Pizza Making Tips
Keep your pizza warm by putting it in the oven at 200° F. If you have a leftover take-out box, keep it in that.
I made a batch of dougthecook pizza dough tonight with a new addition: 1 tsp cream of tartar. In reading the ingredients of Lou Malnati's frozen pizza, cream of tartar, a dough conditioner, is used. According to the research I did the role of cream of tartar is to keep the dough elastic. No scientific explanation was found but empirical evidence from people that make their own play dough. They say adding cream of tartar improves elasticity and dough smoothness. Thanks kids!
Having a lot of V8 juice sitting around, I added 1/2 cup to the already great tasting pizza sauce recipe. The V8 juice added a nice dimension to the sauce. This addition is worth pursuing.
From a hint I found at Cooks Illustrated I used milk instead of water to make pizza dough. The dough was a little less wet than the water-based one but still pliable. As they say the proof is in the pizza and I will find out tonight how well it tastes. As an aside, I do not think any pizzerias use milk in their dough as it would be too expensive.
I started to put together the dougthecook homemade pizza sauce when it came to me. The sauce is slightly tangy so I added 1/4 of a carrot, minced. The improvement was pleasant indeed. The carrot adds a slight sweetness but does not have any carrot taste whatsoever.
I made a batch of dougthecook pizza dough the other day. As usual, I relied on the breadmaker to do the kneading. But, before I loaded up the breadmaker pan, I mixed the flour and cornmeal together and sifted them. Not that any lumps existed but I wanted to insure that the flour was aerated. As flour travels from factory to your home it is compressed by settling among other things. Aerating the flour makes it lighter per cup (4 oz vs 5 oz packed) and overall mixing improves. The result was no pockets of flour or cornmeal and a more consistent dough. Though this is empirical evidence I'll add this step to the dougthecook pizza dough.
