BBA: Pizza Napoletana

The twenty-fifth Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge (from the book by the same name authored by Peter Reinhart) is Pizza Napoletana, and is found on pages 207-212. 

This is a two-day dough: a day to make the dough and then it sits in the refrigerator overnight until the next day when you do the shaping and baking.  (It has the added instructions in the book for making it and freezing the dough for later use.)  Flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and water are all you need. 

Mixing is easy, the shaping a little more difficult as I had trouble stretching the dough in the manner he suggested (putting it over my knuckles and stretching) so that needs more practice by me for sure.  I ended up just putting it down and shaping it that way.  I also ended up baking it on parchment paper as I could not get it to move off onto the stone without the parchment paper, actually we liked that way and it kept the crust a little more tender, which we like in a pizza crust.  Might do that again. 

We enjoyed the flavor of the pizza crust, so I will be making this often as the guys love pizza.  Definitely a repeat.

Nancy, Cathy, Jessica, Melissa, Sarah, Di, Leslie, Margaret and I are baking on a slower schedule.  If you would like to see their Pizza Dough, click on their names and visit their sites, or you can visit the main group and marvel how they are so far ahead of us.  We'll get there...Slow and Steady.  Our next challenge:  Poolish Baguettes, found on pages 213-214.