Deep pan pizza or focaccia? Don’t really care. It’s fun to play around with. You can even eat it.
I tend to knock up 1600g of 80% hydration dough and put it in the fridge for at least a couple of days. Then I have pizza dough available when I want it and the rest is used up as 100g rustic buns – perfect for burger buns.
This time round I made one pizza in a 9.5″x8″ tin (about 360g) and two smaller bases to experiment with freezing.
First off – it’s not very photogenic – Peter Reinhart’s Blue Cheese, Balsamic Onion Marmalade and Walnut Focaccia – he calls it Focaccia. Fabulously cloying, maybe a little over-the-top.
The bases were fully baked, cooled and frozen.
Number one. As ever you can’t beat simplicity. Our favourite bruschetta is thick slices of grilled Classic rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil, topped with cherry tomatoes roasted with garlic, black pepper and olive oil + soft goats cheese and shredded lettuce.
This is a sort of reflection of that, just the roasted tomatoes topped with a chiffonade of basil. Gave the base ten minutes at 210C, topped with the tomatoes, couple more minutes in the oven, scattered the basil. Ate on the hoof while cooking the main course.
Number two. Even simpler – ten minutes in the oven, topped with garlic olive oil, sprinkled with parmesan, briefly back in the oven, scattering of parsley.
Pretty wonderful stuff for nibbling. Maybe the base is slightly tougher. Maybe I’ll try just par-baking before freezing next time. If I freeze bases again …
The PArtisan Baker 