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Pizza spinners: useful tools for backyard pizza making

6/6/2024

Backyard pizza ovens have their origins in Italy, of course, about 4,000 years ago. The popularity of pizza in the U.S. combined with our love for backyard cooking and entertaining has prompted a sharp rise in having a pizza oven on the patio. Literally hundreds of models are available, from grill adapter kits to table top ovens using gas or pellets to full-size wood-fired brick ovens housed in a pizza man-cave. Examining this great variety could be a book in itself, and each model has its own quirks, strengths and limitations—not to mention specific instructions on heating the oven, cooking temps and times, etc.

Nonetheless, most backyard oven require the same utensils:

A metal brush (copper or steel) to clean the baking surface of ash and burnt cornmeal, and possibly a scraper as well, for baked-on cheese.
A small metal shovel to remove the ashes and a metal bucket nearby to safely store the ashes until they are cool.
Long handled peels to get the move your pizzas in and out of the oven. I like to use a wooden peel to slide the pizza in, and a metal one to slide it out.
An infrared thermometer to ensure proper baking temperatures

Because the heat source for the oven is in the back or side of the baking bed, pizzas have to be rotated for even baking. Some tabletop pizza ovens come with a rotating stone, but in a large brick oven, this has to be done by hand. There are two ways to do this. The traditional method is to use a small metal peel with a long handle. The flat head of the peel often has ridges or slots that help grip the crust for turning. Tilt the pizza at a slight angle as you manipulate the peel to rotate the pie. This method requires some practice, and many a novice pizza maker has had the experience of turning their pizza too slowly, so one side is burnt, or worse yet, pushing their beautiful pizza into the flames, ashes and all, thereby completely ruining their creation!

The other option for rotating a pizza in a wood fired oven is to use a pair of “pizza spinners” which feature long wooden handles with a bent fork or tines on the end. The tines grip the crust of the pizza so it can be easily spun on the baking bed. You can buy them online for $10 to $40, but I just keep a lookout for long handled barbecue forks at thrift shops and bend the tines myself with a pair of pliers. I’ve made a half a dozen sets for my pizza making friends and they love them. As you can see, they don't have to match exactly in style, although they are easier to operate if they are the same length. I bought all of these at thrift shops for less that $2.00 apiece. Choose long handled forks with tines that are fairly close together. The ones with three tines are my favorite but are harder to find. The tines can be bent easily with a pair of pliers. I use linesman pliers because they usually have a wider, flatter plate on the jaw, plus a pair of side cutters to take the points of the tines so they don't get stuck in the crust. Below you can see a pair of linesman pliers so you know what tool I mean.

Below, you can see a short video of the pizza spinners in action. Notice that you can use them to move the pizza closer or further from the fire source.

As I said before, you can find pizza spinners online for around $20, but I like the thrill of the hunt in thrift stores, and the pleasure making my own tools for my baking adventures. If you're already enjoying backyard pizzas, or thinking of investing in an oven, you'll be happy to have a pair of these spinners hanging near the oven.

Portions of this blog are adapted from the new edition of my Thursday Night Pizza, which will include a section of backyard pizza oven, as well several new recipes. It should be out around August 1st. I'll keep you posted.

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A visit from St. Nicholas

12/6/2023

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Every year in late May or early June, I start growing my beard out so I can play St. Nicholas on December 6 and Santa the rest of the month. This year I did somewhat more for St. Nicholas Day than usual, much to the delight of the students at our monastery's high school.

St. Nicholas of Myra was a bishop in Asia Minor. His parents were wealthy, but died in an epidemic when he was a young priest. He used his inheritance to help the poor and the sick. He was exiled and imprisoned during the persecution under Emperor Diocletian, but after Constantine legalized Christianity, he was released and later attended the Council of Nicea. He died in 343 A.D. Many stories and legends are told of his generosity to the poor, one of which is the origin of the legend of Santa Claus coming down the chimney to leave gifts. You can learn more HERE at the "Saint Nicholas Center" website, which has a wealth of information about the traditions surrounding the saint.

