Herbed Cheese Pizza: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes

Today in the bread-baking blog, we're continuing our pizza making series. We're making a delicious Herbed Cheese Pizza using the olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes.

There is a picture of a delicious herbed pizza on the front cover of the September issue of Cooking Light. I've been wanting to make this pizza for a few weeks. I decided to make it using the olive oil dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes rather than making the dough from the recipe. I also made homemade pizza sauce using one of my favorite recipes and incorporated some of the additional ingredients from the herbed pizza recipe. I really like the combination. Hopefully, you will too.

 

 

Here are some helpful tips and resources for making homemade pizza:

• Choose a recipe from our collection of homemade pizza recipes.
• Check out the pizza ingredients section for some special products to make your pizza taste even better.
• Browse the homemade pizza section for pizza peels, pizza stones, and other pizza pans and tools.
• Check out our selection of pizza cookbooks.
• View our selection of pizza mixes.
• Refer to the tips in the how to make pizza section.
• For more recipes and instructions, don't forget to check out the September 2008 series on making pizza in the bread baking blog.

Herbed Cheese Pizza using Olive Oil Dough

 

Make the pizza dough according to the instructions in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes.  Then place the dough in the refrigerator overnight.  You can also use your favorite pizza dough for this recipe.

 

 

Preparing the Pizza Sauce and Toppings

I combined a couple of different pizza sauce recipes to make this sauce. It makes a big batch so I froze the rest for another day. I made the sauce Sunday afternoon so we could have pizza for dinner Sunday night.

Pizza Sauce

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 cup white wine (I used some white wine that my friend made)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, undrained. I used fresh tomatoes that another friend of mine gave me. Just peeled them and chopped them up. I had about 32 ounces. Yummy!
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil (I have fresh basil but used dried instead)
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (I used a little more because I like the flavor.)

 

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 teaspoon olive oil to pan. Add onion; sauté 3 minutes or until tender. Add garlic to pan; sauté 30 seconds. Stir in wine; cook 30 seconds. Add tomato paste, oregano, black pepper, salt, crushed red pepper flakes, bay leaf and tomatoes and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes or until thick. Then stir in basil and vinegar and cool. It took about 30 minutes for my sauce to thicken. It also cooked down a good bit.

This makes a chunky sauce so if you prefer a smooth sauce, you can puree it in the blender. I like it either way but my taste tester preferred the sauce smooth so I pureed it and it tasted great.

Herb Topping

• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon hot paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

 

To prepare the topping, combine oregano, cumin, paprika, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper in a small bowl. Set this aside.

Now it's time to make the pizza...

Twenty minutes before baking time, preheat the oven with a baking stone at 450 degrees F.

Get the dough out of the refrigerator. Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1-pound piece.

Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball. My dough was really wet so I shaped it on the counter (rather than in my hands) incorporating more flour as I went along.

Flatten the dough with your hands (or a rolling pin if you prefer) to a 1/8-thick round. You may need to use a dough scraper to unstick the dough and keep from adding too much flour. You may also need to let the partially rolled dough sit for a few minutes to "relax" to allow further shaping.

Place the dough on a piece of parchment or you can use a cornmeal-covered pizza peel. I find that the dough sticks to the peel too much with just cornmeal so I like to use parchment paper on top of the peel.

Slide the pizza (on the parchment paper) onto the stone and parbake for a few minutes. This keeps the toppings from making the pizza soggy.  Then top the pizza with some sauce; and the herb mixture;

Finish with slices of your choice of cheese. The recipe suggested kasseri cheese but I couldn't find it so I just used sliced mozzarella.

Slide the pizza onto the baking stone and bake it for 8 to 10 minutes, then check for doneness.  Rotate the pizza if it is browning too much on one side. Then bake for another 5 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly.

Remove the pizza from the oven and allow it to cool slightly before serving. This will give the cheese time to set. I slid mine onto a bread board to let it cool for a few minutes.

