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Also, hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish," where this week,
we're taking a look at Pizza Poppa's pizza balls
from "Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness."
Now, I might not be able to afford to license a clip
from the movie because it's still in theaters,
but I do have this Eye of Agamotto,
which is actually just a fire bomb.
It's literally a bomb that you throw at a fire,
which is still pretty cool, right, guys?
Okay, yeah, pizza balls, here we go.
I'm gonna start with our New York-style-base pizza dough,
marrying together 470 grams of bread flour,
25 grams of sugar, and 1 1/2 grams of yeast
in the bowl of a food processor,
where it's going to sit motionless
because my food processor is not working.
So we're gonna bust out our stand mixer.
Dump in all that dry stuff I said into the bowl,
adding 285 ml of cold water,
15 ml of extra virgin olive oil,
and nine grams of kosher salt.
Affix dough hooks, pull up the bowl lever, and knead
at medium-high strength for at least eight minutes.
Pretty hard to overwork the gluten in this dough,
so just let it go.
To see if your gluten is properly developed,
you can perform the windowpane test,
or you can roll the dough into a taut ball
and then you can poke it with your finger like this.
If you would describe the dimple popping out
as anything less than enthusiastic,
don't be afraid to go ahead and knead this
for another two to five minutes
until the dimple pops back out with rigor and gumption.
Now we're gonna place this guy in an airtight container,
cover him up, and put him in the fridge to cold-ferment
at least overnight and ideally three days.
On the day of the pizza balls,
we're gonna construct a simple sauce,
sauteing some crushed garlic and olive oil
and adding one can of pureed whole San Marzano tomatoes.
I'm gonna toss in some fresh basil and dried oregano,
and then I'm gonna cook it down fairly significantly,
one to two hours or until it's thick and pasty.
I pictured the sauce being inside Pizza Poppa's pizza balls,
and so it's gotta be nice and low moisture.
Once we've removed the basil,
it's time to puree this guy in the food processor,
which is now working again,
that's the multiverse for you,
so that it's smooth enough to be delivered
by a large stainless-steel needle.
I'm sure that this is someone's nightmare,
and whoever you are, I'm sorry.
Next up, it looked like the pizza balls were topped
with miniature pepperonis,
so I'm gonna cut these full-size 'ronis down to size
and retrieve my cold fermented pizza dough,
which, as soon as I did, I had a brain blast.
What if we treated the dough like cinnamon roll dough
and the sauce like cinnamon roll sauce
and the cheese like cinnamon roll cheese,
or frosting, as it's called?
And I'm going to publicly thank Kendall
for shredding this fresh mozzarella.
It is my least favorite thing to do in the world.
And so now all's I gotta do is sprinkle it
on top of our sauce,
on top of which I'm going to shingle pepperoni.
And even though it looks like we got ourselves
a good grandma-style pie started here,
we're gonna roll it up
like a pizza-flavored jelly or cinnamon roll.
We're gonna pinch the gap shut and make sure
that it's on the bottom of the roll as we begin to cut it,
first slicing off the unseemly end pieces
to create a cohesive log
so we can break the whole thing down
into 12 evenly sized pieces,
which, once again, like a cinnamon roll,
we are going to evenly space out
and arrange in a well-lubricated 9x13 casserole.
Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature
for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes
until they've grown by about 50%.
Brush down with a combination of extra virgin olive oil
and crushed fresh garlic, and then I think
these guys are ready for a 425 degree Fahrenheit oven
for anywhere from 25 to 35 minutes
or until they're a pool of oil.
In spite of this, I'm gonna soldier on and sprinkle it
with Kendall's homemade shredded mozzarella,
a smattering of extra pepperoni, going with full-size
'cause I think the little ones could just get lost on this,
return it to the oven, and bake until the cheese is bubbling
and starting to brown, about 10 minutes.
Now, they didn't come out very tall,
and they came out pretty greasy,
but we got some nice cheese bowls and I think
some functional pizza cinnamon rolls, pretty much.
Might as well give 'em a taste, see what we're dealing with,
and they're not bad.
They're definitely not great, but they're not bad.
Maybe next time I would leave the pepperoni
on the outside of the pizza roll,
I think that's where a lot of the grease came from,
maybe let the dough rise a little bit longer,
and maybe use low-moisture mozzarella.
Thanks to Make-A-Wish, I've got an official taste tester
in the studio today.
Everybody say hi to Sam.
And even though Sam gave these a very generous review,
we both agreed they're just not pizza balls.
So instead of trying to improve
upon the pizza cinnamon roll,
I'm gonna save that for my free time
and refocus on the balled-ness of the pizza.
So I'm gonna hack off 65-gram hunks of my dough,
roll it out to about the thickness of a scented marker,
and tie it into a knot because as you may have guessed,
I'm going to make garlic knots,
which I'm going to let rise
on a parchment-lined and lubricated baking sheet
covered with another baking sheet
for at least one hour or until about 50% bigger.
Brush these guys down with our garlic oil
and pop 'em into the same 425 degree Fahrenheit oven,
that is, until you suddenly get a better idea,
which is to preheat an oiled muffin tin in the hot oven
and drop a knot into each hot spot,
giving us a leg up on developing a golden-brown crust.
I forgot to set a timer.
I think it was, like, 15 minutes later?
Yes, there is a question mark in this recipe.
These guys emerge starting brown and ready
to get dumped on by cheese and mini pepperoni.
Back into the oven for about 10 minutes
or until the cheese is melted.
Extract the pizza balls from their pizza place.
I'm going out onto a wire rack
because I want them to cool off just enough to handle,
because after some pepperoni relocation,
our tomato-sauce-filled trauma needle is back
and ready to inject our little pizza buns
with some of the red stuff.
And with that, it's time
to reintroduce Sam the taste tester.
A self-described Marvel fanatic,
Sam happily gave me his Pizza Poppa seal of approval.
Thank you so much to the Make-A-Wish Foundation
for introducing me to Sam
and for doing some really amazing work,
and thanks again to Cash App for sponsoring today's episode.
Don't forget to download Cash App today
and use code BABISH22 to get $15 for free,
and $10 will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
(upbeat music)