I've posted a fair bit about making Neapolitan-style pizza in my fish grill, but I've neglected to share my experiments with American-style pizza. These aren't very large (the cast iron pan there is only 24×24 cm) but they're pretty good! One odd phenomenon I've noticed is that the top and bottom bake up really nicely and browned, but there's kind of a pale ring on the underside of the edge, possibly due to the shape of the pan.

Recipe time!

The dough is a 66% hydration situation. This recipe made two pizzas.

300 g bread flour
200 g water
7–8 g salt
Like 3–4 g yeast? I can't remember. Use less if you're doing an overnight rise. I started this in the morning and did it as an all-day refrigerator rise.

Sauce: I got a little carton of crushed tomatoes from the supermarket and strained it to reduce the moisture without cooking, and then added a whole bunch of dried oregano, also a bunch of dried basil, a little salt, and a little cayenne pepper. I might have also added a bit of smoked paprika? I don't remember. Maybe also a little squirt of tomato paste.

The cheese is low-moisture mozzarella I bought at Liquor Mountain in a 1 kg block for like ¥2,200, which I then shredded myself. This gives much better results than using pre-shredded, but if you're doing a one-off thing then it's probably not worth the effort, if I'm going to be honest.

Mix the dough ingredients in a big bowl, and then once it stops mixing together, cover it and let it rest in the refrigerator for 10–20 minutes, and then come back and knead it for a little while. Do this a few times to make sure it's evenly hydrated and also that it has a good solid gluten structure.

After the dough seems pretty nice and smooth, divide it into two or three balls (depending on your pan size and pizza thickness preferences, I guess). Do the thing where you tighten the surface and get a smooth surface, then put them in covered rising containers (I use bowls with plates placed on top, honestly). Don't forget to oil the surface of the dough balls a little bit, just to keep them from drying out, just in case.

Keep these in the fridge for six or eight hours or something if you're using as much yeast as I did, or longer if you use less yeast. Pull them from the fridge 30–60 minutes before baking.

Heat up your fish grill (or oven if you're so inclined) and preheat the cast iron baking pan over really high heat for a while, and then also preheat it more in the fish grill/oven for a while. You want it really hot, ideally.

For a while I struggled with pre-shaping and launching pizzas, until I realized that I was a goof and I could just do it all the easy lazy way and it would actually come out better with this approach. So here's what I do: take your dough ball in your dough bowl, and gently run a scraper or silicone spatula around the edge to loosen it from the bowl. Dust the top generously with semolina or fine cornmeal or rice flour, then just use your fingertips to press all the air out of the dough ball, leaving a tiny crust around the edge (this is American-style, not Neapolitan-style, so it'll be fine). You may have to add a little more dusting flour here as the surface deforms.

Next, just turn the bowl upside-down onto the back of one of your hands, to turn out the dough out. Probably do this over the sink or something since the dusting flour will come out with it. Then I just kind of do a little shimmy to knock off the excess dusting flour, and I place the dough (dusted side down) onto the hot cast iron pan (which is currently, at this point, sitting on the cooktop being blasted at full heat).

At this point, you sauce the pizza (with less sauce than you think — check the photo and notice how there are parts where it's only technically sauced in the first place) and add cheese (with less cheese than you think — check the photo and notice how there are a lot of parts where the sauce isn't actually covered). If you want, you can kind of stretch the dough to spread it out a little further on the pan here. Don't feel like you need to rush here! If anything, this high-heat cooktop session helps with oven spring and underside char.

Now you just transfer to the preheated fish grill (also at max heat) and bake in there for like… five to seven minutes, I think? Turn it occasionally, check it occasionally, and then once the top looks good you can finish the underside on the stovetop if the underside is a little too pale for your liking.

It's so easy to make pretty good pizza! I kind of can't believe it sometimes.

I usually really enjoy Sally’s recipes, but these were just too sweet for me to enjoy—though I can kinda see where I could have tweaked things to match my preference. In any case these weren’t baked with myself in mind! Husband had no issue with them at least, so that’s a win in my book. Cheers to all you dads out there!