One of my favorite St. Nicholas Day traditions is making speculaas, a crisp spice cookie often made in molds in the shape of the saint. The recipe may be found in a previous blog from several years ago. I spent the last two nights making them for my three religion classes. I also had a free period just before lunch on the saint's day, so I made big batches of cinnamon sugar donut holes to share with even more students as they entered the student refectory. It's not hard to make a LOT of donut holes when your school kitchen has an industrial-sized fryer that can fry 80 donut holes at a time! In case you're wondering what recipe I used for the dough, I have no shame in admitting that I used canned biscuits cut into bite-sized pieces. My mom used to make these sweet treats for parish potlucks and they're a favorite with my Stage Rats. You can find instructions HERE.

It was a lot of work to get ready for my stint as the saintly bishop who inspired the legend of Santa Claus, but it gave me an opportunity to teach some valuable lessons. My students learned about an important holy man from church history, and (one hopes) were inspired by his example of courage, compassion and generosity. I was able to model that generous spirit and spread joy by handing out treats--you should have seen the kids' eyes light up when they saw me with that basket of goodies! Above all, the day was an example of our school's mission "to educate the whole student", mind, body, and spirit; not just book knowledge but creativity and culture and Christian values made real in something as simple as a smile and cookie.

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New Book Published!

9/6/2022

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After several years and more than a few setbacks, my new cookbook is finally available! This one is pretty special: hardback, all-color, and TONS of photographs! I cannot help but think that my father the photographer and my mother the baker both would have been proud to see this product of their inspiration and tutelage.

You can order a personalized signed copy directly from me here at the abbey. Just put the name of the person to whom the book should be addressed in the comments section of the online order form.

Click HERE to go to book's page on the the abbey's website.

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Homemade Bagels

4/5/2022

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It's been a looong time since I made homemade bagels, but I have a new book coming out titled Breakfast Breads and Sweet Treats (coming in September from Reedy Press) and my publisher insisted that bagels had to be in it. But I've never been entirely satisfied with my bagel recipe and technique, so I did a lot more research and experimentation to create the recipe that follows.

A few important points

If you want chewy, dense bagels, bread flour is best, which has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour.
Be careful not to allow the balls of dough to over-rise before the shaping and boiling process, or the result will be somewhat flattened bagels with a wrinkled surface.
Some recipes direct you to add your toppings as soon as the bagels come out of the boiling water, but I find that using an egg wash makes the toppings stick better and makes for a shiny, golden brown crust.
In addition to toppings, you can add just about anything to this dough: onion flakes, granulated garlic, cinnamon and raisins, mini chocolate chips, etc. My personal preference is for plain bagels, toasted, with flavored cream cheese or compound butters.

Homemade
Bagels

Dough
1 ½ cups warm water
1 package active dry yeast
2 teaspoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon salt
3½ cups bread flour (see note)

Boiling Process
Water
3 tablespoons of honey

Baking
Egg wash
Toppings like poppy seed, sesame seed, onion flakes, etc.

Place the warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer or in a medium mixing bowl and add the yeast and brown sugar. Stir to dissolve and allow to develop for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in the salt, then add the flour, about one cup at a time, with the mixer on medium, using the dough hook. When all the flour is fully incorporated, knead it for about 10 minutes in the mixer, 15 minutes if you knead it by hand. The dough will be very stiff. Turn the dough out onto a clean counter top and divide into six equal piece for large bagels or eight pieces for slightly smaller ones. Line one large or two smaller baking sheets with parchment paper. Shape each portion of dough into a round ball and then place them at least 3” apart on the baking sheets. Cover the pans with cling wrap. Don’t use a dish towel because the stiff dough tends to dry out. You can also place a couple of small bowls of warm water under the plastic (see ph0to). Place the pans in a warm place and let the dough balls rise for an hour or until nearly doubled. Do not allow them to over-rise, or the bagels will be misshapen and wrinkly—I know this from experience!

After the dough balls have risen, take your forefinger and make a hole in the center of each ball. Spread the hole out carefully to shape the bagel shapes (the hole should be about 1½” across). Cover the pans again with cling wrap while you get the water boiling. Preheat your oven to 375° F.

