Peter Reinhart's Pizza Dough

Using the recipe out of Bread Maker's Apprentice (recipe available here), I made a batch of Reinhart's pizza dough last night... leaving two roughly 6 ounce balls of dough in the fridge tonight's pizza making, and freezing the other four for later. Anna and I really enjoy homemade pizzas, but up until this point, we have used the simple and straightforward dough recipe out of New Best Recipe... handy since it's made in the food processor and can be used the same day you mix it (not true of Reinhart's). However, as I've gotten a bit into bread making, I've become a little disappointed with the NBR dough... I don't find it to give terribly consistent results, and I'd prefer a little bit more chew and oven spring than we generally get from it... so, since both things I've made from Bread Maker's Apprentice have been amazing, I thought I'd give Reinhart's dough a shot. Reinhart is a big fan of delayed fermentation... the same deal as Pain a l'Ancienne, which we already know is tasty... so you chill the flour and use cold water to make it and immediately put your dough balls into the fridge... putting the yeast into super slow motion, which apparently does all sorts of wonderful flavor things which I don't really understand.

I hand mixed as per usual, and didn't seem to have any problems, but we'll see. As a novice with bread making I don't exactly know how the dough is supposed to feel... but I think I got "smooth and sticky" but I'm not sure how "springy" it was... though I guess I could call it "elastic"... maybe. The proof will be in the baking I suppose.

I haven't completely decided on toppings for the pizzas tonight, but I think I'm going to go with a simple 3 cheese pizza (Gruyère, Asiago, and Gorgonzola) for one and a spinach, ricotta, and Roma tomatoes for the other.

photo by flickr user edwardkimuk used under a Creative Commons license