prepping mushrooms, onions and bell peppers
Mushrooms, onions and bell peppers are popular pizza toppings that are often not prepared to their full potential. There is a concern of creating a soggy pizza because all three pizza toppings contain a lot of water. In addition the vegetables will be undercooked if the bake time for your pizza is short (5 minutes in my case).
Some techniques that pizza makers use to minimize this excess water is to cut smaller, thinner pieces as well as to apply them sparingly and to top them last on the pie (so the moisture is not trapped). Some pizza makers will opt to use canned vegetables to avoid the problem. With canning, most of the water has been released with the canning process. Personally I have had some great pizza with canned mushrooms. Nevertheless, today it’s all about the real thing, fresh ingredients,freshly prepared.The right techniques will enable you to use a generous amount of fresh ingredients that look fantastic on a pie without the worry of under cooked vegetables or a soggy pizza.
Baking trays and hotel pans are your best friend when wanting to remove water from vegetables and tenderize them. I find it best to use half hotel pans at home with their lids.You could also use two baking trays of the same size placing one right side up and the other upside down to serve as the lid. Hotel pans are essentially the pans used in steam tables and can be purchased on Amazon. I found mine years ago at a used restaurant equipment store.
Simply cut the vegetables to your liking and spread them out in the pan and add enough water to create steam and keep the vegetables from burning, then cover. Usually I’ll set the oven temperature to 400° and take a peek around 15 to 20 minutes into the bake to see what they look like. Be careful when opening the oven and removing the cover because a lot of hot steam is escaping. When the vegetables have noticeably shrunk in size and are about 90 % done there ready to cool down and used on your pizza.
For mushrooms I will mix in chopped garlic but for everything else I steam the vegetables plain. You can season and add olive oil if you like, or just add some olive oil on the pie before baking.
Since the worry of a soggy pizza is avoided, don’t be tempted to overwhelm the pie with a mountain of vegetables. Mushrooms, onions and bell peppers are an addition not the main attraction. Good dough, sauce and cheese are the stars of the show.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post
Better pizzamaking
Jimmy
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