Fill a wide pot about 2/3 of the way with water (I use a stock pot), add the honey and bring to a medium boil. Use a spatula to gently drop the bagels into the boiling water one at a time. Boil for 90 seconds, flip over and boil for another 90 seconds. Remove and set on a clean, dry cloth or towel to drain briefly (do NOT use paper towels) and then place them back on the baking sheets. Once they are all boiled, brush the tops of the bagels with whole egg wash and add toppings if desired.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. If you use an instant read thermometer, the interior temp should be above 200 ° F. Let bagels cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

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Cherry Biscotti

3/23/2022

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I haven't done any baking lately, because we are in the middle of the spring musical (we're doing Cinderella) so I've been covered in sawdust and paint spatters rather than flour recently. But before we got to production week I made a batch of biscotti flavored with dried Michigan cherries and white baking chips. As you can see here, I often serve them as dessert at the end of an Italian dinner, along with a little scoop of pistachio almond ice cream. The recipe is below.

Dried Cherry Biscotti
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8" teaspoon of salt
1 cup of dried cherries
¾ cup white baking chips (regular or mini)
3 large eggs
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350° F. Place flour, baking powder and salt in a medium size mixing bowl and whisk thoroughly until combined. Stir in cherries and baking chips. In a separate bowl, beat eggs, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly.

Shape the dough into a log about 12” long and 4” wide and place it on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown and firm to the touch. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a cutting board and slice the log into 12” slices. Place the slices back on the baking sheet, cut side down, and bake at 325° F. for seven minutes. Turn the slices over and bake for an additional 7 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely.

Notes
--Biscotti (literally “twice baked”) are an Italian cookie originating in Prato and traditionally made with almonds. Chocolate and anise versions are also popular.
--I was inspired to make these when some friends of mine brought me back dried cherries from Michigan. The combination of tart and sweet is delicious. You can substitute dried cranberries if you prefer.
--Many biscotti recipes call to dip them in melted chocolate or almond bark, but resist the temptation with this recipe—these are plenty sweet as is! You can even reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup and still get good results.

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Four Corner Danish Pastries

2/3/2022

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In my last post I gave the recipe for Danish Pastry dough. Here's a good beginner's recipe to make some modestly-sized treats for family and friends.

Four Corner Danish Pastries
1 batch of Danish Pastry Dough
Preserves, pie filling, chutney, etc.

Prepare a 9” x 13” baking sheet with parchment or vegetable cooking spray. Divide dough in half. Leave half, wrapped, in the refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll portion of dough into a 9” x 9” rectangle. When you roll out the dough it’s almost impossible to get the edges perfectly straight, so roll it out 10” x 10” and trim it as needed. Using a pastry cutter or a sharp knife, divide dough into 9 squares. I often use a vintage 3” x 3” cookie cutter I found in a monastery junk drawer.

On each square, bring the corners to the center and press down with your fingers to make an indentation about the size of a quarter. Add a tablespoon of filling to the center and place on the baking sheet. Repeat with second portion of dough or use to make some other pastry.

You can use the trimmings to make spiral pastries as shown here. Knead the dough scraps together, divide and roll into ropes, flatten each one slightly and shape as shown. Place on the baking sheet and add the filling. I like this better than trying to roll the leftovers out to cut more squares. Besides, they make nice samples for the kitchen help!

Preheat oven to 350° F. Cover the baking sheet with a clean dry towel and allow pastries to rise for 30 to 45 minutes or until nearly doubled. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet. Drizzle with powdered sugar icing.

There are a lot of different ways to shape Danish pastries. Here's a couple of ideas from Craftsy (where I just happen to have a couple of online classes!) I'll be posting some additional ideas in the days ahead. But right now, I think I'll have a little breakfast.

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Danish Pastry Dough

1/21/2022

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I explored Danish pastry dough for the first time in Season Three of Breaking Bread with Father Dominic (20 years ago!) and I'm embarrassed to say that I have done very little with it ever since. But since I have a new book coming out in August titled Breakfast Breads and Sweet Treats, I figured it was time to renew my friendship with this sweet laminated dough.

