Been messing around with Peter Reinhart’s Perfect Pan Pizza book for a good couple of years now so I’ve reached that nice stage where I don’t have to to think too much about the basics. Mix a batch of my 80% hydration dough a day or two before baking and ferment in the fridge. 400g of dough is right for the 8″/200mm square tin I use (so I mix 800g and use half to make 4 x 100g *instant buns for the freezer).
The dough gets pressed out to cover the base of the well-oiled tin and rises for about four hours. Many of the recipes have a good scattering of tiny cubes of cheese that cover the surface from the start – gently pressed in so that the dough rises around them.
So, my routine is to get to this stage before breakfast and worry about the rest afterwards. Some OAPs lead a lunch-orientated life.
This particular pizza is based on Peter Reinhart’s Beef Brisket with Burnt Ends. We had no brisket but on Saturday Sue did a fabulous braise of Top Rump about half of which was left over – I’ve been waiting for this opportunity.
So by the time she comes down for breakfast the dough is in the tin and the cheese is mingling with it.
In the following four hours all I have to do, apart from decide on the most appropriate cocktail, is: knock up a simple barbeque sauce – direct from BBC Good Food – before Kev comes for his weekly pint of cider on the dot of midday. We can set the world arights in a straight half hour.
This is the most sumptious of pizzas but really simple to make. Very thinly sliced onion is softened in a saute pan and allowed to cool. The beef is cut into one inch cubes. The onion is spread over the risen dough and the beef is arranged on the onion. Additional cubes of cheese go on the beef and particularly aroung the edges of the tin. This will form the “frico”, the crisp crust of baked cheese that adds an intense flavour to the whole.
Oven heated to 300C top and bottom. Baked for 16 or so minutes. The outside of the beef should be crispy and a bit scorched.
Removed the pizza to a board. Scattered cubes of tomato over the top together with a little of yesterday’s cooking juices, a few splodges of barbeque sauce and a sprinkling of parsley.
Let stand for five minutes; cut into squares; ate greedily with fingers.
* Instant buns. Switch the oven on to 300C top and bottom. Take the dough straight from the fridge, scale at 100g, roughly shape and flatten on a floured baking sheet. As soon as the oven is up to temperature dimple the buns and whack in the oven. Ready in 15 minutes – careful towards the end – that’s a hot oven for small doughs …
The PArtisan Baker 