Gourmet: From a Stall in Northern Europe

Chapter 496 - 408: Surrounded by Onlookers, Durian Pizza Fresh from the Oven

Even without experience, you can use deduction to figure out how to hand-roll the shape of a crusted pizza.

Crust is simply a dough with edges thinner than the center, so just change your hand’s gesture, lift up the base of the palm, press down with your fingers, and make the edges thinner than the center using the same technique.

After finishing one dough, a sense of realization flashed through his eyes, feeling like he had taken a big circle; next time, he could switch the order, make the crust first and then the center, saving more time.

The finished dough resembles a large bun skin, thin on the outside and thick in the middle.

Glancing at the three expectant head chefs beside him, along with several ladies from the service staff who hurried over, as well as Rovena, he thought for a moment and decided to make the fruit-flavored ones first.

He picked up the pineapple cream filling already packed in a piping bag, snipped a suitable opening, and circled around the dough, about one finger’s width from the edge.

Then, using a technique similar to wrapping dumpling edges, layer by layer, fold the edges back, completely wrapping the light yellow pineapple filling, finally using the palm’s base to press the closure tightly to prevent the filling from seeping out during baking.

If this step is not pressed tight enough, the filling leaking out is a secondary issue; mainly during baking, the dough will expand, contract, and deform, the crust without enough pressure will shrink, creating a gap that impacts its appearance.

After dealing with the crust, the middle part doesn’t have much technical content.

A layer of original flavor mayonnaise is first squeezed onto the dough’s surface, sprinkled with a full layer of mozzarella cheese as the base, then crushed durian fruit puree.

Durian puree should not be crushed too finely; retaining some grainy texture is best.

Because during baking, the durian flesh will melt into a cheese-like texture, crushing it too finely will result in no texture, only flavor.

Only by keeping some large chunks of durian flesh will there be a surprise sensation when eating.

On half of the pizza, place a few pieces of pineapple flesh, extra pineapple cream squeezed on the flesh, some corn kernels and pre-roasted Orléans chicken thigh pieces placed in gaps, and finally sprinkle an appropriate amount of mozzarella cheese, and the fruit-flavored two-flavor pizza is complete.

Next up is the savory pizza.

With the first experience, the pizza dough this time was kneaded extremely smoothly, completed entirely in a mere seven or eight seconds.

Half of the crust is topped with Cantonese-style small sausages softened with hot water, and the other half squeezed with golden sand salty egg yolk sauce.

This time the crust technique also differs from before; instead of rolling up the entire edge, every few distances is rolled once, folding the edges back forcefully onto the dough bottom, resembling small compartments, exposing the sauce outside.

After rolling, the crust’s materials are visually obvious, and the pizza dough’s overall shape looks much more aesthetic, hiding a symmetry of beauty within.

The half with sausage crust is coated with the previously boiled beef sauce, mixed with rich beef particles, exuding a strong beef fat aroma.

The sauce on the other half is somewhat special, made from concentrated veal stock, creating a spicy sauce; its color even resembles many barbecue or fragrant cake-brushed sauces, deep brown with faint dark red.

Still laid with a layer of mozzarella cheese.

The beef side places some white onion slices, green pepper strips, and fingernail-sized beef rib pieces; the spicy sauce side places small brown mushroom slices, white poplar mushrooms, crab-flavor mushrooms, red pepper strips, and Orléans chicken thigh pieces.

These Orléans chicken thigh pieces are from the same batch of marinade as in the morning’s sandwich thigh steak, roasted in advance then cut into small cubes, with the roasting time shorter by two minutes than usual, just reaching a slightly pink, eighty percent cooked state.

In this state, when baked together with the pizza, it will reach a perfect cooked thigh meat, and not excessively dry juices due to prolonged baking.

Beef ribs were grilled on a barbecue in advance, taken off at about three tenths cooked to rest, allowing internal temperature to gradually balance.

Beef ribs themselves are a very juicy part; there’s no need to roast them fully, a five to seven tenths state is optimal.

If a guest requests fully cooked, it’s simple; before putting into the oven, pan-fry the beef ribs in a skillet for a minute to finish, considered pre-heating.

Finally, still a layer of mozzarella cheese.

After both pizzas were sent into the oven simultaneously, the expressions on Raphael’s and Marchello’s faces became somewhat strange, only Nagishiro Sho’s expression remained normal, unfazed as if he were accustomed to it.

"Pizza being made into this shape in Great Xia does indeed look very bizarre; merely discussing appearance, it indeed has transformed into a different food."

"Why is it that any food reaching Great Xia can be played with and turned into various forms? I recall sushi seems to also have been popularized by Great Xia people, right?"

