Pizza dough dates from the time of the Romans. It’s a double fistful of everything…in the old way of measuring, the way Roman soldiers used to make bread in the evening, something like sourdough, 2 fistfuls of flour, two capfuls of olive oil, a little aqua pura [water], a pinch of salt, a shot of honey, and a little of the sourdough mix, allowed to rise a bit, then cooked at fireside on a hot rock. To translate into modern terms, 2 cups of flour [one whole wheat, one white], 2 tbs of olive oil, pinch of salt, tbs of honey, enough water to make it mix in an elastic, non-sticky way; and 2 tsp of yeast. Stir, hand-shape to a ball, adding flour at need.
In point of fact—all bread requires: flour, liquid (often water), oil, sugar in some form [for the yeast to work], salt, and yeast or equivalent. Simple as early civilization.
Only I’m going to put back what the Romans had and we’ve lost: wheat germ/bran, as in what results when you grind whole grain. About a cup of it. Because it’s inert, it doesn’t count much in the recipe, and it ‘extends’ the mix into something larger. Allow to rise once, then shape by hand. Punch in center, spread outward, or—if you’re brave—use its elasticity to flatten it by spinning it on your hand. The old Romans simply pressed a knife or blade into the risen dough ball, to pre-make easy-break divisions of bread, like pie slices. We found loaves in the ovens of a bakery in Pompeii, or at least, their ghosts. The people had been going about their normal morning—until the apocalypse.
I used to be able to ‘throw’ pizza like the guys in the pizzeria ‘windows’, but that was many decades ago. We’ll see.
How-some-ever, on our diet, using a little Prego sauce, Paul Newman’s, or its equivalent, {if I were being good, I’d hand-make that, too), I plan to lay down some low salt, low fat, low calorie stuff, like chicken bits and raw mushroom with Italian spices, then some acceptable cheese, not overdoing it, and produce an Italian-style pizza, which is much lighter on ‘goodies’ than the American version.
With a 425 bake on a pizza stone (ceramic: if you like crispy bottomed pizza, a must) it should rise and be nice. Not like Domino’s, but good.
On Pompeii, Mary Beard’s book The Fires of Vesuvius is well worth reading, even if you’ve already read many other books on the subject.
She explodes many popular myths about Pompeii, including that it was ‘frozen in time’.
Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at Cambridge University (UK). She takes into account all the latest research done in the past few decades, and she also has a very practical, common-sense, down-to-earth approach, so the book is highly readable and fascinating.
Prof. Beard says that in fact there was plenty of warning about the eruption. About 90% or more of the inhabitants had already left when the city was buried. It was already a mostly deserted city, with many houses packed up, and many portable valuables removed.
Of course, nobody knew that the city would be buried. They expected to be able to come back after the danger was over and resume their lives. There had been a major earthquake which seriously damaged the city only 17 years earlier, so they were simply playing it safe and getting away from obvious signs of impending danger like small earthquakes, fumes from vents, etc.
Another interesting point is that city was never really ‘lost’ after the eruption. There is plenty of evidence of looting, tunneling through the ash, excavating, etc. in Roman times – up to the 4th or 5th century. There are also graffiti which undoubtedly originated after the eruption. Obviously a lot of valuable items were there for the taking if anyone cared to dig. Some homeowners may have tried to retrieve valuable possessions quite soon after the eruption. It was dangerous, though. Some skeletons are thought to be those of Roman tunnelers whose tunnel collapsed.
There’s an interview with Mary Beard about her book on Pompeii here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvvTMg321NY
I tracked the rumblings of Vesuvius through history, personal letters, etc, and it had been quaking and rumbling and [late phase] producing small clouds for 10 years. People had gotten ‘used’ to it. What Beard does not mention—it was 9 days before the Kalends of September when it blew. That is August 23. Then, and to this day, EVERYBODY in Italy heads for the high mountains during the month of August—even the less affluent. This is the kind of August heat in which you lie awake until 2 am, when the hot breeze turns tail and the sea breeze comes through the open doors to make the night tolerable.
