Steelers vs. Cardinals (pizza) (Feb. 4, 2009)

Sunday night is pizza night at our house, even if it's Super Bowl Sunday, so we threw together a couple of pizzas in honor of the two teams.  Of course the Pittsburgh pizza should have had kielbasa with fries on top, but we went with the more conventional Italian sausage with peppers and onions.  The Arizona pizza replaced most of the mozzarella with a generous amount of pepper jack cheese, mixed in some adobo sauce in the tomato sauce, used a bit of red pepper, and topped the pizza with afterward with fresh cilantro.  Like the game itself, for our household at least, the Arizona pizza was more beloved but the Pittsburgh pizza came out first.  Here's a rough cut at my two pizza dough recipe:

• 400 g of flour.  Primarily Caputo 00 flour, with a few tablespoons of organic whole wheat thrown in
• 240 g of filtered water, heated just a bit (maybe to 85-90 degrees), just to get it warmer than room temp
• 2 t quick rising yeast
• 1 T sea salt

1. Put the water in a mixing bowl and sprinkle the yeast on top.  Let it sit a few minutes.
2. Measure out 75% of the flour, including the whole wheat, and mix in the salt.
3. On a relatively low speed, mix in the flour for about 2 minutes
4. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 20 minutes
5. Uncover and start mixing again on a low speed.  (I'm using something in the "2" range on our Kitchenaid mixer.)
6. After about 5 minutes, begin mixing in the remainder of the flour.  This should take about 3 more minutes.  In the last minute or two, increase the speed a bit to about "4" on a Kitchenaid mixer--nothing speedy.
7. Cover and let sit for 20 minutes.
8. Turn the fairly wet dough out onto a floured surface and divide it into 2 balls.  Each will weigh about 310-315g.
9. In two bowls, each sprayed lightly with olive oil, put each ball of dough and cover with plastic wrap.
10. In a warm spot (we use the side oven, turned off, but getting the ambient heat from the big oven warming up), let rise for about 90 minutes.
11. Turn each of the balls of dough out onto the floured surface.  Stretch the top of the dough from each side, around to the bottom, and join.  Cover and let sit for about 20 minutes.

At this point, the dough will have considerable resilience and can be worked into two 13" pizzas easily.  I roughly shape them into small (6-8") circles, with more dough in the middle, and begin stretching them out or using one form or another of tossing to take them to 13".

Here's a picture of the Super Bowl pizzas.  The crust was browner than it appears here.  Chalk up the whiteness to the flash.