Pizza #10: Anadama Pizza with Mushrooms and Fresh Tomato

Anadama Pizza with Mushrooms and Fresh Tomato

I was planning on making some Anadama bread from the people who have given us "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" and "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day".  But I figured that would be far too much Anadama bread for me to take.  I elected to try it, and see if the dough could be used in a pizza recipe.

I decided it can't.  The taste is not good enough for pizza.  It is not that it tasted bad.  It just had no appreciable taste at all.

The dough mixes up easily with a spoon

It takes only 70 minutes for the dough to double today

I mixed up the dough following the recipe in 'Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day", and based on the ingredients I weighed, this is the baker's percentage that I came up with (your mileage may vary):

Ingredient	wt	Baker's %
WW Flour	262g	36%
AP Flour	458g	64%
Yeast	20g	3%
Corn Meal	262g	36%
Salt	9g	1.25%
Vital Wheat Gluten	40g	5.5%
Molasses	159g	22%
Water	857g	119%
Wheat Germ	26g	4%

Notes on the percentages: This dough is well hydrated.  I was able to stir it up until all parts of the dough were wet, using a wooden spoon.  But the 119% hydration content is deceiving.  Probably one should include the Corn Meal into the Flour amounts, so that the total flour content is 982g.  This would make the water 87% of the total.  But Corn Meal is not flour.  It doesn't act like flour.  It does absorb some of the water, though, so the hydration percentages are just not as helpful in this recipe.

Just from looking at the other Anadama recipes I've tried, this one has a lot more ap flour, and a lot more molasses, and a lot more yeast.  I suppose it has a lot more corn meal too.  But based on all that, I didn't think I'd like it.  Still, I was hoping I would be pleasantly surprised.

I wasn't.  As a pizza dough, this was particularly tasteless and disappointing.  To be fair, the authors never intended it to be used as a pizza dough.  I was improvising.

First time ever to try out my new firebricks in the gas barbecue

I was trying out my new fire bricks, in the gas barbecue.  I think it took substantially longer for the temperature to rise, using these fire bricks: there was more mass to heat.  So this is actually quite a wasteful procedure.  On the other hand, the pizza cooked just as fast, once the bricks were heated to about 700 degrees.  I left this pizza for about 15 minutes this time, and it was starting to just singe around the edges.  But the toppings were well cooked.  I still had a problem, with this stone, with the oil soaking into the stone rather than providing a nice smooth surface.  It gets better every time I use it, but it is still not good.

The toppings:

• Pizza Sauce
• Mushrooms
• Fresh Diced Tomato
• Dried Italian Herbs Seasoning
• Chipotle Chili
• Dried Chili Peppers
• Minced Garlic
• Kalamata Olives
• Mozzarello Cheese
• Grated Italian Padano Cheese

Despite the chili peppers, there was virtually no taste to this.  And there simply were not enough of the chili peppers.

The dough easily gets molded to the right shape of the pizza stone

The Italian Padano Cheese is a nice cheese, but it doesn't have enough flavour to carry this pizza

The fireplace takes substantially longer to reach 700 degrees with the firebrick: about 40 minutes!

If you don't lift the lid, and can trust the process, pizza is done in 15 minutes.

The olive oil is still soaking into the stone too much, so the dough continues to stick.

I will bake the bread with the rest of this dough tomorrow.

Notes to Myself

• Continue to cure this baking stone with oil each time you bake with it, so that the stone will no longer soak up the olive oil each time you use it for pizza.
• The time taken to preheat the firebrick is prohibitive and wasteful of propane.  Therefore, if you must do it, try baking other things besides just the pizza on the hot stone.  For example, have some bread ready to bake, too.
• Padano Cheese isn't strong enough for pizza
• Anadama dough isn't the right kind of dough for pizza