PIZZA!!! And tests. Yes, I'm a geek.

Man, I love pizza. My obsession with it goes back years. I remember the first pizza I tried to make from scratch. It was hard as a rock and had no taste. The thing is, through the years and different recipes, that didn't change. All of this was pre-Food Network.

Pretty quickly Good Eats became my favorite show and Alton Brown was the man. He had this way of making pizza crust like I've never seen before. Cold rising. So I try it. It's better but I still can't seem to get it right, at least not as fluffy and chewy like he has it. Although he does turn me on to instant yeast instead of Rapid Rise Yeast which happens to be a big eye opener. The search continues.

Somewhat recently and rather deflated with the choice of pizza crusts I have found I try that there interweb. A Google search for "The best pizza crust recipe" turns up a TON of hits. One catches my eye though, "Mitch's Basic Pizza Dough". After reading it I find it's a little different than the rest. It uses honey instead of sugar and, what surprised me more, uses All Purpose flour instead of Bread flour. It surprised me because everything I have read about pizza crust is that bread flour gives that chewiness that is so prized in crusts. So I give it a shot. It's actually really good. Has a nice rise, it's tasty, and crisps well. I do have to make some adjustments to the recipe since I use a stand mixer and in the recipe he uses a food processor and his hands.

I want to do some tests. Instead of AP flour I want to try it with bread flour. I make two identical doughs the same way, nothing different, except one is with AP and one with bread flour. The AP came out better than the last time I made it. It was fluffy and thin. The bread flour crust was interesting. It had a better taste and a better crisp when you bite in to it..the AP one had a little staleness in the bite. So in general I like qualities of both with the AP one being a bit better.

The next test? Mixing one cup bread flour with 2 cups AP (I only use 3 cups of flour as opposed to 3.5 in the recipe). After that sifting...will that make a difference?

When all is said and done I'll post my recipe..or what will probably be an altered Mitch's recipe

I'll let you know how it turns out.

PS - while creating this post I found out that Mitch has given props to his business partner's pizza crust who basically did what I am doing, except hundreds of times. She uses Semolina flour which IS the way you are supposed to do it. I will try that but I want to make a dough that most people can make with degrediants that they will most likely have.