I spent a good chunk of time this year (almost every Sunday) in the quest to make a pizza at home that came as close as possible to replicating the pizza from Via Tribunali in Seattle and Pizzeria Prima Strada in Victoria. Both restaurants make authentic Nepalese style pizza - which means it is cooked in a hot (about 800F) wood-fired brick or clay oven, uses of San Marzano plum tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella cheese, and fine-milled white high-gluten wheat flour. The dough also must be leavened with a sourdough starter or regular brewers’ yeast and should be hand stretched, not rolled out. I can only replicate some of this, but I'm pretty happy with my results so far.
My version of the dough uses Robin Hood flour (sometimes I go crazy & throw in a bit of whole wheat), brewers" yeast (but I plan to start experimenting with sourdough), water and a pinch of salt. I make the dough in my bread machine and then put it in a bowl coated with olive oil for a second rise. I have not yet fully mastered the hand stretching and still need a bit of assistance from my rolling pin. I do use San Marzano tomatoes which I luckily can buy at my local grocery store (and this is good since they come in glass jars and just today I read about the yuckiness of canned tomatoes). I also happen to live in the same town as the one Canadian Cheesemaker making genuine mozzarella from an imported herd of water buffalo. It's not cheap, but I consider my pizza a worthwhile splurge.
When it comes to baking I do my best to replicate the wood-fired oven with a pizza stone and putting my oven as high as it goes - which is only 550F, but this works reasonably well. And it took me a few tries (imagine pizzas which became defacto calzones) to get the hang of using a pizza peel to get the pizza onto the stone. In the summer, we use the gas grill outside with the pizza stone. The (not very good) picture is of a pizza with spinach and chorizo with the buffalo mozzarella. I love our pizza Sundays.
This post is part of Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.
