Working toward that perfect pie...

Making the perfect pizza is becoming quite an obsession of mine. In my quest to perfect my pies, I have been on the look out for better and better ingredients. For me, I would rather get great local heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market (I am a terrible gardener) then used can ones from Italy. (Although in the middle of winter, those are tasty.)

This last week I picked up some fresh ovoline from Elko's Produce (featured here), along with some yellow tomatoes. I know that a margherita is supposed to be red, green and white, the these yellows were hard to pass on.

I have also been experimenting with my dough. I have really enjoyed this recipe from Slice, but allowing it to rest in the refrigerator at least over night. This time I experimented with a bit more complicated method. I made a round of dough and let it rest over night. Then the next day started with just the flour and water (upping it to %65) and let that rest an hour (autolyze) before adding the yeast and salt then a bit of the day old dough. Then let this rest over another night. I liked the end result. The dough had a great texture to work with and stretched out nicely. I didn't do a fair head to head with dough that did not rest, but the result was promising.


For my yellow tomato sauce, all I did was peel the tomato (drop in boiling water for about a minute, then peel the skin) then pass through a food mill. Add oregano and a touch of sea salt.


Here is my yellow margherita, with the yellow tomatoes and Elko ovoline and basil, which was also from the market.



I also made a potato and rosemary pie. I let the potatoes soak in salted water for about an hour (as recommended by Jim Lahey), this helps to draw out the moisture and make the potatoes cook quicker. I think this trick worked great, then thin slices cooked well without getting dried out or being undercooked.

The pie is topped with the potatoes, rosemary and a touch of Parmesan.


And last as always is a white with hots.


For those keeping track, I recently bought a Weber Grill with the intention of using it to make pies... I am finally going to try to modify it so that it acts more like a wood burning oven than a grill. I will keep you posted. (Thanks Andy)