Dough

For years I've been complaining about the poor pizza available in this town, mumbling especially about the lack of decent crust, and making my own pizza, which is never as perfect as I want but gets better all the time. Lawson liked my pizza but has also always defended the cracker crust (absurdly thin and flavorless) and piled-on toppings of places like Pizza Man on Rosewood Drive.

Then, a few months ago we visited a New York/college-town-style pizza place in Athens, GA after a show. It was two in the morning and the place was packed. We leaned against the counter and watched the dough guy shape pizza after pizza, easily but with great concentration. It was pretty sensual, actually, and I learned more about handling dough in that 15 minutes than from any single book I've read...it was very much like watching a musician much more talented than you. And since then Lawson has been excited about pizza. He bought me this Peter Reinhardt book for Christmas, tromped around town looking for unglazed tiles for the oven, and is learning to toss dough, New York-style.

I'm excited that he's excited, but I also feel a little protective of the dough-and-baking arena. Lawson excels at everything culinary -- stir-frying, seasoning, saucemaking, chopping -- but isn't very interested in baking, which is my favorite thing to do in the kitchen. I kind of feel like it's my territory, so it's hard to share pizza-making duties. But I imagine the shared work will make our pizzas much, much better. And so far, I'm still making the doughs.



I made some so-called neo-Neapolitan dough from the Reinhardt book; this is supposed to be the best kind for tossing. I prefer wetter doughs; my standard pizza dough recipe contains no oil -- I've had better luck that way. The neo-Neapolitan dough had lots of oil and honey and was very springy. I smoothed and pulled out the dough, and Lawson practiced tossing it, and it turned out to be the best pizza I've ever made at home.



Today I also pulled my old sourdough starter out of the fridge. You gave it to me years ago; I think you got it from Jack Kearns. When I moved out here to South Carolina, I drove the whole way with it on the seat next to me in an ice bucket I stole from a motel and filled with ice each morning. It's survived on years of neglect: about once a year I pull it out and spend a few days feeding it and baking a few loaves, then return it to the fridge to ignore for another year. As a result it is absurdly acidic and has a slight cheesy/fruity edge that goes away after a few feedings.

I've read that making it less wet will make it less acidic, as will feeding it water instead of milk. So I'll try that.