Tavern Style Pizza

This is a really interesting style of pizza which is very easy to make at home and get good results.  It is a pizza with a cracker thin dough which is crunchy rather than chewy.  My recipe is based on one I originally saw on America's Test Kitchen (called "Chicago Thin Crust Pizza").

It is a low hydration dough (50% hydration with 10% olive oil).  It traditionally uses raw sausage which is cooked on top of the pizza and is intended to be cooked to a dark brown color.  The toppings go to the edge of the pizza and there is little exposed crust.  It is cut into rectangles rather than wedges which is a fun way to eat it.

I have made this pizza several times.  I find that making enough dough for 4 pizza is a good time savings.  I'll typically eat a couple of them soon after making the dough and then I'll freeze the other two.  It is a dough that isn't meant to get much in the way of air bubbles so over proofing isn't a concern with this one - making it a day to a week in advance and then letting it slowly ferment at fridge temperatures is a good way of doing things

Crispy Pizza Crust Cross Section

Recipe Details:

• Dough for 4 pizzas:
• 680g All Purpose Flour
• 340g Spring Water
• 68g Olive Oil
• 2 tsp table salt
• 2 tsp yeast
• 1 tbs sugar
• Sauce for 2 pizza:
• 8 oz seasoned tomato sauce
• 1 tbs tomato paste
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp Italian Seasoning
• Toppings on 1 pizza:
• 6 oz Monterey Jack Cheese
• 6 oz Spicy Italian Sausage

Process Details:

• Mix up the dough (flour, water, oil, salt, sugar, and yeast) - it is a shaggy dough initially

• Kneed the dough in the bowl until it becomes a smooth ball

• Let this ferment for a few hours at room temperature (it will double in size).  This is really more about flavor than it is about formation of air bubbles.

• Flour a work surface, dump the dough, and then cut it into 4 equal pieces (these should be about 270g each which will make 12 inch diameter pizzas)

• Move the pieces of the dough into the fridge until ready to use
• Mix up a batch of sauce.  I think this makes sense to make a day ahead of use as well and then keep it in the fridge
• When it is time to make the pizza, pre-heat the oven with a pizza stone to 500 F.  Probably want to heat the oven for an hour or so before using
• Form the dough into a rough circle with your fingers

• Then roll out the dough to be roughly 12 inch in diameter with a rolling pin.  The pizza will be about 1/8 inch thick when rolled out.  You want to make it even thickness - I don't put much stock in getting a round pizza but you want it to fit on a round pizza stone.  Move the dough to a pizza peel with corn meal to avoid sticking

• Build the pizza.  Add sauce first (I don't measure but it's a fairly restrained amount of sauce), then dime size pieces of sausage, then add cheese

• Make sure there aren't any sticky spots on the peel - add corn meal where it's sticking.  Ease the pizza onto the pizza stone

• Bake the pizza for 10 min and then check to see how dark it is before deciding how much more time to give it.  In my oven, I typically give it another couple minutes.  The cheese should be browned and the pizza will have burned edges

• Take the pizza out of the oven and let it cool for 5 min
• Cut into 2-3 in rectangles
• It is very good

Margarita Recipe

I really love a Margarita and I found this recipe for making a very simple but really delicious drink.  It uses juice from a freshly squeezed lemon for the flavoring which I think is much better than a pre-made Margarita mix.

It's good with an inexpensive toquilla (at least to my taste) and is nice with varying strengths and levels of sweetness.  Below is a mix that I find very pleasing

Recipe Details:

• 3 oz Taquilla
• 0.75 oz Triple Sec
• 0.75 oz Agave Syrup
• Juice of 1 Lime
• Ice

    I shake the drink

Russian Imperial Stout with Bourbon Soaked Oak - Take IV - Tasting Notes

This is my fourth attempt at brewing a Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout Clone.  I am using a recipe from the brewery - the same one I've used before.  It is a challenging beer to make as the grain bill is more than my mash tun can take and I end up doing 2 mashes on it and then boil for 4 hrs to get down to 6 gal-ish of beer

It started at 1.128 and I had to pitch a second round of super high gravity yeast to get it close to my target of 1.038 (I ended up at 1.042 - although in my bottling I measured it a bit higher than that).  It aged on a large amount of oak that I toasted and then aged with ever clear to attempt to simulate the character of freshly drained bourbon barrel (I didn't think the oak had soaked up as much bourbon as I would have liked so I added some of my extra spirit to try to compensate (perhaps this was a mistake)

I aged the beer up in my attic for more than 3 years before bottling a couple months ago.  The beer hasn't carbonated in that time.

