent pizzas that made it to the oven.

Result

I have made pizza from scratch for many years and from several different recipes, but this dough was the best dough that we had ever tasted! It kneaded great, it rose great, it held the toppings like a pro and was a thin, crusty crust.

The recommendation of letting it sit for five minutes after it was finished baking was a great idea, as it gave the cheese and the toppings time to meld together.

We enjoyed this pizza!

Future

I hope to make several batches of this dough and prestage it to have a pizza night every once and a while. Pizza is something we can all agree upon for a meal!

Although I wasn't too daring with my toppings, I hope to gather inspiration from my fellow talented Daring Bakers and try different combinations soon!

Thanks to Rosa from Rosa's Yummy Yums for hosting this fun challenge!