Now it's time to enjoy this delicious pizza! It has a wonderful spicy and herb flavor. I think this combination would taste really good with pepperoni but my taste tester is vegetarian so I didn't use any meat. Evenso, it was yummy!

 

You might enjoy some of these other Homemade Pizza Recipes

Happy Baking!
Cathy

Baguettes: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes

This week in the bread baking blog, we're continuing our series on making Artisan Bread using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes' method. Today, we're making baguettes from dough that has been fermenting in the refrigerator for the past week. The long fermentation process gives the bread a wonderful flavor and chewy texture.

Do you ever have days (or weeks) when you're just too exhausted to bake? This has been one of those weeks for me. I love to bake bread and it's usually very relaxing; however, this week, I just wasn't up to it. The good thing about the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes' method is that it's really easy once you have the stored dough in the refrigerator. In fact, it took such a short amount of time to prepare and bake these baguettes that I was able to do it in the morning before work. You can't say that about too many artisan breads. This is only the second bread I've made using this method, but I like it already.

Baguettes

Makes: 1 large or 2 small loaves

Ingredients:

• 1 pound Boule dough
• Cornmeal for dusting the pizza peel

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. with a baking stone on the middle rack and place an empty steam pan on the bottom rack so that it doesn't interfere with the loaves rising.

Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-size) piece. My dough was a little bit gummy to cut off (probably because it's been in the refrigerator over a week) so I just grabbed a handful of it and dusted it with more flour. That seemed to work just fine.

Shape the dough into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides.  This is called the gluten cloak.

Then, begin to stretch the dough out to the desired length. Dust with more flour if necessary. It helps to roll it back and forth on a flour-dusted surface to get the desired shape. If the dough is too big for your pizza peel, like mine, make two smaller baguettes. Place the loaves on the pizza peel covered with whole wheat flour. I placed mine on parchment paper to make it easy to slide the loaf onto the baking stone.  Allow the loaves to rest for 20 minutes.

After the dough has rested, paint water over the surface of the loaf using a pastry brush. This will help prevent the knife from sticking in the dough when you make the slashes.

Slash the loaf diagonally, using a serrated knife or a lame. I like to use a lame for this. 

Slide the loaves directly onto the hot pizza stone.  Pour a cup of hot water into the broiler pan and quickly close the oven door. Then bake the loaves for about 25 minutes, or until they are deeply browned and firm to the touch.

I rotated the loaves about midway through the bake cycle to make sure they baked evenly. That seems to help especially in my oven. The loaves turned out to be a golden brown color. I should’ve baked them a little longer.

Let the loaves cool on a wire rack before cutting or eating. 

These baguettes are very tasty. Very flavorful and chewy. They actually look and taste more like batards than baguettes. That's ok by me. I love Italian bread. My taste tester also liked them and asked for more.

The shape is rather funky, but just look at those holes!

Happy Baking!
Cathy

Artisan Free-Form Loaf (Boule)

I've heard a lot of good things about the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes’ technique from other bread bakers on Twitter and I couldn't wait to try it for myself.  I decided to start with the master artisan free-form loaf.

 

So far this method lives up to its name. Basically, you make the master dough, let it rise for a couple of hours, then store it in the refrigerator for up to 14 days. When you want to bake bread, just take out the amount of dough needed for a particular recipe, shape it, let it rise and bake it. How easy is that? There are a couple of other steps but you get the gist. 

 

Edited 8/4/2013: I made this loaf again and adapted the ingredients a little. Basically, I cut the formula in third, used less water and yeast and a little more flour.  I also changed the order of the ingredients. 

I prefer to mix the dry ingredients first, then add in the wet ingredients.  However, if you are using active dry yeast instead of instant yeast, add it to the lukewarm water and then mix it with the flour and salt.

The original version makes four 1-pound loaves.  If you want to make that version, refer to the list of ingredients here.

To make one 1 1/2-pound round freeform loaf, use the following formula.  The directions are basically the same for both versions, but you use all of the dough in my version instead of cutting off part of it and putting the rest back in the refrigerator.

