The Ships Cook Book

Recipes, Insight, Theory and Everyday Management for Students, Ships Cooks, and those with an interest in Marine Catering Operations. All Recipes have a fully adjustable servings feature, just change the number of servings and the ingredients recalculate automatically.

The Ships Cook Book

Pizza

This Pizza could not be described as an autentic resturant style Pizza but end result is exseptionally good, I have served this pizza on so many ships to so many crews and the response is always possitive, The base is a basic bread dough only with olive oil in place of white shortening, this dough is extremely reliable and easy to use, you can scale it off to suit the thickness of base you require, 100 grams rolled out to the size of a large plate will produce a nice thin base and 250 grams will produce a thicker base, as with all pizzas oil your tray well and cook a thin Pizza for 9 to 10 Minutes and the thicker base for approximately 10 to 12 minutes, you will need to get to know your oven. This Pizza is so popular with the crew we have to have it on the menu every week, everyone loves a good pizza. The important thing to remember is whilst this pizza can be rolled and placed on the trays half an hour to an hour before service time, cook your pizza during the service period, only place the pizzas in the oven to suit the flow in the messroom, placing each tray each tray in the oven 10 minutes before you need it, so that as the crew come into the messroom, you are taking hot pizzas out of the oven and slicing them.
Print Recipe
 Pizza
Course Main Dish
Cuisine American, Italian
Prep Time 1 Hour
Cook Time 15 Minutes
Passive Time 30 Minutes
Servings
Portions
Ingredients
Course Main Dish
Cuisine American, Italian
Prep Time 1 Hour
Cook Time 15 Minutes
Passive Time 30 Minutes
Servings
Portions
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Place all the dry Ingredients in a machine bowl fitted with a dough hook and mix for 15 minutes scraping down the bowl half way through the mixing.
  2. Stop the machine add the olive oil and mix for 15 minutes on slow speed.
  3. Add water and mix until a smooth dough.
  4. When the dough is fully mixed remove from the mixer and place in the dough in a suitable lightly oiled container and cover, or better still lightly oil the inside of a polyethene bag and place the dough inside the bag and allow to prove until approximately 50% larger in volume. The polyethene bag accelerates the proving.
  5. We can see here just how efficient it is to use an oiled polyethene bag to prove the dough, this dough proved in just 15 minutes sat on the bench, see how the bag is stretched like a balloon
  6. When the dough has risen knock it back, this done by removing the dough from the container or polyethene bag and slamming the dough on the bench, Knead briefly and scale at 100grams. ( For a thicker pizza base scale the dough at 250grams)
  7. Mould the dough into balls and place on the bench and cover with oiled polyethylene.
  8. Oil or grease your trays with white shortening and have the standing by on the bench, this dough is very active and will start its second prove quic
  9. Roll out to round shape and place on a well Oiled oven tray. I fit 3 Pizza's onto a standard shallow Gastronome tray. (or 4 pizza onto a black baking tray.)
  10. On another bench have your pizza sauce and cheese standing by, you must the sauce and cheese on your dough soon as each tray is ready, spoon some tomato pizza topping on the dough.
  11. Using the back of the spoon evenly spread the sauce over the dough.
  12. Sprinkle with some cheese I always use a mixture of Cheddar and Mozzarella, we will be adding more cheese later. Immediately return to rolling your dough and lining the trays, then topping in the same way.
  13. Top the pizzas with any toppings of your choice.
  14. How you bake your Pizza's will depend on the type of ovens you have in your galley, convection ovens, bakers ovens, or standard oven with top and bottom heat? Tray the following ;- Bake in a hot oven at 180°C for just 10 to 15minutes, in a standard oven with top and bottom heat, Bake in a fan assisted combination oven on dry heat at 160°C to 170°C Bake in a deck oven at 180°C to 200°C for 8 to 12 minutes. The challenge is to find the right temperature and time required to bake your pizza's to perfection.
  15. I always bake my pizzas during service period so as to ensure they are fresh out of the oven as the crew come to the messroom service counter. Sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley
  16. Note;- The secret to proving any bread dough is the temperature of the dough during proving , optimum temperature for yeast to ferment is approximately 28°C, having said this the average ships galley is normally warm enough to prove your dough.
Recipe Notes

When you take the hot pizza out of the oven and cut it, you get pinching of the pizza base where the knife cuts through the dough, this prevents the true profile of the light pizza base from being seen, however here are some images of the same pizza cut when cold, we can clearly see the light texture of the pizza base. 

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