illdothedisheslater

When you were a kid in school did you ever get one of those tests that was pretty much just a list of instructions?  It would start off like:

1. Read all of the instructions before you start the test

2. Write your name at the top of your paper

3. Draw a star on the left hand side of the test

Then it would go on through twenty more silly little chores until you got to the last one:

24. Now that you’ve finished reading the instructions, ignore them.  Put down your pencil.

Zing!  The teacher got you.  Well not me, because I read the last one first.  I did not carefully read every line of the paper then get the joke at the very end.  I skimmed it and caught the last line.  This probably tells a lot about my personality, id, ego, or whatever.  I don’t know exactly what it says about me, but I do admit to feelings of smugness as classmates around me busily added squiggles and polka dots to their test papers.

That’s pretty much what making this dough was like.  I didn’t read the whole recipe – I just skimmed it.  And, like in third grade, I most likely pulled it off but it was a mess this morning in my kitchen.  But if the moral of the story is that all’s well that ends well, then I win.  It’s 7:30 a.m. and I have three balls of New York style pizza dough rising slowly in my fridge.

The recipe comes from Serious Eats and may or may not be “authentic”, which is an overused word in cooking.  I trust J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.  (My cat is currently doing the butt-scoot boogie across an area rug, which I find distracting.  I apologize if it affects my writing.)  (As I finished typing that sentence, he horked up a giant wad of undigested Fancy Feast onto a brand new pair of knee-high black boots that I haven’t even worn yet.)

ANYWAY.

Like all good recipes (like ones I don’t write), this one calls for measurements by weight, not by volume.  Certified kitchen hottie Michael Ruhlman, in his brilliant and inexplicably entertaining Ratio, informs me that a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from four to six ounces.  So you could be up to 50% off in your measurements when you measure by volume.  (If Mr. Ruhlman would like to inform me of this in person, he can send me a private message here so we can agree on when/where to meet.)

So here we have:

22 ½ ounces bread flour (remember how chewy and good that was in Chicago style?)

1 ½ tablespoons sugar

3 teaspoons kosher salt (recipe calls for 0.35 oz. but that’s a little too picky.)

2 teaspoons instant yeast

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

15 ounces lukewarm water (c’mon J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.  Temperatures matter too.  No one ever tells you what “lukewarm” means.)

The dry ingredients go into a food processor and get pulsed a couple times to blend evenly.  (Mistake #1 – I emptied an entire packet of yeast into the bowl without measuring.  A packet holds 2 ¼ teaspoons of yeast, so I have to try to fish out ¼ teaspoon of the little granules, lest my dough over-rise and drown us all in sticky oobleck.  The directions say to add the olive oil and water and mix for 15 seconds until a ball forms, then mix for 15 seconds more.

This dough is too wet.  Waaaaay too wet.  And my (11-cup Cuisinart) food processor is barely big enough for this.  Damn you J. Kenji Lopez-Alt!  I trusted you!  Whatever.  I add more flour until it starts to come together.  I don’t know how many ounces.  I don’t care.  Then the dough gets tipped onto a lightly floured surface (which I do not have prepared) to be kneaded two or three times by hand.  Huh.

The dough sticks to everything.  It eats the Cuisinart blade, which I have to fish out, getting dough aaaalllll over my hands.  It sticks to my hands, the lightly floured surface, the bowl of my food processor, etc.  It is like quicksand, thickly sucking my pizza hopes into its murky depths.  (Creative writing, y’all!)

Why are there so few pictures on this post?  Because I was wrestling a dough monster covered in sludge the entire time.  I was afraid if I touched my camera it would be consumed in the blob.

Just a few more things, and I’ll lay off.  (Yes, I’m too wordy and my posts are too long.  I have nightmares about a comment section full of “TL;DR”.)

The dough is divided into three balls, which are placed in the waiting plastic containers.  (Oh wait, I didn’t read that part, and have no plastic containers waiting, and I’m still covered in sticky gooey dough.)

The containers go into the fridge, tightly covered, where they will rise for “at least one day and up to five”.  More time means more flavor, and the fridge lets it rise slowly without over-oxidizing.)

This is not a joke – I’m actually off to buy a dishwasher this morning.  I might have to change the name of this blog.  I’m actually disappointed that I didn’t come up with “Kneadful Things” for this pizza series, although I do like Ciao Time.