Pizza night! Around our house, pizza is always a unifying dish to make. Everybody gets to fix their own toppings, grate their own cheeses, sometimes even make their own dough (although we usually opt for one big single-source batch of dough, this is not a rule, but more of a guideline!). Tonight we had very thin crust pesto pizza, thin crust salad pizza with handfuls of roughly chopped baby arugula and baby spinach, and a more traditional meat za, with lots of fresh Italian sausage, salami, mushrooms, sweet peppers, and other such fare. The only trick I know for pizza is this - get your oven as hot as it can possibly go. Those recipes that tell you to cook your pizza at, oh, 425F or even 450F are - to my way of seeing it - nonsense. You will never get the beautiful char youre looking for on the crust at those temps. Im lucky to have accidentally purchased a stove whose highest setting is 550F. If I leave it to come to that temperature, and let it *stay* at that temperature for about 30 minutes before using it, the oven just stays much hotter as I open it to pop pizzas in and out. Standard dough for 2 medium crust 14 pies makes about 3 14 pies if youre using very thin crustal technique! I will not presume to tell you about cheese or ingredients, those are entirely a matter of preference, but the extremely hot oven is not! Pizza dough for 2-3 appx. 14 pies 3-1/2 - 4 C. bread flour. Many recipes will tell you to use bread flour for a crisper crust and - theyre right! Bread flour is a little bit coarser in grind and has a higher gluten content than all purpose - this gives your crust a little more zing and crispiness (crispnissity?). Anyhow - bread flour will make your crust crisp on the outside, will char beautifully, and will retain a delightful chewiness. If you want to go all out, you can source some Caputo Tipo 00 flour - a super fine grind of flour with high gluten, designed specifically for making awesome pizza crusts. Amazon has it, as do baking and restaurant supply stores. 1-1/2 C. warm water. I have seen near-religious levels of argument about what exact temperature the water should be. My take - after trying several - is that around 110 works great, but 105 isnt bad, and 112 isnt bad and - really, anything over about 100 and under about 115 is just fine. 1/4 oz. yeast (not instant yeast, just one packet or 1/4 oz. from a container) 1 tsp. sugar 2 tsp. Kosher salt 2 T. good quality olive oil Proof the yeast in 110 degree water!! When its all frothy (about 10 minutes), add the salt, mix well, and add the flour (Im going for a quick crust here, not a lengthy overnight crust, which is also good but - lengthy and overnight!). I use a wooden spoon, you can use whatever you like to mix your dough, including those nifty KitchenAide machines which I so long for. Mix in the bowl until the flour comes together in a rough ball, then turn out onto a floured work surface and knead it vigorously for a few minutes until youre happy with its texture, which should be smooth and reasonably silky. Coat a large bowl with the olive oil, plop the ball of dough into it and turn it around a few times to coat the surface with oil. This helps keep the dough from drying out and maintains its pliability. Also tastes good! Cover the bowl with a cloth. Here is where many recipes will say cover with a clean cloth. Seriously. I mean, I was thinking of covering my freshly made pizza dough with the cloth I use to swab the floors, but OK, if you say so - a clean cloth it is. Set the clean-cloth-covered bowl in a warmish place (you can put it inside your oven, close the door and turn the oven light on, for example) for about 30 minutes or until the dough has doubled in bulk. Remove the dough, punch it down a bit, cut the big blob of dough in half to make two smaller blobs and roll or stretch (or toss if you have those sublime skills) until it is not more than 1/4 thick for thin crust, or, for a medium-thin crust, not more than about 3/8 thick. You can roll it out even a little thinner for a super thin crust, but it can be very difficult to stretch out properly and handle, esp. when using bread flour with its higher gluten content. The rest is up to you! Your favorite pizza sauce, red or white or pesto or - none! Your favorite toppings - be experimental - many of the beautiful fruits - pears, plums, peaches - now in season go beautifully on pizza, as do large handfuls of fresh greens like arugula and lettuce. Cheeses if desired, or a little white sauce - I like fresh mozzarella - I just like the way it tastes, its texture and the way it melts and browns, but there are lots of great cheeses to use. I think one of the reasons pizza has gained such primacy in our food consciousness is that its an incredibly easy food to make that allows you to be as inventive as you like in preparation. There are probably other reasons. Enjoy!
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 04:51:52 +0000
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