 

 

Artisan Free-Form Loaf

 

Adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois

 

Makes: One 1 1/2-pound Round Boule

 

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups (315 grams) all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1/2 tablespoon Kosher salt
• 1 – 1 1/4 cups (281.25 grams) lukewarm water
• Cornmeal for dusting pizza peel or parchment paper

 

Directions:

First Step: Mixing and Storing the Dough

Measure the flour (with dry-ingredient measuring cups), using the scoop and sweep method. Basically, you just scoop up the flour, then sweep off the top with a knife.

 

Mix together the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl.  Add the lukewarm water (about 100 degrees F.)  Use a wooden spoon or a Danish dough whisk to thoroughly mix the ingredients.

I mixed the dough with a wooden spoon, and it worked just fine. However, if the dough becomes to stiff to handle with the spoon, you can reach into your mixing bowl with wet hands and finish mixing the dough, but there’s no need to knead it. Do this until everything is moist and you have a dough that is wet and loose. I mixed everything right in the container which makes it really easy to clean up.

Cover the container with a lid that is not airtight. Allow the dough to rise at room temperature for approximately 2 hours or until it begins to collapse. It may take longer depending on the temperature of the room and the temperature of the water used. You can use a portion of the dough at any time after the rising period. However, it is recommended that you refrigerate the dough overnight or at least 3 hours before shaping a loaf because fully refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and easier to work with that dough at room temperature.

I let the dough rest on the counter for a couple of hours, then placed it in the refrigerator until the next day when I was ready to bake. Then, I took it out and let it warm up to room temperature.

Baking Day: 1st Try

Shaping the Dough

First, you prepare a pizza peel (or the back of a baking sheet) by sprinkling it with cornmeal to prevent your loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven.

At this point, I thought to myself, "I should use parchment paper to make sure the dough doesn't stick." However, I decided to do it the way the recipe suggested so I didn't use parchment paper. That was my first mistake. You'll see why in a minute.

Then, you sprinkle the refrigerated dough with flour and pull up and cut off a grapefruit-sized piece.  Hold the dough in your hands and sprinkle with more flour so it doesn't stick to your hands. Stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating it as you go. When it's correctly shaped, the ball will be smooth and cohesive. This shouldn't take very long.

Place the ball on the pizza peel and allow the loaf to rise for about 40 minutes. No covering is necessary.

Baking the Boule

Twenty minutes before you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F, with a baking stone placed on the middle rack. Place an empty pan for holding water on the shelf underneath the baking stone.

This is the risen Boule

Dust the top of the loaf and make a 1/4-inch slash using a serrated knife. The book offers a few different patterns to choose from.  I chose the scallop pattern.

Now, this was the tricky part. The instructions say to give a quick forward jerking motion of the wrist, and slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the preheated baking stone. Well, all I can say is that I should've gone with my first thought of using parchment paper because this part didn't work too well. The dough just stuck to the pizza peel. Phooey!

Instead of trying to bake a blob and not be happy with it, I decided to just start over again. I put the dough back in the refrigerator to try again the next night. That's the good thing about this method. You can always put the dough back in the refrigerator and try it another day.

Baking Day: 2nd Try

Okay. Let's try this again...

Sprinkle a little flour over the top of the dough and pull off a grapefruit-size ball. Then tightly shape the ball by stretching the surface around to the bottom on all sides.

I placed it on the parchment this time to make sure it would come off in the shape I want it to and not stick to the peel.

Here is the shaped boule doubled in size. It held it's shape pretty well during the proofing.

Now we'll make the slashes. The slashes worked better this time.

It’s ready to bake!

Just slide the shaped and scored loaf (on the parchment paper) onto the preheated baking stone.  Then quickly pour hot water into your steam pan.  Close the oven door immediately to trap the steam.  Bake the bread for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is browned and firm to the touch.

Remove the loaf to a wire rack to cool completely before slicing and serving.

 

Then slice and enjoy!  Look at those holes. I’m very pleased with this version. It tastes so good!  It’s great warm with butter. You can also make crostini with it.

Happy Baking!
Cathy