Pompeii was more of a resort town, like Cape Cod. Many people had houses there who did not live there year round, but who had a housekeeper and staff to keep the house, and live rather well until the family showed up and wanted the place to run like a first class hotel. People in Naples and Capri, including our reporter, young Pliny, considered the event as it started more of a nuisance, but the navy had been asked to go in and get some people away from the quakes, etc. Admiral Pliny asked his young nephew if he would like to get some fresh air and go, but it is a measure of the boredom young Pliny thought would be the whole day [and the August heat on a ship deck, and waiting around and filling out paperwork] that he said he’d rather stay in the house [shade] and do his homework. Which is why he survived.
The elder Pliny, having gotten one evacuation organized, [so not everybody was in the boathouse carnage] thought that they might rescue a lady who lived alone up on the peninsula, and the party being exhausted, they took a dinner break at a villa which had decided evacuation was a pain they’d skip. Again—nobody had a clue. The gas got them. They began to fall asleep, and finally took alarm at that fact, and began to realize that something was Not Right. So they decided to leave the house and head down to the ship. Including Admiral Pliny, who was elderly. His slaves, who were trying to get him out, were never found, and possibly were overcome earlier, or ran for it, trying to escape the invisible gas, and were never associated with the Admiral’s body. He was found, looking as if he were asleep.
They were all dead up on the height. The ship waited, then left, or pulled out to sea, as quakes disturbed the area.
Perhaps the batch at the boathouse were some who had waited too late for the ships to get them off—Admiral Pliny was a kind man, and would have packed that ship like sardines if he had had to to get these people out; but the ships had already moved out, and then the volcano blew, and the pyroclastic flow rolled down on that area, somewhat apart from where Adm. Pliny was lying.
Naples still had no notion there was a serious problem, but then they saw the eruption column, and some time later ash began to darken the sky—so much ash that they could not tell day from night.
I recently saw a program in which the discovery of ashfall from an earlier eruption seriously shook the confidence of the Neopolitans in their remoteness from Vesuvius. I’m amazed. Children learn about young Pliny in school. They surely got the part when he and his mother and all the household staff were standing up all night trying to keep the ash from collapsing their temporary shelters.
I’ve had luck with a ‘white’ sauce for pizza topping, along with the ubiquitous marinated artichoke hearts — odd, but tasty. I’ve also made rolls, although pizza dough would probably make them more like focaccia, and dipped the tops in a mix of poppy, sesame, and caraway seeds, a bit of powdered garlic, and a dab of coarse salt. They freeze well. Pizza Hut makes their breadsticks out of unused pan pizza crusts; I see no reason yours wouldn’t do well for that too.
Now you’ve got me thinking about pumpernickel!
You don’t need to add sugar to bread. The kneading releases enough sugars from the wheat for the yeast to work. Some salt is essential though for regulating the yeast action. Many recipes use more than is necesaary.
I like to make breads out of unusual liquids, whatever I have to hand. Beer and wine both work (although red wine makes an odd purple/grey coloured loaf!).
I use a relatively high amount of salt (2tsp per 500g flour) because I use unsalted butter and don’t use salt in anything else. This means that particularly in summer I am likely to be deficient in salt.
Many of us would love to know if you have your own a recipe for green pizza 😀
Ohhhh, yes.
It may not tell you much you didn’t already know, but there’s a fun British show about food in different time periods, and they did a Rome episode that starts here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swhEbBDwM0I
I’ve been making enough bread n such lately I just got 2 lbs of yeast in the mail from Amazon. Maybe $1 more than just one of the 4oz jars you get at the supermarket!
CJ, if you are into sourdough, you can have a lot of fun trying different styles by simply ordering various starters, which will provide all the yeast you need for the leavening, as well as kicking in that yummy sour tang. I used to scratch that particular itch at a place just north of Boise which sold starters characteristic of various places around the world–I preferred the San Francisco variant, though the Independence, CA, flavor was reminiscent of all those loaves of Sheepherder’s Bread we scarfed up in my childhood (though, sadly, I see that they no longer have that one). Sourdoughs International, in Cascade, ID, at http://www.sourdo.com/ . Yum! The longer you let the starter “run” before using it, the sourer it gets. I made an incubator from a styro ice chest and a 60W light bulb….
