[Julie]Alas! What horrors have begotten this pizza stone?
It had been a night of unsettling appliance noises...dripping refrigerator, huffing gas stove, when we heard a strange cracking noise. "What was that?" I didn't see anything broken or out of place until I opened the oven to check on the pizza. What the hell?! The pizza stone, without any known cracks or chips, snapped in half while baking at 400 degrees. We've used this stone bunches of times before. Has anyone heard of this happening? I'm trying to track down a local Pampered Chef rep here in the cities, but if anyone knows one in either WI or MN, please let me know. Aren't these things supposed to have a lifetime warranty??
[Jeremy]
So it turn out PChef goods, whether inherited from ex-roommates or bought outright, have only a three year warranty. Which means we'll have to stick with the more efficient baking stone that we got as a wedding present and find some other way to bake extra fourth of the pizza. As with the rest of this home-made business, it's hard to go back to the disappointing finish you get from a regular baking sheet after you experience the happy crisp of a baking stone. Sigh
Tonight's pizza was disappointing on three counts even before you got to the cracking of the stone: first, the TJ pasta sauce we used (being out of Muir Glen pizza sauce) was decidedly bland; second, the faux-meatballs Julie requested in the interests of apparent protein were squishy and not nice in this context; third, the roasted garlic-jack cheese that we bought on impulse while camping and thought we might use up here tasted almost exactly like roasted garlic flavored plastic. Sigh, again. As usual the crust was tasty though.
Wheat Pizza Crust
I arrived at this recipe by combining and adapting the pizza dough recipes from Field of Greens and Alton Brown to produce a soft, light and chewy part-whole wheat crust. We also use our stand mixer for this one, so if you don't have one just substitute the phrase "stand there and stir/knead it yourself" for "let the mixer run for a while."
1.5 tsp active dry yeast
.75 C (filtered) water and or (soy) milk
1.5 T olive oil
.5 tsp salt (we use sea salt)
1 tsp sugar
.5 C whole wheat flour
1.5 C (unbleached) all-purpose flour
Heat the water/milk for 45 seconds in the microwave or until warm on the stove top and add the yeast. Once the yeast has proofed (shown you that it has life in it, ie gotten bubbly, usually 2-3 minutes; you can skip this step if you trust your yeast) add the whole thing to your work bowl along with the oil, salt and sugar. Add the whole wheat flour and mix until well Incorporated. Add the first half cup of AP flour and allow to mix for five minutes or so (this helps the flour to develop gluten and get good and stretchy), then add the second half cup of AP flour and work this in (in each case you'll want to start the mixer on low so as not to send the flour flying and switch to medium). At this point you might want to switch to your dough hook or knead on the table top. How much of the last half cup of flour you'll need to use will depend on your flour and what the weather's like that day (seriously), so add it a bit at a time while you're working the dough as needed. What you want is to be able to take a piece of the dough and stretch it out with your fingers so that you can see sun light through it without it pulling apart, so keep kneading until you get that.
Roll the dough into a ball and place it in a bowl with a little oil. Roll the dough in the oil to coat, cover with a towel and allow to rise on the counter about three hours.
Turn the out onto a work surface (you don't need to punch it down, it will deflate on its own) and divide it as you see fit. We usually divide into four pieces, which will each produce a nine inch pizza. Stretch the dough into friendly rounds (thumbs are better than a rolling pin here) and place on your baking stone/sheet to be covered by sauce, toppings and cheese. Bake in a 425 oven until bubbly and as brown as you like (12-15 mins).
Takes some time but is very worth it.
1 comment:
Hey julie. sorry about your stone. For the most part if they are going to break they break early in the life of the stone because of a bubble trapped in manufacture. it is more rare to break after you have used it for a while. they are very sensitive to extreme changes in heat, so dont take well to going from fridge to oven. they also crack when exposed to direct flame, so you cant really broil with them. if it was just the oven, thats poor.
My mother in law is a PChef consultant. She says you should:
1. Find your receipt.
2. On the back of the receipt there is a 1-800 number. You have to call for a 'reference number'
3. Find a small chip of the stone (she says if it cracked in half just take one half out to the curb and crack off a small enough piece to mail)
4. Fill out the back of the receipt, put receipt, and stone chip. write the reference number on the outside of the box and on the receipt.
she also says you can either 1) find your original consultant's number on the receipt 2) go to pampered chef website to find local consultant or 3) call her (she's nice)
and they will help you
It has a three year warranty
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