Hopefully all of you are able to adjust to our new and changing lifestyles. Around my home in Boston, it is certainly quiet. The pace of the city is different. We’ve all slowed down.
In music, pieces with a slow tempo are arguably more difficult than those with robust ones. Slow tempo music requires more attention to detail, more control, more precision—it demands that the musician concentrate on the elements that make their tones sing and resonate. While an up-tempo piece filled with trills and flurries can become muddied easily.
The past several years, the food world has become obsessed with the concept of slow foods. Soul foods. Fermented foods. The kinds of foods that contain richness and depth of flavor that reminds us of being in our grandmother’s kitchens—an aroma of cooked tomato, a simmering pot of fragrant broth, or the smell of rice and beans. The kinds of foods that must be looked after and cared for. We admire older generations ability to make this beautiful and nostalgic food with seemingly little effort. No recipes—just a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But, in some ways, they had something that we have lost: time.
In my home kitchen, I’ve been working on nailing down a slow-rise pizza dough. This has been a recipe that I’ve gone to in the last couple of years when I’m making pizza at home. I like the recipe even better if I let the dough proof in the refrigerator overnight. Yeasted doughs take on more flavor the slower they rise (essentially time + temperature = flavor), so if you don’t need the dough that day, you can let it rise in the refrigerator and have a more flavorful, and in my opinion, a crispier crust.
I’ve also been filling the kitchen with broths for a few different kinds of soups. I’ve saved the carcasses of the chickens I’ve roasted the past two weeks in the freezer, and they’re ready now to make some stock. Stock is one of the most basic of cooking ingredients, made from bones, mirepoix, and aromatic herbs. Almost every section of cuisine has stock, or broth, as part of their culinary traditions. Most European-trained cooks begin their culinary trining making stock, too. It’s a foundational recipe.
The key to a good stock and a bad one is really controlling your heat. First, blanch or roast your bones to help remove any surface impurities. Then, start the stock with cold water and gradually bring to a light simmer. Don’t let it boil. Gradual heating of the stock allows proteins that gather at the top (a.k.a. scum) to be more easily skimmed off. Boiling breaks these proteins into smaller bits that aren’t able to be strained away, so the stock becomes cloudy. A bit of attention paid to the stock to skim away that excess will lead to a more flavorful, and attractive broth. Additionally, let the stock cool gradually to let the flavors settle before straining.
While we have a little bit of time to breathe, perhaps, remember a time when we longed for a bit of extra time to cook and be with our families. take it, slow it down, and bask in the details.
Slow-Rise Pizza Dough
400 g all-purpose flour (3 cups)
100 g whole wheat flour (about 1 cup)
375 g room temperature water (1½ cups)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flours together. Then, in a separate container, whisk water, olive oil, and honey until combined. Make a well in the flour and add ¾ of the water and yeast. Use a fork to gradually mix the flour and the water mixture. Incorporate the dough so that it is all incorporated, but still a little shaggy. Cover bowl with plastic and let dough rest for 30 minutes.
2. Mix in remaining water and salt and knead until incorporated. Cover bowl again with plastic and let rest for 1 hour.
Now, in 30 minute increments, we will knead the dough. Tug the dough from up the sides of the bowl and fold into the center of the dough. Rotate the bowl 90° and repeat that process a total of 8 times. Cover the dough and rest another 30 minutes. Repeat this process with 6 turns, and 4 turns. Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes between each knead. After the 4 turn, let the dough rest for another 30 minutes.
3. Turn out dough onto a floured surface. Split dough into 4 pieces and form into dough balls. Cover and rest for 30 minutes. Dough can be wrapped and stored at this point in the refrigerator for up to 2-3 days or in the freezer.
4. Heat oven to 450° with a baking stone in the oven on the middle rack. Flatten or toss doughs into a 12-14 inch pie. Place dough onto a floured pizza peel. Place sauce and toppings of your choice onto pizza. Slide pizza onto stone and bake for 12-14 minutes until pizza is bubbly and delicious. Remove from oven using peel and move to a cutting board. Cool for a couple of minutes before slicing and serving.