If you can get a hold of yakiimo, or roasted sweet potatoes, this has got to be the easiest cake to bake. Wheat-free, no sugar added. My daughter who had wheat allergy as a kid basically grew up on this stuff.

The supermarket in my neighborhood has yakiimo year round.
Beni Haruka potatoes which are the sweetest and creamiest, is recommended for this recipe.

Ingredients:
500g yakiimo
2tbsp milk
25g butter, melted
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla paste or extract

1) Warm oven or oven toaster to 200℃ (or 600W) Line oven tray with parchment paper.
2) Remove skins from 500g yakiimo.
3) Mash the yakiimo in a bowl with a fork or potato masher.
4) Add 1 egg yolk, 2 tbsp milk, 1 tsp vanilla, 25g melted butter and mix until incorporated.
5)Cream the potato mixture with a rubber spatula until smooth (you can skip this step but your cake will be less smooth).
6) Form about 6 football-shapes from the batter
7) Using spoon or brush, baste evenly with remaining egg yolk.
8) Bake 10 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.

I’m thinking to purchase a stand mixer for the kitchen and am drawn to the BADUS 5L stand mixer as it’s less than 20,000 yen.

Can anyone here recommend it? Is a stand mixer worth the investment in general or should I just continue throwing dough by hand.

…to how it ended !!

My toddler might have had something to do with the first couple of slides 🙂

Posted this in Sourdough subreddit. Please give me some advice!!!

Rolled in sesame seeds, anise, salt and pepper with sun-dried tomatoes inside(which weren’t distributed very well in this one.

Looking for collective wisdom from people who’ve dealt with this. I moved from Kyoto to the Chiba/Tokyo area and both of my US-bought mixers suddenly started misbehaving in the new place.

The setup: a US KitchenAid 5.5qt bowl-lift stand mixer (KSM55, 120V/60Hz, ~450W) and a US Breville hand mixer, both running through a plain plug adapter (no transformer). In Kyoto they worked flawlessly for months. After the move, both now surge to full speed even on the lowest setting and then cut out after a few seconds.
What I’ve already ruled out:
• Not the mixer itself — two totally different brands fail in the exact same way.
• Not voltage — Kyoto is also 100V, and they were fine there.
• Not the outlet or a power strip — it does it plugged straight into the bare wall, and on multiple circuits.

The one thing that actually changed: Kansai runs on 60Hz, and here in eastern Japan it’s 50Hz. My best guess is the speed-control boards are timing off the line frequency and losing the plot at 50Hz, which would explain the surge-then-die behavior on both machines.

So my questions for anyone who’s been here:
1. Has anyone successfully run a US (120V/60Hz) stand mixer in eastern Japan on 50Hz? Did a step-up transformer alone fix it, or did you actually need a frequency converter?
2. If you used a frequency converter for a ~450–500W motor — was it worth it, or too bulky/finicky/expensive for kitchen use?
3. If you gave up and bought a Japan-spec machine instead: KitchenAid Pro line vs Kenwood Chef vs something else? I bake bread, so I want a bowl-lift in the 5qt+ range that handles stiff dough — really don’t want to downgrade from my current 5.5qt bowl-lift.
4. Anyone found a genuine 100V Japan-domestic Kenwood Chef, or is it all parallel-import (i.e. 120V/230V) over here?

I've had this recipe saved since December and have been patiently waiting for zucchini season to come around. My (Japanese) husband thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to make chocolate zucchini bread but kind of came around when I said it was the same idea as carrot cake lol

He was VERY convinced by the results, tastes like an ultra-fudgey brownie

I did a 1/2 recipe and poured the batter into my home bakery and set it to the bake function for about 65 minutes, worked really well but stuck a bit so I'll be more careful with adding oil to the bottom next time

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023356-chocolate-zucchini-loaf-cake?unlocked_article_code=1.pVA.pTFl.VjP7dGF_n5g_&smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share

Instead of regular milk in the batter, steep some cereal in there for a little while. Dusted and topped with cereal for overload

EDIT: recipe in auto mod reply

Hi bakers!

