Shadow Wrought's Journal: After Action Report: Geckofood's Recipes

Geckofood was kind enough to grace last week with not one, but two recipes last week. Armed with both of them I did some baking Saturday.

I actually started the process Friday night since the Pizza dough recipe called for an overnight sit in the fridge. Mixing all the ingredients was pretty easy and straightforward. The only thing is that by the last cup of flour, the arm does start to get a bit tired from the mixing.* It is, however, very much worth it. It was also extremely easy getting the dough into the plastic bags like he recommends through the spraying of Pam or similar product.

Saturday was the day for the Pizza and for the Amish White Bread. I don't know if I'll ever try two in the same night again, but I have a remarkably short memory when it comes to questionable decisions (i.e.- stupidity in general). So I started making the white bread at about 6PM figuring that I could get everything mixed and and kneaded and started rising in plenty of time to start the Pizza's at 6:30PM. ROTFLOLHHHHHHHHH**

By 6:40PM the pizza needed to be started since we had to feed the kids before they went to the 8PM showing of The Pink Panther. Where was I with the Bread, you ask? Well, only 4 of 5-6 cups of flour had been incorporated and my arm was about ready to fall off. I am not a super strong individual, but I am not a weakling either, and my arm was so close to being dead that even a zombie would pass it over as one of its own. So... time to set aside and switch to the pizza...

Pull out Pizza dough and place on floured surface. Dig out baking stone. Realize that there's more dough than stone. D'oh. While I go about fiddling with baking arrangements, my wife came along and took over the stretching of the dough. Now if you notice in some of Gecko's photos, the pizza is round. And mine was, too- sort of. The corners were round which kept it from being a perfect rectangle. Indeed, what it really looked like was a pizza in the shape of Oregon. A key mistake at this point was in choosing hunger over a picture. In hindsight, a photo would have been a lot of fun to share. More D'oh!***

So. Back to the baking stone. I was going to use it because I had it. So I put the pizza on a cookie sheet and the cookie sheet in turn on top of the baking stone. Which worked perfectly. Well, as long as its backwards day and "perfectly" means "anything but." It ended up cooking a bit funky and was difficult to remove due to my shoice of cornmeal instead of cookign spray as a greaser. While I tried to get Pizza number 1 off the cookie sheet, my wife worked her stretching magic on Pizza number 2. Next time around I am going to have to watch her closely. Because when I tried it I ended up with d'oh^h^h^h^h dough that was about 1 foot by 1 foot with a small hole in the middle. Then my wife took over and it was rectangular (thought still Oregonish) in shape and filled a full size cookie sheet. If we had had more time, and if I had involved her sooner, I have no doubt that circular pizzas would have ensued.

Now, despite the shape and need of my wife's rescuing, it should be noted that the pizza turned out awesome. A great taste, nice and thick, but not too heavy. Perfect! (And we ain't talking no backwards-day Perfect either. We mean arse-kicking perfection here!) After partaking of some pizza it was time to head back to the bread. By now it was close to 7:45 and I needed to knead. In addition to the kneading, I needed to knead in another cup of flour. So it would be close to 8:30PM by the time I had it in the bowl and ready to rise.

About the rising. Gecko gave me a great idea for getting dough to rise in an otherwise cold house- place it over the Dryer when its running. Luckily we had plenty of laundry to keep the dryer humming. So I placed it in the laundry room and it worked beautifully. Except that, well, I had to pick the kids up, and then I got distracted, and then I got caught up in a game, anfd then the dryer was finished for the night, and then, and then, and then... after all these "then's" it wasn't until nigh on midnight-twenty that I actually got them into the oven. Wheich means that it wasn't until close to 1:00 that it came out, which means that it wasn't until about 1:30 that I was it had cooled enough to put it into plastic and I could go to bread. Er, bed.

Despite the late night the bread turned out great. It has a thick brown crust but is super soft inside. I was very, very happy with it, and now feel that I can resonably refer to myself as a baker. I'm even thinking of re-visiting the Sourdough recipe again...

Thanks for the recipes Gecko!

*The Pizza dough was no where near as tough as the White Bread. I understand now why people have large kitchen mixers. That being said I don't want one. I like making it the simple way. The way that people have been making it for hundreds of years. If a 120lb Amish houseife can make this without a Kitchenaid, then so can I, right?

**RollOnTheFloorLaughingOutLoudHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa

***I will have the camera ready to go before I start next time- then it won't come down to a choice between posterity and hunger- 'cause I didn't get to 230lbs by letting posterity win!