Thanks for the kind comments, folks - pizza is definitely a work in progress for us, and we continually try to improve. We'll get there one of these days.
Great looking pizza pz!!
Would you mind sharing the recipe for that crust, temps, etc. ... Thanks
My pleasure - my sweetie does all the dough in our family, and she says it is easy (for her, I think). Many pizza purists will talk about measuring by weight rather than volume as the only way to achieve good dough. For example, I recently saw a recipe in which flour was measured to 5 significant figures (843.79 grams), but to my inexperienced eye, that is a bit too extreme. Other pizza people talk about the "feel" of the dough as the hallmark - my wife is among the latter.
Ingredients- 2 heaping cups of flour - we use Conagra Harvest bread flour that we get in the 50 pound bag at Costco, so it is really cheap to experiment
- 1 tsp yeast (plain generic yeast we also get at Costco)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar (optional)
- 1/2 tsp olive oil (optional)
- Approximately 1 cup of water, more or less
MethodLoad all ingredients except water in your mixer of choice, start blending on slow, and begin adding water slowly until a ball of dough forms. If the dough starts sticking to the sides of the bowl, add flour in small pinches until the dough pulls away from the sides and bottom of the bowl - my sweetie assures me that anyone can get the "right feel" by adding more water if too dry, or more flour if too wet. The key is that the dough needs to pull away from the bowl.
Here's what my wife means by heaping cups, and how she adds water:
Cover and prove the dough. If we plan a room temperature or slightly warmer prove, up to 12 hours or so (we can start the dough in the morning and can use it when we come home from work). If you prove in the fridge, we've heard up to 96 hours or so is okay - we've not tried it that long yet. My wife made dough this morning and we're going to let it go 24 hours on the kitchen counter as an experiment. She also added the sugar which she usually doesn't.
With pizza stone in the oven, preheat the oven to 450F, and let the stone heat for 10 additional minutes at that temperature. If you don't have a stone, a cookie sheet will work fine.
While the oven is heating, divide the dough into 4 equal portions (each makes a 10-12-inch pizza), and roll one out as thin as you like your crust
Transfer the rolled dough to a pizza peel (generously sprinkled with flour or corn meal, whichever you like better to decrease the friction between dough and peel
Add 1 tsp of oil to the dough, and spread to a thin film by hand or bristle brush. Add coarse salt if you want a tasty surprise when you take your first bite
Once the oven is to temperature, transfer the dough to the hot stone, and bake for approximately 3-5 minutes - watch it after 3 minutes and take it out when you like the color of the brown spots
Take the entire stone with crust out of the oven, and turn the crust over so the oiled/salted surface is now in direct contact with the stone and start layering your ingredients. We like to put any ingredient that is likely to dry our or burn on first and then cover with cheese
Put the completed pizza into the 450F oven and set the timer for 3 minutes, and then begin watching every minute or so. Remove when you like the color, the cheese bubbles, of the crust browns - basically remove it when you like how it looks.
Some use a pizza cutter (blade in disc form), but I like to use a 12-inch chef knife which is the perfect length for these small pizzas. You won't believe the crispy cracker-like sound as the blade slices through the pizza.
We usually bake 4 pizzas, and that gives 2 on the first day, and 2 on the second day. By the morning of the second day the crust has softened due to the damp ingredients, but a quick reheat in a 450F oven for 5 minutes makes the crust all better again.
Here's the leftover pizza from yesterday, topped with a poached egg