28 June 2004
Pizza for a crowd?
I love making home-made pizza, and it’s especially fun serving it to guests. But for a party of about 20 people, I’m stumped over how to serve it without being chained in the kitchen preparing these things all night. Can I parbake my pizzas and keep them in the fridge, inconspicuously popping them in the oven throughout the evening? Can I roll out several pieces of dough, flour them well, and stack them up for later assembly? The appeal of crisp, hot homemade pizza is too good to pass up — anyone have experiences to share?
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2 ideas: you can parbake them and freeze them, not refrigerate- refrigeration will make ‘em soggy.Second idea: make your dough, separating them with parchment paper or wax paper.Another suggestion is a make-your-own pizza party, where each person makes their own individual size pizza, freeing you from the assembly. If you do this, though, make sure you have other munchies out, ’cause probably not everyone’s pizza will be able to cook at the same time.
You have a couple of choices.1) cook 2 or 3 pizzas 2/3 of the way ahead of time, then cook last 5 minutes each. This way you get 3 pizzas out and can have the 4th in the oven in short order.2) Buy half a dozen pizza screens, make the pizzas on them prior and as pizzas come out of the oven, replace with a new pizza. (just give the oven a bit of time to get back up to temp) If you are worried about the sauce making the pizza soggy, just have the stretched dough on the screen, and sauce and cheese the pizza while the oven temp rebounds.Just some thoughts.Msk
So, I assembled my pizza, baked it for about 5 minutes at 500 degrees, froze it completely, and stored it in a 2-gallon Ziplock bag. Then, I baked it frozen for 7 minutes at 500 degrees. It worked pretty well, but the crust ended up a bit crispier than normal. We’ll see how it goes over at Thursday’s festivities.
Having just returned from "Thursday’s festivities" — good method. Delicious! (But what else would I expect from the Kosher King himself?!)
Hot Dairy!
Peter Reinhart offers a recipe for pre-made frozen pizza crust in his book American Pie. The book is, in my opinion, a triumph.(One exception: the sourdough starter method he gives doesn’t really work. He made a modification and forgot to test it, by his own admission. To get it to grow, start with a wet culture instead of a dry one, about one part flour to one part liquid, by weight.)
You’ve mentioned this book before… I’m going to check it out. Order has been placed on Half.com!