Anyhow, as you'll see, the beer didn't turn out as I'd hoped and is probably a regression from version III.  "You don't learn anything being right" is what I tell myself when drinking this beer.  I'll do a head to head comparison of all my beer to confirm this assessment.  Still I'm happy to drink it as it is not a bad beer even if a bit off the mark

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Chocolate, coffee, and a bit of boozy character and toasted oak which very much blends with the other characters I think - it doesn't smell that much of bourbon.  It is a very aromatic beer though and smells nice.
• Appearance:
• Dark brown - can't see light through it when held up to a lamp.  It pours with just a thin layer of fizz around the edge of the glass that is then gone pretty quickly
• Flavor:
• Chocolate and toasted and roasted flavors up front (once again, for how much oak is in this, some of that toast and roast flavor must be the oak).  Get a hint of booze character in there as well.  Quite sweet on the finish.  It has a bit of bitterness which balances the sweet a bit.  There is a fruitiness in there too and maybe other yeast character  I just don't get much that I would associate with bourbon in this one
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and very sticky on the palate
• Overall:
• This is a rich and flavorful stout.  The boldness of it and the sweetness are lovely but, as a beer intended to imitate BCBS, it is way off the mark.  The other flavors are overpowering any bourbon character it might have and I suspect even if it were more muted there isn't that much of the bourbon character to taste.  I am going to need to think about what when wrong here before my next attempt

English Barleywine (2025 Version) - Tasting Notes

This is my 12th version of an English Barley wine.  It was brewed on Memorial day 2025 and bottled it about 2 months ago now.

This was based on a historical recipe from the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Blog: 1879 William Younger No. 1.  It is all base malt (Pilsner, Golden Promise, and Munich) and is fairly heavilly hopped and then was dry hopped in a 5 month secondary.  Also, I cultured brett dregs from Orval and pitched these in secondary - this is a very interesting fruity Brett which I was thinking could go well in an English Barleywine.

Lets see how I did

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Fruity ester character is pretty prominent (apple maybe).  Get some toasty and caramel malt character as well.  Some booze.  Maybe get some hop character in there as well.  It's fairly bold in aroma
• Appearance:
• Pours with only a thin wisp of carbonation.  Dark gold in color and very clear
• Flavor:
• Very fruity up front (a bit of an odd character - this is the contribution of the Brett harvested from Orval).  Caramel and toasty malt come next.  The finish has a fairly firm bitterness.  It's lightly sweet.  The slightly funky fruitiness lingers in the finish along with the hop bitterness.  Get some alcohol character.  Not picking up much in the way of hop flavor but it's complex beer with quite a bit going on that could overshadow the hop flavor on a beer that is already 9 months old
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and only slightly sticky on the palate.  Drinks pretty smooth
• Overall:
• It's an interesting beer with it's fruit forward character - I think the Brett delivers a character very much in line with what you might expect from an English Barleywine.  The malt is nice but is pretty much overshadowed.  I like the level of bitterness in it.  I think it's a reasonably complex beer and it's pretty light and easy drinking for a ~10% ABV beer - hides the alcohol well and is a bit dryer than many I've made in the past.  Also, appearance is the least concern but I think the color is very nice on this beer - I don't think I got the priming sugar evenly distributed when bottling this batch so this one had little carbonation and I may have some surprises opening the later ones 

French Baguette

This is an attempt to make something resembling a classic French Baguette in my home.  These are fairly simple in terms of ingredients and technique I think but figuring out the right way to cook them to get the lovely crisp and chewy crust is a real challenge. 

I have tried making these a few times now and they've come out pretty well so far - I will likely continue to tweak the process and use this post as a record of what I've done.

Attempt #1:

I have chosen to start out with the recipe from King Author - Classic Baguettes.  With some minor adjustments.

This is a 70% hydration dough which is pretty easy to work with (hydration level is the ratio of water to flour) such that the shaping steps are pretty fun

Recipe Details:

• Preferment:
• 120 g of All Purpose Flour
• 120 g of room temperature Spring Water
• 1/8 g of Dry Instant Yeast
• Main dough:
• 420 g of Flour
• 255 g of room temperature Spring Water
• 1.5 tsp of Dry Instant Yeast
• 2 tsp of Table Salt

Process Details:

• Day 1:
• I mixed up the preferment and left it covered to ferment for 16 hours or so.  This is intended ot give the dough some extra fermented flavor as the main dough is a fairly short fermentation with a large amount of yeast