Beside him, Nagishiro Sho nodded in agreement, "That’s right; our cherry blossom sushi is very simple, just sushi rice with sashimi, at most additionally grilled."

"If it’s sushi roll, it’s basically mainly sashimi, or cucumber, very simple flavors, primarily enjoying seafood’s own freshness."

"Since Great Xia people opened self-service sushi restaurants, a variety of colorful volcano rolls, seafood rolls, fruit rolls gradually became popular, and sushi’s reputation gradually stepped onto the international stage."

"From this perspective alone, Great Xia people in the culinary field do indeed have a very unique innovative ability, which is precisely what we lack most."

What he’s referring to as lacking innovative ability isn’t that they don’t have it, but a lack of that bold exploratory ability to break away from established frameworks.

Just like the cold noodles and gluten consumed yesterday.

Clearly a food made from the most ordinary dough, yet the Western culinary world has played with dough for so many years, no one thought of soaking dough in water for washing.

This is a kind of inherent framework, which has deeply trapped the thinking of modern chefs.

Only by breaking it can more innovative ideas be unleashed.

The pizza baking time must not be too long, the oven temperature should be maintained above 230 degrees, about five minutes is enough.

If it’s lower, it will cause the dough to be baked for too long, losing moisture, making the texture hard.

Only pizzas baked at high temperatures can retain the dough’s soft texture and also unleash a rich wheat aroma.

While several head chefs were chatting casually, Zhao Shun and Lin Chen were not idle, constantly kneading pizza dough, while Old Chen added various sauces and ingredients on top.

The pizza flavors are fixed anyway, they’re not doing DIY today, so they can prepare some ahead of time.

Whether it’s a single flavor or two-in-one, preparing a few of them in advance won’t go wrong.

While they were making pizza, Jonathan also quietly came over to watch.

Today’s lunch buffet offers various grilled meats, he doesn’t need to do anything else, just prepare two pots of thick soup for guests to soothe their throats, followed by the usual self-serve salad to accompany the grilled meat.

Those things had been ready for a long time, now it’s just waiting for the time to take the grilled meat out of the oven for serving.

Leisure is leisure, he is also very interested in the Great Xia flavor pizza.

"Ah... so fragrant so fragrant!"

"Is the pizza ready?"

At this moment, John and Magna entered together as if agreed, dragging a trolley loaded with ingredients behind them.

"They’re baking, your sandwiches are packed in bags over there, don’t forget to take them when you leave."

As more people gathered, two pizzas were definitely not enough to share, and they also needed to eat something themselves, so several more pizzas were quickly stuffed into the oven beside them.

Soon, the first two pizzas were out of the oven.

As soon as the oven was opened, a rich durian sweet aroma rushed out with the surging heat wave, completely overshadowing the smell of other flavors.

Marchello and Raphael pinched their noses, involuntarily rolling their eyes.

As pure-blooded Italians and Romantic People, both of them felt a deep aversion to fruit-flavored pizza from the bottom of their hearts.

If it weren’t for the culinary profession which forced them to try various things, the aversion would have been even stronger.

"I still can’t understand who actually likes to eat fruit-flavored pizza... sigh!"

"I even feel this thing can’t be called pizza anymore, pizza doesn’t look like this, better call it Chinese-style pizza."

The surface cheese of the freshly baked two pizzas was still sizzling, visually seeming to be two wholes, but the two curled edges on the savory pizza clearly divided it.

The durian pizza had completely different toppings for the two flavors, easily distinguishable at a glance.

"There’s nothing to say, let’s try durian and pineapple first?"

Lin Chen didn’t give them any choice at all, the pizza knife made a few quick cuts and placed it in the center of the table.

The other savory one was placed in front of him on standby, also uncut, giving them no alternatives.

Seeing this, not only Zhao Shun and Lucas looked full of anticipation, but also the several women watching, along with Rovena, John, and Magna all focused their eyes on the chefs’ faces.

As ordinary people, whether they can get used to fruit pizza or not doesn’t matter.

What matters is what kind of reaction these Michelin chefs will have.

Michelin’s influence nowadays spreads across all countries worldwide, even Great Xia, originally not within Michelin’s influence, has gradually entered the selection range in recent years.

Being selected as Michelin chefs, especially three-star chefs, are definitely leaders in culinary cultural fusion.

Feeling the gaze of the crowd, Marchello and Raphael couldn’t help but twitch their mouths a few times, secretly grumbling in their hearts.

Although they were mentally prepared to taste it, being watched like monkeys in close range with those spectating eyes was indeed a bit speechless.

At this moment.

Nagishiro Sho took action first.

He grabbed a piece of golden durian pizza without hesitation, the abundant cheese stretched long in mid-air, wrapping obvious durian pulp.