Maybe Pizza?
Gus's experiments in making pizza with very hot ovens.
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January 12, 2014

Let's say you made enough dough for six pizzas, but only used three of them. What do you do with the rest?

What I usually do is take the dough and re-ball them so they are tight for a third raise, and then I place then them back in my proofing box.

dough that's not actually re-balled yet.
dough that's not actually re-balled yet.

Another 12 to 24 hours later and you'll find that the dough has raised again and looks and smells pretty awesome.

At this point, you can make more pizza. Duh.

mmm more pizza
mmm more pizza

Or you could do what I did today, and make bread.

pizza bread
pizza bread

The process is simple. Heat up the oven as hot as you can get it[^1] for at least a half hour, plop your dough down on a dough mat and use a pizza cutter to slice it up into strips, and then throw those guys on your pizza stones. Then wait till the top is nice and brown. That's what I did with the larger loafs in the back.

However, the shorter guys in the front I cooked differently- I actually fried those in a small pot filled with 1/4" of olive oil. You get that as hot as you can (but not so hot that the oil is burning), and then drop in one small strip of dough. If it's nice and hot, it will balloon up right away. You can then swish the pan around so olive oil gets all over the dough and once the bottom of the bread starts to brown, you'll flip it over (don't use your fingers obviously) and let the other side puff up and brown and then you pull it out and place it on a paper towl.

The result is a nice super puffy piece of bread that tastes like some of the best pizza crust you've ever had. You can even put a tiny bit of agave nectar on it to sweeten it up even more. It's pretty amazing, though I'm certain it'll kill you in large quantities.

[^1]: As hot as you can get your oven without any hacks that is. 550° is what my oven was set at.