Thanks for the tip about the sausage. I tried it out for tonight's pizza, and it is excellent! I tried a couple other things as an experiment as well. Since I work full time, and still have to come home to feed a hungry family of four at the end of the day, it's tough to keep the wolves at bay if you are making pizza dough. So I mixed up the dough the night before and put it through the first knead, and then 'retarded' it by covering my bowl of un-risen mixture in the refrigerator overnight. The dough still rose, though more slowly. When I got home from work today, I took it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature for about an hour and a half. Then I followed the rest of the recipe as directed, though I needed one additional 15 minute period of stretch and rest. The dough did not rise as much overnight in the fridge as it did for me at room temperature in 60 minutes, so it was a bit more dense and elastic, and was a tad more difficult to work with. However, when I baked it, the consistency and crunch were perfect! The dough, when allowed to mellow overnight, gained a wonderful, rich flavor. I'm not sure I really saved any time doing it this way, but my family agreed that we like the overall results better. I also mixed the sausage the night before, to blend the flavors better. I flattened the raw sausage very thin, and laid patches of it across the entire top of the cheese layer, added some sauteed mushrooms and onions, and then the sauce and Parmesan. I baked the pie an extra 5-8 minutes to insure the sausage was cooked through. I think as long as your ground pork or sausage is lean, you won't have problems with excessively greasy pizza. My second pie came out even better than the first!
Ah pizza night! My family and I held a massive pizza night while we were all home for Christmas. I ended up making four different doughs with various flours and processing methods. Our favorite was a thicker crust BBQ pork pizza we made using shredded pork, BBQ sauce, onions and green peppers. Delicious! - kelsey
January 6, 2011 at 10:32pm