Sunday, December 5, 2010

Pizza Dough Revisited

The more I learn about bread, the more I realize just how much more there is to learn. Almost as soon as I think I have bumped my bakin’ up to the next level (level 2!), I find myself humbled by true talent. Fortunately, I remain excited by the prospect of learning it all! Bread baking has become my favorite hobby and mastering this craft can clearly be a life-long pursuit.

So, after admitting my infantile level of baking knowledge, am I still going to presume to offer a recipe on making pizza dough? Well, yeah. Why not? After all, everybody thinks that they make the best pizza, regardless of skill, right? Lucky for you, with me, it’s actually TRUE!

Pizza Dough Recipe

The Night Before: Develop a dough starter that will add flavor and texture to your pizza.

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup water

¼ teaspoon yeast

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl until they reach a pasty consistency and are all fully incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside.

The Day of: Make the dough.

2 cups of bread flower

1 cup of all-purpose flour

1.5 teaspoons of salt

1 cup of warm water

1 teaspoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of yeast

1 tablespoon of olive oil

All of the starter

Method

Mix together the flours and salt. Add the sugar to the cup of water and then whisk the yeast into the sugar water solution. Allow the yeast solution to proof for 3-5 minutes until it achieves a foamy head.

Combine all ingredients (the starter, dry ingredients, and the yeast solution) in the bowl of your stand mixer and mix on the low setting for 1 minute. The dough should be a little sticky, but still workable. If the dough is still too sticky, add a little flour and mix for another minute.

When the dough looks like this:


wed dough

Place it in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise for 1.5 hours, stretching and folding ever 30 minutes. Next, add the oil to the dough bowl, put the dough in the dough bowl, and mix the dough around to coat it in oil. Place the dough (in its dough bowl) in the refrigerator and let it rise until doubled (should take three or four hours).


pizza dough

There you go! Beautiful pizza dough from a pizza bakin’ baby. Next time I'll teach you how to make brick-oven style pizza at home!

Stay tuned for next week's exciting episode of "Pizza and Dough-Bowl"!
dough pizza