My original recipe made a HUGE amount of dough, enough for dozens of almond bear claws, so I decided to re-work the recipe into a half batch. This change has the added benefit of making the technique more manageable, so you don't need to roll the dough out two feet wide. I have a commercial kitchen, but never everyone has that kind of counter space!

The step by step recipe is below, which is only for the dough. Future blogs (soon---I promise!) will show shaping techniques.

Danish Pastry Doughnish Pastry Dough
1 pkg. active dry yeast
3/4 c. warm milk (100° to 110° F.)
3 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg
2½ cups all-purpose flour, divided
1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter

In a medium size bowl or stand mixer, dissolve yeast in warm milk and let stand until foamy (about 10 minutes). Add sugar, salt and eggs and stir until blended. Add 2 cups of flour and beat until smooth (about 2 minutes). Stir in another ¼ cup of flour until thoroughly incorporated, but don’t overwork the dough. The mixture will be halfway between batter and bread dough---your bread baking instincts may be screaming at you to add more flour or beat it longer, but turn a deaf ear. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for at least 60 minutes.

Cut the unsalted butter into slices and place it in the bowl of a stand mixer with the remaining ¼ cup of flour. Process with the paddle attachment on medium high until smooth. Form the butter into a flattened rectangle and place it between two large pieces of parchment lightly coated with pan spray. Roll the butter out between the sheets into a rectangle about 8” x 10”. Leave butter between parchment sheets and place it in the refrigerator to firm up again.

Remove dough from refrigerator, and set aside a piece about the size of a small walnut (that’s your emergency repair kit, which you may need later. On a well-floured board or pastry cloth, roll the dough out into a rectangle 18” x 10”.

Peel the top layer of waxed paper off the butter, and turn it over onto one half of the dough. Peel off the remaining waxed paper, and brush the edges of the dough lightly with water. Fold the dough on one side over the butter and dough of the other side, stretching gently to line the edges up as needed. Press edges to seal.

You now have an envelope of dough, 9” x 10”, with a butter love letter tucked inside. Fold one third over the center of the dough, and use a dry pastry brush to brush off the extra flour on top. Fold the remaining third over that, so you now have a triple-decker package about 5” x 10”. Line up the edges carefully and press them together. Turn the package with the narrow side directly in front of you and dust the top very lightly with flour. Roll the dough out to 10” wide and 18” tall. Fold again into a triple-decker, wrap in wax paper or parchment, and refrigerate for 15 minutes (you now have 27 layers of butter). Repeat this process---roll out, fold, refrigerate---2 more times, after which you will have 27 x 3 x 3 = 243 layers of butter. If in the process of rolling the dough out, a hole appears in the dough and the butter sticks out, cover it with a small piece of your emergency repair kit.

Refrigerate the dough for a final 60 minutes, or overnight, and then it will be ready to form into Danish pastries. If you refrigerate it overnight, be sure to wrap it loosely but thoroughly---I wrap mine once loosely in parchment paper that has been coated with pan spray, then wrap it once in plastic wrap. The dough will expand in the fridge, and you don’t want it to blow out of the wrapper.

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Getting ready to party!

10/7/2021

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The Stage Rats and I are partnering with the Saint Bede Academy wrestling team for a fundraiser later this month, a gourmet pizza party and wine pairing. This event will be not just your usual high school dinner or fried chicken and spaghetti. We're serving only 40 guests, but tickets were $100 each, and we sold out in 3 days! I'll post a menu and wine pairing soon, but right now we've been hard at work on decorations for the tables. Late in the summer we build some trays with handles and assembled candle holders from scrap wood. After a careful paint job, several weeks of collecting silk leaves and artificial gourds, and a messy night with multiple glue guns, our centerpieces are complete.

Pretty proud of these kids! And just wait until you see the napkin rings . . .

