pizza napoletana - bread baker's apprentice challenge #25

Pizza. I've made the bread baker's apprentice pizza dough more times than I can count. In fact it is probably one of the first Peter Reinhart recipes I mastered. Why? Because everyone loves pizza right. So I thought I would look back at some of the pies I've made this year when the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge entered recipe 25.

While I'm not picky on the cheese; Blue, boccacini, fontina, provolone, cheddar, mozzarella, I tend to keep my pies very minimal. With my usual creations having two or three of the following; roasted peppers, sliced mushrooms, crushed tomatoes, caramelized onions, fresh basil, artichoke hearts, or maybe some chicken.

I picked up my first ever pizza stone for this reason, which was 10 dollars at Safeway back in the day, and it's still alive for a friend. I'm lucky to have a nice gas oven that goes to 550, so the pizza usually pops out in a blistering 6-7 minutes. Delicious and amazing. The crust is airy, with a slight chew and I get those leopard marks that everyone talks about. A definite recipe keeper, but then again, it always was.

I've even started tossing my pies on a regular basis. Of course it's just as easy to roll or hand stretch them too!

How did your pizza's turn out?

Check out more pies by the BBAC. Something Shiny, The Yumarama, and Aehrelich Gesagt