I finally tried a deep dish pizza in a cast iron skillet at the cottage. I bought some of the red star yeast packs and used the recipe for rolls from the back of the packet. Heated some water (probably hotter than 150?) and used a normal hand held electric beater to mix everything together (flour, sugar, salt, yeast, water) put in a bowl after coating lightly with oil and cover and let stand for hour. Never did rise...much...not even an extra 1/4 of original size. Got hungrier and patted out the dough into the skillet added pizza stuff and baked to what I thought was perfection-golden brown crust with no burning. (Man, this is going to taste great!) After the first two bites, I thought that the crust was lousy, made a couple of disappointing comments about it, and asked 99 lbs what she thought...then I noticed that she was eating only the toppings! (That answers the question!) What did I do wrong?
Water was too hot , I make pizza all the time and I use Luke warm water and some sugar in the dough , works every time
Sounds like you needed more time. If it was raising you did pretty good, but you need to let it raise fully, punch down, reraise. Also, packets are notorious for Not working well and going bad on the shelf.
I thought about the too hot water... I checked the date on the yeast packet...2015 or 2016-can't remember I also wondered if it was mixed too "violently"?
fishingpol- I guess I have you to blame for this miserable attempt! I read with interest your calzone post and wanted to try the crust on pizza first...but didn't have your recipe at the cottage. Hence, the recipe from the back of the packet
I guess that makes two Dave's from Michigan busting my cookies about pizza and stuff. Keep trying, it is part of the fun.
I think the water was too hot and did you start the yeast separately before adding flour and other ingredients? I use the old baby temp testing method for how hot the water is. If you can't stand it on your wrist, it is too hot!! Beating it with the electric beaters would have developed the gluten in the dough so that shouldn't have destroyed it's raising properties. That is why you are suppose to knead bread dough.
I pulled out 99's ole'bread machine and will be using that for mixing and kneading from this point forward. On the plus side, I (the machine) baked two loafs this weekend of just basic white bread...much better and I have bought the pizza dough yeast to try-probably next weekend.
Nice yooper! I'm a bread machiner as well. Got one about a year ago and I'm impressed (I'm easily impressed). I "make" the occasional basic white loaf and man, that first warm slice with butter is always so dang good.
I always use my bread machine to make dough for buns, pizzas, monster calzones etc. I can't knead bread dough like I used to. For just the two of us, I make buns now instead of bread and freeze them. When we want bread, I just take a couple of buns out of the freezer in the morning. Bread machines are an awesome invention.
You have to knead the dough- after mixing- for ten minutes to get the gluten fibers ready to start absorbing CO2 from the yeast. That's what makes bread rise. I like to use yogurt whey instead of water in the dough. Gives it a nice tangy taste, especially if using sourdough starter. Same amount as water. Get itby straining plain yogurt from the store through a coffee filter, cheese cloth, etc. or make and strain your own yogurt from just milk.
Great idea! I have a 7 year old sourdough starter. Sometimes, I only feed it once a month, or two, and it has never failed. It just goes dormant, and starts working again once it is fed with more flour. Sometimes it gets a nasty gray color, just scrape it off, feed it and it's good again. Liquid to flour ratio is important. 5:3 ratio by weight, flour/water is ideal. Making sourdough starter, and using it, is a whole other thread.
