Saturday, December 08, 2007

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Or, how I managed to ruin two batches of homemade pizza dough this evening.

The recipe is as follows:
1 (.25 oz) package active yeast
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1 teaspoon sugar

2.5 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine yeast, sugar, and water in a bowl and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.

Add flour, salt, and olive oil and mix until smooth. Let rest 5 minutes.

Turn out on pizza stone, roll into a circle, top with toppings, bake at 450 degrees for ? 20 minutes? I don't recall, as I didn't get that far.

I put two cups of water in the microwave to heat it to the 110 degrees. I added the yeast and the sugar and let it sit. Then I added the flour, salt, and olive oil and let my Kitchenaid do the mixing. After a few minutes I realized something was wrong. I thought maybe I had mismeasured the flour, since I was counting 10 quarter cups of flour instead of washing my one-cup measuring cup. I added another half-cup of flour and the dough was still not the consistency so I dumped it and started over.

Once again, after reviewing the recipe, I warmed two cups of water in the microwave. I repeated the exact same steps, but used a one-cup measuring cup this time to make sure I got the right amount of flour. I started mixing, and guess what? It looked the same. After wasting another half-cup of flour, I gave up.

Then I went to the recipe and looked at it, trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

ONE FREAKING CUPS OF WATER RUINED MY DOUGH!!! I used twice as much water in the yeast, TWICE! UGH. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results? *sigh*

I would have tried a third time, but I was out of yeast.

1 comment:

Erin said...

One word: Boboli!

http://boboli.gwbakeries.com/subcat.cfm/catId/6/subcatId/0