Frozen Pizza Dough Balls

[16vCento]

Anyone get these delivered at all from online places?

My local place has stopped selling them and I see a few online places are doing this now.

This one looks decent ish I think:
https://greatballsofflour.com/product/s ... gJ9DPD_BwE

[dinny_g]

We’ll someone’s going to say it - may as well be me.

Make your own. It’s dead easy and only takes about 30 mins. Divide up into 8 equal parts and freeze in individual sandwich bags with a bit of flour

[ZedLeg]

Whenever I see these discussions I wonder how often people are eating pizza to need to batch make dough and freeze it. Do you all have those back garden pizza ovens?

[Swervin_Mervin]

Whenever I see these discussions I wonder how often people are eating pizza to need to batch make dough and freeze it. Do you all have those back garden pizza ovens?

If you're goig to make it once, you may as well make enough for future. It's not something you can make a small amount of that easily anyway. a 500g flour mix will make 3 good size bases, and dividing the mix of ingreients down less than that doesn't really work out.

I don't have an outdoor pizza oven, sadly. Give it time though. I used to manage a decent job on a large cast iron skillet in our knackered old range oven as you could crank that old heap up to 240/250C (eventually). Sadly our new ovens only go up to 230C and they just don't quite have the ferocity/guts to get a good cook on it.

I'm plannign on getting some sort of ceramic egg BBQ soon though, so I'd be interested to have a go doing pizza on one of those. Previous BBQ pizzas on an open grill have worked out pretty well.

[ZedLeg]

If you're goig to make it once, you may as well make enough for future. It's not something you can make a small amount of that easily anyway. a 500g flour mix will make 3 good size bases, and dividing the mix of ingreients down less than that doesn't really work out.

True, we have made our own dough in the past but it's usually if we're having people over so we make a bunch of pizzas at once.

I fancy a green egg but they are very spendy.

[dinny_g]

1 kg of flour makes 8 bases or 3 Pizza dinners for our household

For now, I crank the oven up to max ( about 240) and lay the base on oiled tin foil, then build the pizza from there. Make my own sauce etc. Pepperoni, Jalapenos and mushrooms with fresh basil and oregano or Chicken, and peppers with Fresh thyme are my go to topping combos.

I AM going to have a pizza Oven in the garden. Haven't' got around to is yet (new house, inside to finish off first) but hope to get onto it in September after our holidays. Nothing huge - just big enough to do 2 at a time.

[16vCento]

We have a Aldi Kamado Egg thing, and a normal gas bbq with a pizza stone, but our Ooni Koda makes much better pizza and is a lot quicker to set up and use.

I cba making dough

[Gavster]

Whenever I see these discussions I wonder how often people are eating pizza to need to batch make dough and freeze it. Do you all have those back garden pizza ovens?

I make my own bases and sauce, then freeze them in batches, usually have pizza once a week and cook it on a pizza stone in the oven on max temp. Really easy and feels infinitely tastier than a delivery, because decent pizzas really don't travel well.

[ZedLeg]

I make all my own sauces, I hate working with dough though if I’m being honest.

I was actually saying to my partner that I might try and get more into making dough and baking.

[Mito Man]

I just chuck all the ingredients into my bread maker and let it make the dough
Haven't bothered since Covid has died down though, just eat out instead.

[robin_cox]

I invested in a 12" Ooni the other week as well as some hardwood logs at a decent price and an axe off Amazon to be able to break the logs down into inch-square chunks.

Ended up spending around an hour using the axe as a wedge and a 3 pound lump hammer breaking the first 8 logs down into several burns-worth of wood in a usable size for a smaller Ooni owing to the aperture of the wood compartment and not wanting to spend more cash on smaller fuel. This is the bit that made me think that spending the extra 300+ quid for the 16" version to have space to insert fuel in larger pieces may be a benefit - but I didn't want to spend 600 quid on an experiment. Conversely spend another 80 quid and get a gas burner.. although that is a bit conflicting.

Dough recipe adapted off one of the BBC food magazine franchise websites actually worked really well -

420g bread flour
220mL warm water
2 tsp salt
14g sachet yeast
25mL Lidl rapeseed oil
50mL milk

Distribute salt into flour.

Distribute yeast into flour

Make depression, add oil and milk and stir liquid in. Mix warm water through with spoon, then turn into a ball. Flour and compress. Knead vigorously on a floured surface for 15-20 minutes. Return to bowl, put clingfilm over top and transfer to heating cupboard for 2-3 hours. Knock back then cut into 4 balls, flour.

At this point, chuck 2-3 loglets into the lit ooni with some encouragement to get them to burst into flames to generate proper heat and return to kitchen. Spread the ball by hand and use rolling pin to expand into a rough oval with edges, put onto pizza shovel with plenty of polenta / semolina to give the nonstick underside, add toppings and take to oven for cooking with turn every minute or so with door open. Repeat wood addition for each pizza if there is a time delay due to eating.

Would be very interested if someone has suggestions on how to do a sourdough from personal experience - without getting all mystical about mother cultures and so on - but the above dough recipe works so well giving a good chewy dough but remaining crispy underneath for many minutes with topping after cooking that it isn't an urgent requirement.

[ZedLeg]

As in a sourdough starter?

[jamcg]

Just a tip- don’t hit axes with a hammer, you can loosen off the handle and cause all sorts of problems, like swinging it later and the head detaching- use a wooden mallet or a baton instead, never something metal

[robin_cox]

As in a sourdough starter?

Yes. (Sorry if this seems a bit abrupt). I am a micro / molecular biologist in my day job and if there is a mysticism-free "what to do" suggestion from experience of how to generate a viable starter as an alternative to my 11-14g of commercial yeast powder I'm all ears. That being said - I was so impressed by how the recipe above worked at the first attempt in terms of giving a pliant dough yielding a pizza base staying crispy underneath (ie a thin wedge could be eaten without risk of soiling clothes!) whilst not being obviously overcooked, the question now is on the flavour / intangible aspects of the base rather than the physical in the value of trialling sourdough vs newly-leavened. This is where word of mouth knowledge would be appreciated.

[robin_cox]

Just a tip- don’t hit axes with a hammer, you can loosen off the handle and cause all sorts of problems, like swinging it later and the head detaching- use a wooden mallet or a baton instead, never something metal

Point taken - I can see why what I wrote above would raise concerns and appreciate the advice. I don't see a like / recommend button but would use it in this case.

[ZedLeg]

As in a sourdough starter?

Yes. (Sorry if this seems a bit abrupt). I am a micro / molecular biologist in my day job and if there is a mysticism-free "what to do" suggestion from experience of how to generate a viable starter as an alternative to my 11-14g of commercial yeast powder I'm all ears. That being said - I was so impressed by how the recipe above worked at the first attempt in terms of giving a pliant dough yielding a pizza base staying crispy underneath (ie a thin wedge could be eaten without risk of soiling clothes!) whilst not being obviously overcooked, the question now is on the flavour / intangible aspects of the base rather than the physical in the value of trialling sourdough vs newly-leavened. This is where word of mouth knowledge would be appreciated.

This is a fairly straight forward instruction on how to get one started.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sourdough-starter

The only thing that it doesn’t mention is that if you leave it to go dormant it’ll probably produce a layer of brown of black liquid over the top. This should be poured away before you do anything with it as it’s basically raw alcohol.

[dinny_g]

Raw Alcohol you say??? #BecauseIrish

[ZedLeg]

It’s literally called hooch