Interesting notes, all!
If you’ve never personally tried to bake bread, you can do it WITHOUT a breadmaker, and the pizza one is about the easiest. Use all ingredients at body temperature, and use Bread Flour as opposed to All Purpose Flour preferentially, but you can make it just fine with what you’ve got. It’s done what it does for thousands of years, one of the first bits of baking there was—probably discovered when they were out of baking tubers of whatever sort, and wanted a way to make the grain more palatable for old and young. You mix it with water, mush it up to look like a tuber and bake it, and the whole tribe would have figured this was a Good Thing.
Once THAT happened, they needed more and more grain, found out the grains sprouted where spilled, and began to hang about in one spot for their grain to ripen, to guard it from other gatherers.
Hence—farms. Villages. TOwns. Cities. Computers. And space flight. We never would have done it if some tribe hadn’t run out of those tuber-thingies.
Every time you ever mention pizza all I can think of is Bren and the Atevi. Work does not understand when I make salad comments in response to offers of pizza.
I don’t have a sourdough starter, darn it, or a pizza stone, but if pizza dough is *that* simple (why did I not know or expect this?) then… we shall have a minor revolution in the kitchen (with probably lots of flour going everywhere!) (okay, maybe slightly neater!) this weekend. Uh, probably with a store-bought (ick-frozen) pizza first, because I’ll be hungry before I get home. Hey, I bought some pepperoni, sliced, the other day on a whim. Have some shredded mozzarella handy, and Ragu sauce…other goodies…. I believe we are pre-prepped for pizza, approximately. I’ll want to consult Shejidan.com about that green atevi pizza recipe.
P.S., I would have put the proper ` grave accent over the U, but Windows seems determined not to accept the Alt+0249 that I think is the proper keycode.
Flour? Check. Olive Oil? Of course. Salt, Sugar, maybe honey? Check. — Yeast! I will need yeast from the store. Okay, adding to the list.
Mmmm, I sense something tasty and probably reasonably pizza-like this weekend. Abondanza. Mirabile! De bon goût et bon appétit! Grazie, Signorina Cherryh.
I swear to you, the dough’s not hard. Flour a cutting board, and hand knead the dough on it, ie, punch it in the middle, fold the edges in, and keep doing that until the dough acquires a slightly silkier and more elastic feel. This is one job men were made for! Strong hands are an asset!–and once it’s gotten to that, stop, dust it with flour, as a ball, and put it in a bowl with a cloth towel over it in a warm nook in your kitchen [the top of the fridge is often warm because of the motor]—and let it alone for 3o minutes.
[Bread dough is much the same, but you do two risings on it, and the recipe is a little different.]
Don’t so much try to roll it as flatten, pull and stretch it into a round flat when ready to use it. Always put the stuff on the RAW dough, and ideally on a pizza stone, but a pan or even iron skillet will work: remember they used to use rocks: this stuff is forgiving. 😉
Bake about 20 minutes (check it then) at 425 on the bottom rack—and the oven should be 425 when you put it in! When the crust browns and cheese bubbles, that’s done!
Try the dough, and have a Boboli crust as a backup if you sense it’s not going to work.
Slightly off topic – Every time we mention salads, I also think of Bren insisting that his aishid call him Bren-ji rather than paidhi-aiji, and when Banichi asked why, Bren replied about “warm blankets” CJ, To all your readers “Salads and Warm Blankets!”
😆 indeed!
Haven’t tried pizza yet, but I still remember my second loaf of bread. It could almost have been used to pound nails. If you’re using yeast for the first time, check the water temp on your water heater. I killed the yeast with water that was too cold. Now, I run it as hot as possible till the cup warms and use that water to start my yeast.
Very curious to hear how this turns out. Especially the addition of wheat bran.
My favorite “green sauce” pizza: Chicken Pesto Pizza. Shake chicken bits in a baggie with flour and pepper, saute lightly in olive oil and vermouth. Spread pesto on dough, top with chicken, broccoli and black olives (halved, to lower the chances of them rolling off the peel during transfer to the stone, although I always wind up with one or two olive briquettes on the bottom of the oven), mozz and parm. If one is new to the pizza stone, be aware that it takes a hefty amount of cornmeal to ensure a smooth transition from peel to stone. But it’s SO worth it. And if you haven’t got a peel, a cookie sheet (without raised edges) works pretty well too.