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Pizza Recipes

5/3/2021

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Pizza is one of my favorite foods to eat and to make, and if you've been following my blog or my Facebook posts over the years you'll know that I have a LOT of pizza recipes. (Comes from teaching high school and living with bachelors, I guess!) I have a pizza cookbook called Thursday Night Pizza which was out of print for awhile because we lost our remaining copies in a warehouse fire. But it's been reprinted and is now available again on our monastery's retail website Monks' Market. I hope you will consider supporting my abbey by buying a copy. The new edition is spiral bound so it will lay flat on the countertop---whoo-hoo!

There are still plenty of posts and recipes right here on the website, and since I've been giving pizza programs via Zoom during the pandemic, I decided to gather the links all on one page to make life easier for my pizza loving Breadheads. Some of the pages are blog posts and some are recipe pages, but all of them should be useful. I am hoping to have a new pizza cookbook eventually, one that will include tips on pizzas on the grill and in those wood-fired ovens that are popping up on patios these days. In the meantime, explore the links here and do a little experimenting on your own.

8 minute Pizza Sauce
Big Ol' Batch of Pizza Sauce
Pizza Tossing 101
American Style Pizza Crust
Sweet Hot Italian Sausage
Muffaletta Pizza
Four Cheese Tomato Top Pizza
Mornay Sauce for Pizza
Spinach Pesto Pizza
Pesto and Prosciutto Pizza
Tomato Bacon Galette

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Scone Recipes

4/23/2021

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When I first started working on Breaking Bread with Father Dominic for PBS, I thought I had a fairly wide repertoire of bread recipes, but when we started looking at ideas for a second season, I realized that there were some serious gaps in my culinary education.

Glaring example: I had no idea what a scone was.

Since then I have expanded my recipe collection in any number of directions and am delighted to have the acquaintance of a great many scone recipes along the way. (My monastic brethren and fellow teachers are happy with this development as well!) Some people say they don't like scones because they claim that they "too dry and tough" but that is likely because they only scones they've had were sitting uncovered is the display case at Starbucks for 8 hours. Fresh and warm from the oven, they are a revelation.

Before we get to recipes, a note about how to pronounce “scone” properly. In Scotland and most of Northern England, the word is pronounced skahn (rhymes with “Ron”) but in parts of southern England, most of Canada and throughout the U.S., it is pronounced skoan (rhymes with “bone”). Both are correct in their respective regions and don’t let any foodie snobs tell you otherwise. If someone tries to correct you, tell them to try pronouncing “croissant” in front of a French patisserier.

It’s likely scones originated in the form of griddle cakes made with oats (the Scottish bannock), evolved their way through something like Welsh cakes cooked on a stove top, and eventually landed in the form of a round of dough cut into wedges and baked individually, but not until after home ovens became more common in the 1800’s. They may also be cut into shapes like rounds, squares and diamonds. I generally think of making wedges for the family, rounds for a guest, and squares when I’m making a larger batch for a crowd. Most of the recipes that follow are for wedges.

The liquid used for scones can be cream, half and half, sour cream, buttermilk, or whole milk. Most chefs say you can't make a decent scone with 2% or skim milk, but I say you can still get a good product if you have enough butter and eggs in the recipe! The recipes that follow will use variations of all these options. The recipes themselves can be adapted according to what you have in the fridge. No heavy cream? Use sour cream and all you have to do is add a quarter teaspoon of baking soda; the same adaptation can be made for buttermilk. Nothing but 2%? A little extra butter can work wonders!

Classic scones have little sugar and no add-ins except currants or raisins. They are perhaps a little dry, but that's because they are meant to be served with clotted cream and fruit preserves, jam, or lemon curd. Of course American coffeeshops have added chocolate chips, cranberries, toffee bits, vanilla or cinnamon baking chips, and various nuts. Similarly, classic scones may be brushed with cream and sprinkled with sugar (granulated or demerara) but you also see more modern versions drizzled with icing. No judgement here---my sweet tooth is as well-developed as the next monk!

So gives these yummy quick breads a try and you may find yourself with a new favorite treat for your morning coffee, afternoon tea, or midnight snack. Click on the photo to be directed to the respective recipe pages.