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03/19/2002 Entry: "Dough Battle"
I've started pushing myself beyond Enrique. I've been in the pantry long enough that some things are getting very repetitive. Which is good, I'm settling in and really getting to know what I am doing. But my goal is to learn as much as I can in the time that I have, so I must press onwards. I think about it though, I am always aware that as I try to learn what the restaurant experience is, I am outside of it because I have freedom. Enrique can't wander off and make a pasta. He can't hang out by the grill and watch. He can't decide to spend twenty minutes at the pizza station. He has to do his job everyday, the same things, with some variations. I have freedom to roam from one place to the next, and it is a luxury I would be stripped of, of course, if I worked full time somewhere.
I have been leaving Enrique, even though my natural instinct is to give him a hand. But I do move, and the next step...is pizza.
Rye, S_ cousin, is done with his training. He works days at The Restaurant, and nights at an equally if not more trendy place nearby. Yet he still comes by at night to hang out, have a drink, and that says something about the place, that he comes back on his time off to relax. When he was doing his hours he was working with me, but coming in more days so he surpassed me quickly in things other than pantry work. Such as....pizza.
I had pizza explained to me on my first day, I watched Siro make a pie, and it was time, I decided, to start to learn myself.
So one evening I watched him, a few weeks ago. But what he did was entirely different than the first time I saw him. Now he held the dough in his hands, rotating it the way you'd see in a pizza parlor, when the first time he had used one hand, then two, to stretch the dough out on the marble surface. I was in no way ready to try it his way. He finished off his pizza and put it in the oven, showing me how to rotate it with the small paddle after slipping it inside with the bigger one. The bigger battle was a battle in itself, getting the technique right for sliding the raw pizza onto the metal off the marble without touching it. Mine always got caught and bunched up as I tried, I still don't have it down perfect, though in the past two weeks, I think "the knack" finally kicked in. A forward motion is made with the paddle slipping under and pushing forward a little, then a quick smooth motion backwards, to get the inertia going on the pizza. As it slides backwards, the paddle is quickly pushed forward again, and after one or two repetitions, the pizza should be fully on the paddle ready to go in the oven. I threw away several rounds of dough just trying to get the dough on the paddle. First, without anything on it except maybe a rag, then with sauce and cheese. Each one I screwed up only cost pennies, so it didn't matter to S_ each time I failed. I wasn't even trying for a nice round pizza at that point, just one the size, roughly, of the pizza stone that it was served on to the customers. My thing was to get it on the paddle without it sticking, or bunching up. I threw flour on the end, with an Emeril stylee. BAM! It helped, but sometimes the dough still stuck.
I watched Siro and Rye do it with ease. "How can you DO this already?" I asked Rye in frustration. "It took me making like fifty of them first. Don't worry, you haven't made fifty yet."
I still felt like a dork, they were so smooth, easing the paddle under and getting the pizza to slide obediently into place, while it disobeyed me like an ornery dog. Rye went on to work evenings elsehwere, but since he was hanging around the bar at night while I was was there, he still coached me. There's technique to this, and everyone has a different way. Rye taught me to press the round of dough with my fingertips first, leaving more dough in the middle than on the edges. Then to roll it with a pin, especially in the beginning, for more control, still leaving a raised section in the middle. As the dough gets stretched, having more in the middle helps to keep it from tearing in the middle, where the most stretching in the most directions is occurring. I had never thought it could be so...technical, but at the same time, of course it is.
I started making pizzas, and they never came out right. Never a good enough circle, lopsided, square, uneven. It would simply take practice. When I managed to make them large enough at least, I started putting sauce and cheese on. Siro would say the sauce should spread out from teh middle, while Rye kept sauce very light in the middle, as well as the cheese, the central point again being important. Less stuff on the central point would keep it from sagging or breaking from the weight. Sauce went out to the ends, with maybe half an inch or an inch free. No need to raise the crusts, the heat would do it itself. And the heat! The crust could not go black, it had to be baked but to a golden brown, and that included on the bottom. Turning it was hard, getting the right way to rotate the handle of the small paddle getting the pizza to either rotate towards me, or away, as I browned all sides. Mine had cracked edges, burnt bits from hitting the back wall...but they were all tasty, if not presentable. I brought them home to the Boy, who gratefully ate them. Every week I disappeared for a quarter of an hour to make a pizza or three. Each time, Siro, S_ or Rye would tell me a different way to do it. Rye told me to not use the rolling pin; he was the one who told me to in the first place! Siro reccomended dropping the edge over the corner of the marble to help stretch it. It was only last week, on my first night of the week, when my pizzas finally became noble for the first time. And that is an event for another post.
Replies: 1 Comment
Wolfgang puck's comment on on learning to tourne potatoes "The first 300 are hard after that it gets easyer"
Posted by dlachez @ 03/20/2002 07:12 AM PTZ
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