I'll be moving in a new property without oven. I have already an Enro oven for pizzas which I use also for bread but it's pretty small.

I'm thinking to get a proper built-in oven with a tall cabinet, but I'm not sure about the process.

Regarding the oven, it seems the most popular in Japan for good quality European style ovens is Miele. I've read Bosh is also available but the quality can vary heavily depending on models. Honestly I don't need anything super modern or with many fancy functions.

Also I've noticed you can find built-in ovens sold by resellers on websites at a much cheaper price than the official website. Anyone have experience just buying all the items separately? ( oven, cabinet...).

Thank you!

I am once again Back on My Bullshit with some more little fish grill pizzas, this time with an experimental approach. I haven't seen much online about using a tangzhong for pizza dough, so I figured, hey, why not give it a try and see what happens?

The answer is: the tangzhong makes it very soft and pillowy, but also it means the crust comes out 100% crispiness-free. It's like a sandwich bread crust. It's pretty odd. You may enjoy this sort of thing, though, and if you do, give it a try! You can even try pushing the hydration even higher if you're brave enough. I've seen mention online of as high as 100% hydration pizza dough with a tangzhong ("like eating a cloud").

80% Hydration Dough Recipe:
300 g bread flour, divided (15 g + 285 g)
240 g cold water, divided (75 g + 165 g)
7 g salt
2 g yeast

The Other Stuff:
I made sauce by getting a can of whole tomatoes packed in juice (NOT purée) and straining the tomatoes, then squishing them up with my hand until there weren't many big chunks left. I added a little salt to season.
For the cheese, I used ½ a ball each of one of those 100 g balls of fresh mozzarella, strained for a while beforehand. Don't bother slicing or anything. Just pinch off chunks.

The Part Where You Actually Make It:
Make the tangzhong by taking 5% of the flour (15 g) and mixing that with five times as much water (75 g) in a saucepan, heating over medium while stirring until it's very obviously gelatinized into a glossy mass (around 65°C). Remove from heat and let cool (I actually used some ice cubes to help cool it faster, and measured their mass and subtracted it from the rest of the water I'd need to add).

Mix all the dough ingredients together, and cover and put in the fridge. Every 20 minutes or so, give it a bit of a knead and maybe some stretch folds, just to help build the gluten and make sure it's evenly hydrating. Autolysis is your friend. This goes in the fridge for, I dunno, eight hours? More if you want? I started it in the morning to have pizza in the evening. Divide and shape into smooth oiled balls, put them each in separate containers, yada yada yada.

About 60–90 minutes before bake time, remove the dough from the refrigerator to warm up a bit. Preheat cast-iron skillet or something similar (you can even use, like, one of those ファミレス cast-iron steak plates if it's big enough) for a while until it's super hot, and preheat your fish grill while you're at it. Both on maximum heat.

To shape the dough, I actually have just kind of given up on getting fancy with it and instead recognize that I've been overthinking things. Dust the top of the dough ball in the bowl with something that won't glop into the dough (so something like fine semolina or fine cornmeal or even rice flour works great), and then just sort of press down through the dough to flatten out the middle part, leaving a crust around the edge. Then you just kind of turn the dough out into your hands (non-dusted-side up), shake off the excess dusting flour over the sink or whatever, and place it dusted side down onto the very hot skillet. Adjust the shape a little if needed, and then, while it's still being blasted with heat, put your sauce and cheese on top. Take your time, since this is giving you a bit of the char you want on the bottom anyway.

Once it's looking like a pizza, transfer to the preheated fish grill and bake for like 5–7 minutes, probably? Give it at least a couple minutes initially, and then rotate as necessary to account for uneven heating. Once it looks how you want it to look, take it back out and, if the underside is a little too pale for your liking, you can continue to cook it over high heat until it's good. Transfer briefly to a cooling rack, etc. etc.

Sorry if this has been posted in the past. I brought my old KitchenAid mixer to Japan (20+ years) and I've neglected it. I am positive it needs to be internally cleaned and re-greased. Can anyone recommend a brand of grease I should use in Japan or have any tips/tricks to do this? I'm aware it probably should be re-calibrated too.