• Day 2:
• Added the main dough ingredients into the preferment and mixed until all the flour is wetted
• Covered and let the dough sit for 15 min before doing stretch and folds of the dough.  With this you pull up a side of the dough and fold it over on itself.  I did 4 of these.  It's all mixed in the container - it is best done with wet hands to minimize sticking.  It starts out pretty shaggy and then gets smoother over time

• Let it ferment for an hour and did another stretch and fold.  The dough becomes stretchier over time which you can tell from doing the stretch and fold.  The working of the dough is intended to make it stronger (although I'm not really sure that it does)
• I fermented it in the container until it had roughly doubled in size which was a few hours maybe (the temperature of the room will play a big part so I think this is a case by case variable)

• I turned the dough out onto a floured work surface and split it into 4 roughly equal pieces.  These make a loaf of the size I would consider to be the "classic" size.  Dividing into 6 equal pieces would make a "sandwich" sized loaf.  On another attempt I divided it up into 2 pieces and that was good too (although the crust to crumb ratio is better with the 4 loaves I think.
• I pre-shaped these by stretching and folding the dough balls into the middle in attempt to give the loaves some initial tension internally (plus gives an excuse to play with the nice dough a bit - it requires little flour and isn't very sticky at all).  I cover this with a towel and let relax and rise a bit while I prepare the oven.  I think you have quite a bit of flexibility at this stage where you can let them rest longer or shorter depending on when you want to bake

• I pre-heated the oven to 475 F and put in a pan of water to create a moist and steamy backing environment.  I believe this is an important step to get the nice chewy crust
• I did batches of two on each baking run.  I did the final shape on two of the loaves which involves folding them in half lengthwise and then rolling them in your hands until you get a long cylindrical piece
• Move the shaped loaves to a cookie sheet and let them do yet another rise for 30 min or so covered by another pan.  The proofing level you want can be tested by pushing a finger into the dough and then watching how the hole pushes back out.  You want it to fill back but do so "slowly"

• Once proofed I sliced the loaves to create the weak point for it to break during the rise

This is it after the 30 min rise - I considered this "proofed"

• I then put them into the oven for 10 min before opening it to turn the sheet (and let out a big wave of steam).  I gave it another 10 min before the color looked good.  I thought the bottom looked a little light so I flipped the loaves and gave them a couple more min

• Let them cool down to room temp before slicing into them

• They are chewy and crusty with a very good flavor.  I feel like I can do better with the crust though.  I plan to refine my process further and will post an Attempt #2 if/when I feel like I've improved on this writeup

Raspberry Wine (2022 Version) - Tasting Notes

This is my fourth version of Raspberry Wine.  For this one I have used 58 lbs of home-grown raspberries and 12 lbs of sugar to ferment which got me about 5 gal of 13% ABV wine.  I used campden tablets to ensure fermentation was halted and back sweetened the wine to 1.025 which balances out the alcohol and tartness of the fruit a bit. 

I bottled this back in January 2024.  I haven't consumed many of these yet even though I've had them for a while.  Excited to be capturing some notes finally. 

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Tart and jammy raspberry along with booze and some fermentation character
• Appearance:
• Dark red (almost purple) and fairly clear when you hold it up to a light
• Flavor:
• Rich fruit flavor up front and then booze hits - it is a fairly mellow alcohol flavor - not hot.  Tart on the finish with just a slight sweetness.  Has a bit of a bitter character as well
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium bodied and only slightly sticky on the pallet.  Maybe a little astringent
• Overall:
• It is a boldly flavored wine with some nice complexity.  The tart and bitter flavors are quite a bit more pronounced than the sweetness on this one so I think it's a bit less drinkable than otherwise - a glass is nice but I can't see reaching for a second in a night

Raspberry Wine (2021 Version) - Tasting Notes

 This was my third version of a Raspberry wine.  I made 5.5 gal of wine using 54 lbs of fruit and 13 lbs of sugar (there was no water added).  I ended up bottling this back in July 2022 so it's been in bottles for over three years now which is hard to believe.

These are tasty but I don't end up reaching for them very often.  I am excited to finally be capturing some tasting notes

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Jammy raspberry with booze and a bit of a funky yeast character
• Appearance:
• Dark red/purple.  Too dark to tell if it is clear
• Flavor:
• Strong raspberry flavor followed by booze.  It has a milt tartness and finishes slightly sweet
• Mouthfeel:
• Medium light bodied and a little sticky on the pallet
• Overall:
• This is a very flavorful and nice drinking wine.  The sweetness balances the fairly firm alcohol presence nicely