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Baking Vent
I've been interested in baking my own pizza crusts/breads lately, and when looking up recipes online, a good number of them start out with you making the dough in a bread machine and it annoys me. I don't have a bread machine, don't really want one right now, don't have the space to store it. What did people do before bread machines? It's not really that hard to make breads without a machine to start out IMO. Yes, it's more messy and takes more time, but to me that's what makes it fun. When looking at the recipes that sound good, I always have to search through the reviews to find someone who reviewed it without a bread machine and take their tips. Maybe instead of looking up these kinds of recipes on the internet, I should check old school cookbooks my mom has that were written well before bread machines were a big thing. *sigh*
Re: Baking Vent
I have a related vent:
I have also been interested in making my own pizza crusts lately and I have also been looking up recipes online. However, I often see recipes where you preheat the pizza stone in the oven and meanwhile prepare the pizza on something else. Then, you slide the pizza onto the hot pizza stone. Yeah... I tried that once and it was a total failure. The crust began ripping apart during the transportation and everything that hit the hot pizza stone melted until I had a pile of melted/burned pizza ingrediants on the stone. If anyone has tips on how to make this work, I'm open to suggestion.
Here's a pretty good step-by-step pizza dough recipe that you don't need a bread machine for (but do need a stand mixer w/dough hook attachment):
http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods/whole-wheat-pizza-dough/
I would like to get into breads more, but we don't have a stand mixer yet and I'm pretty sure I need at least that.
Ha! Nick and I had this problem the first time we made pizza on our stone. We went to BB&B and bought a pizza paddle for $10. It's awesome. What I do is rollout smaller pizza crusts (10" or so) on the paddle with cornmeal on the bottom for easier transfer. I still have to use a spatula to help the pizza slide off the paddle a little better so the toppings don't fall off, but it's super easy. I might try bigger pizza crusts when I get more experienced, but for now the smaller crusts sliding off the paddle is all I can handle. Let me know if you have any more questions.
This is exactly what I use when it calls for a bread machine and it's a stickier dough. Most of the time I can get away without using it, my hands just get covered with a little bit of the dough which is ok. One recipe I have is almost impossible without the dough hook though because it's a fairly wet dough.
I've made tons of bread without either a dough hook or a bread machine. I'm not going to lie, both make it easier, but it still works.
Without the dough hook, you have to knead the hell out of it by hand.
Most breads follow the same basic instructions, so you can really take any recipie, and it'll work.
I'm not a fan of the no knead bread. I have both the books, but it has a different taste to it. I suppose if I got used to it, it would be fine.
I use this recipe for calzone dough http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Real-Italian-Calzones/Detail.aspx as our pizza crust as well... all from scratch and completely delicious