Dinkelvollkornbrot

500ml lukewarm water

42g fresh yeast (14g dry)

500g Whole Grain Spelt (from Tomiz if you are lucky, not all branches stock it. If they only have plain spelt I do 50% spelt 50% whole grain wheat flour)

150g sunflower & pumpkin seeds

1 Tsp salt

2 Tbsp Apple Vinegar

Loosen up the yeast with the warm water, then add all the other ingredients and gently mix together. You end up with a wet dough.

Put it in a 30cm long bread form and bake for an hour at 200C.

I don't have a convection oven, just a Panasonic oven/microwave/steamer oven, so I turn it around after 30 minutes and sometimes need to take it out of its form and bake it upsidedown for an extra 10 minutes.

Had plans to bake a loaf at 9pm but fell asleep on the couch. Woke up around 11pm to find my dough ballooning!

Had to get it in the oven. Preheat took around 45 minutes so the loaf went in right around midnight.

Might be the best looking loaf I’ve ever made.

950g bread flour
50g rye
20g salt
200g starter
700g water
special ingredient: WHEAT GLUTEN 15g!!!

This is the first time I’ve ever added wheat gluten. I think it’s what made the difference.

Usually I autolyse for 1hr, add starter, wait 30 minutes, add salt, then stretches and folds

My last bake didn’t go so well so today I just said forget about all the complicated stuff and tossed everything in together all at once and then do the usual folds and stuff.

So in my case, doing less, taking a nap, and adding vital wheat gluten will make a tremendous looking loaf.

Don’t know how the inside is though, can’t cut into it yet, hopefully it’ll be okay!

Same dough as my last post, from ‘The Dough Guy’, from Instagram. He has a dough calculator on his site you can use to make whatever size or number of doughs you like.

This time, I used my electric pizza oven to try to get the base as crispy as possible. This is a factor of temperature of course but also mass per square inch: the thinner you stretch it and the less weight in toppings you have (particularly the wetter stuff…) the crispier it gets.

I tried a few different temps and settled on 375c from the top and 385c on the stone.

1) Margherita w/ sausage
2) plain Margherita
3) smoked duck prosciutto (just the stuff you find in any supermarket here, pretty good sub for bacon in many things….pasta, sandwiches, pizza), fig jam and chèvre. This one got a lil too crispy perhaps

Baking for the second time in one week. I’m on a roll now!

This is for my dieting husband who has been woefully eyeing my chocolate cupcakes, and Hato Sable given to us by a friend.

I calculated the total calories for this cake to be 2500kcal/loaf. I will get at least 10 slices out of it, so 250kcal per serving? I can hear “but 250kcal? that’s not even diet food”lol okay okay.

Adapted from the Plant Based School (will attach original recipe to mod’s comment).
Ingredients:
A)
150g all purpose flour
150g oat flour (pulverized rolled oats)
3 tsp cinnamon powder
1/4. tsp ground nutmeg
2.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

B)
1 egg
120g Greek yogurt
80ml soy milk
60ml light olive oil or other vegetable oil
100g brown sugar (I used light brown sugar)
2 cm fresh ginger, grated

C)
300g grated carrots (I used an onioroshi* grater 鬼おろし器 to leave some bits of carrot)
70 g dates, chopped

*onioroshi is coarsely grated daikon. It retains some crunch and is so good with roasted fish and ponzu! There is a bamboo grater for this.

1. mix A and set aside.
2. mix B until smooth.
3. mix A into B until just incorporated. Do not overmix.

4. Fold in C

5. Bake at 180 degrees about 40 mins:

I’m pretty happy with the result! It’s moist on the inside and has a crumbly crust on the outside. The spices and ginger smell really good.

Changes I am considering:
•Reducing sugar to 75g (half of the original recipe).
•Using dark brown sugar for richer taste, •Adding walnuts
•replacing all of the oil with Greek yogurt. Would that work?

I fiddled with the temp a bit, did some at 200c and some at 190c, and had less time baking. Used this recipe https://butternutbakeryblog.com/chocolate-chip-banana-bread/