I start my yeast with just-a-bit-too-hot-for-baby water, a bit of sugar and active dry yeast. Then I wait for five minutes to make sure it “blooms” before making bread with it. That way, if it never blooms, I know that the yeast was too cold, or too hot, or just old and decrepit, and I can try again without ruining the whole batch of bread. It also helps to warm the bowl ahead of time, since the perfect water temp drops drastically if put into a winter-kitchen-temp metal bowl.
Diced tomatoes work as a topping -there is enough juice to work as a sauce.
Or any moist veg -meat-cheese combo. The tomatoes were something that the Romans didn’t have. I often wonder how they managed, and managed without coffee as the Italians seem to require a steady input of strong caffine. What did the ancient world do for a stimulant? But then they mostly slept with the sun.
If the dough is softish it can be stirred to the point that it hardly needs kneading.
Shlinas and I tried our hand at making green pizza. Here’s the result. It was very good and a bit spicy. The tomatoes make it look like regular pizza, but the sauce was green.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/mattjhamblin/100_3325.jpg
Sounds very enckuraging, and as someone who’s never made bread, besides cornbread, I really appreciate the advice on using yeast. I’m in Texas, so my kitchen is nearly too warm, most of the time, but knowing the particulars helps.
Hmm… Would the ancient Europeans have had tea, meaning the black or green tea we’re used to from Asia? Or only local herbal teas? They’d have had other acidic veggies, but I’m not sure what they used before American fruits and veggies and Asian and Indian more extensive trade. But my understanding is the Romans and Greeks did have some trade going through the Mideast to India and Asia. How off the mark am I?
Where else but here would I get Pompeii, pizza, and ancient cuisine, all in one neat place?
THey had silk from China, and had to pass laws about threads-per-square-inch to keep young people from indecent exposure…so tea would have been a possibility. They might not have liked the taste as well, however, or thought it medicinal-only. They had been making herbal teas for medicine from time immemorial. The one we still know is acetylsalicylic acid, AKA aspirin, from willow bark, sovereign for headaches, sprains, aches and pains, and heat exhaustion. [The Latin word for willow is salix, and the willow’s is salicis.
Ah, thank you. It helps more to have the cultural context, what they thought and did about a thing, and not only the raw info.
Good, too, to be remonded willow is the source for aspirin.
LOL, I see I mistyped (iPhone keypad, tiny) “enckuraged,” a K for an O. It looks…odd…especially to a proofer. 🙂
Huh, concerns about indecent exposure in a culture with very different ideas (and shifting ideas) on what constituted that. — However, when summer temps here stayed above 100 for several days, I was beginning to wonder about the definition too. :: snicker :: Likewise, the efficacy of a rain dance…. :angelic:
OHhhhhhhhhh bread… what I wouldn’t give to have counter space again. I used to make bread as a kid-it was a great way to work out frustrations and gave me something to beat on without getting in trouble! I got to a point where I didn’t use a recipe, just started tossing things in a bowl. Worked out great most times, occasionally I ended up with a brick though. Usually on bad days… too much beating on the dough! 🙂 And BCS, you can CATCH your own wild sourdough starter, although you won’t know how it tastes until you actually cook the dough. There are wild yeastybeasties floating around in most homes. Just put an open jar of water and flour on the counter for a few days and watch for it to start getting bubbly. Not green or any other color, just bubbly and yeasty smelling. I had a sourdough starter I used for years that I got that way.
I have also made bread with alternative ‘flours’, one of my favorites uses regular rolled oats. Start to make it up like oatmeal with warm water and some sugar, add your yeast and make sure it’ll raise, then add your salt and whatever else, and flour til its kneedable.
Right now my favorite pizza is alfredo sauce instead of red sauce, chicken, onions, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese on top. Sometimes spinach leaves just to give it some color, or chunks of tomato!