Success on the pizza front! Mostly. I'm still using the long barbecue spatula to scooch the pizza off the peel and onto the stone, but with much less difficulty these days. Part of my problem seems to be the layout of the kitchen. It's long and narrow, with the fridge and oven facing the sink/counter. There isn't really room to maneuver with the peel without shaking the toppings off the pizza and into the back of the oven. Not wanting a repeat of the great coffee cake fire (see earlier entry on coffee cake), I go in at an angle and let gravity do the work, with some guidance from the spatula. There's no problem at all getting the pizza off the stone and back onto the peel.
As to the corn meal idea: I'm not thrilled. I used corn meal on the first pizza and discovered that (as I feared) instead of tasting the crust, I was tasting corn meal. If you've ever eaten one of Freschetta's frozen pizzas, you know the flavor I'm talking about. Not so good. So on the second I put a lot of extra bread flour on the peel and that helped the pizza slide off without tainting the crust.
Shape? Well, sort of an oblong amoeba-like shape. Definitely rounder than the previous triangle shapes. I'm not practiced enough at the dough shaping yet to get a perfect circle. I'm pretty paranoid about the dough tearing, so my pizzas are only about 10 or 11 inches in diameter and tend to be a little thicker than your standard slice of New York pizza, but they're pretty tasty. The problem is that just one pizza at this size doesn't quite feed two people, but two of them can easily lead to overeating. Must find the willpower to put the remaining slices into the fridge before they find their way onto the plates.
Fortunately, the menu plan for the rest of the week calls for decidedly leaner meals.
As to the corn meal idea: I'm not thrilled. I used corn meal on the first pizza and discovered that (as I feared) instead of tasting the crust, I was tasting corn meal. If you've ever eaten one of Freschetta's frozen pizzas, you know the flavor I'm talking about. Not so good. So on the second I put a lot of extra bread flour on the peel and that helped the pizza slide off without tainting the crust.
Shape? Well, sort of an oblong amoeba-like shape. Definitely rounder than the previous triangle shapes. I'm not practiced enough at the dough shaping yet to get a perfect circle. I'm pretty paranoid about the dough tearing, so my pizzas are only about 10 or 11 inches in diameter and tend to be a little thicker than your standard slice of New York pizza, but they're pretty tasty. The problem is that just one pizza at this size doesn't quite feed two people, but two of them can easily lead to overeating. Must find the willpower to put the remaining slices into the fridge before they find their way onto the plates.
Fortunately, the menu plan for the rest of the week calls for decidedly leaner meals.
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