I find it a little odd that Giada de Laurentis is getting into the food news so much these days. But… She wouldn’t be here without a good reason. This time, with a newstalgia twist to a ‘natural’ combo: Beer-Raised Pizza Crust…
Giada de Laurentis: Seen here about to dig into another new recipe developed as
part of her current partnership with Peroni – Lemon Pasta Alfredo…
It’s a simple idea, de Lautentis says. Beer and pizza have been a natural combo since Pizza was in-vented, hundreds of years ago. And other have already experimented with raising pizza dough – and other yeast-driven breads – with beer. But some beers just don’t enhance some doughs flavour-wise the way intrepid food experimenters hoped…
Others found that beer did work flavour-wise – but they got more than they bargained for. Specific-ally, they ended up with, light, airy – even cloud-soft and extra-puffy – crusts that just didn’t say ‘Pizza’ at all.
And still others complained that using beer rather than plain water produced a crust with big, inappropriate bubbles, rather than the fine, consistent texture they associate with ’00’ flour and a classic Pizza foundation. It was hard to create a traditional ‘thin crust’ pie.
Giada to the rescue
Given the chance to play with the beer crust concept, as part of a promo partnership with Peroni – one of Italy’s premiere names in beer – she came up with what she calls not only a successful beer-raised crust… But a downright sexy one!
“I replaced half of the water in the dough with Peroni, which gives the dough this sexy, light, airy texture when it cooks, and makes the whole pizza taste incredible,” Giada shares.
Simple, but sensible. And altogether common-sensical. And, like so many great discoveries, she came upon it almost by accident, just tinkering with ingredient ratios to see if she could get the flavour, texture and raising power to all balance out in a single formula.
Italian beer essential
Also, Italian or Italian-style beer is essential to beer-crust success. Italian style beers tend to remind one of traditional Pilsners or Lagers. Their flavours are often described as light, crisp, and subtly bitter, with a fruity or herbal aroma due to the use of European hops and dry-hopping techniques.
One can see, immediately, how that particular favour profile would pair nicely with the essential ingredients found among Pizza toppings – especially the tomato base, and the cheese – another fermented product! In Giada’s beer crust recipe, it seems the complementary characteristics of the beer and the main components of the pie (her test pizza is always a classic ‘Margherita’) come to-gether in such a way that you don’t taste the beer as such – just its subtle influence on the whole.
My take
Faithful readers will know I often make my own Pizza crust. And I’ll be trying Giada’s ‘sexy’ hack, for sure. When she describes the result thus: “The pizza just floats into your mouth. It’s insane!” You just can’t say ‘No’!
~ Maggie J.