I have made homemade pizza forever, but it’s never been great. To me, at least. I’ve used the Pillsbury refrigerated pizza dough, and I’ve made my own non-authentic hybrid spread out thickly in a pan, but I’ve always known I could do better.
I’m also completely done with looking down at a $15 artisanal pizza and thinking, “I can do this.” Mark Bittman says any of us can, you know.
So last year, I got me mah pizza stone and peel and resolved to try.
With little success.
My issue was always the dough. Not surprisingly, since “tomato sauce” and “cheese” do not require highly involved skills. I spent hours (it seems) reading recipes and heated discussions and deeply scientific explanations of The Best Pizza Dough, and I’d always end up confused. Or caught short because, of course, everyone recommends fermenting your dough for days, and as much as I think about cooking and as much as I like to cook, the norm for me, honestly, is to look at the clock at 4 and think, Damn. Really? They want dinner, again?
Same thing happened today, albeit a little earlier, and since pizza had been requested, at about 2:30, I got all brilliant and started researching, “same day pizza dough.”
And guess what?
Best pizza so far.
I finally got the proportions right, and for once, my pizza didn’t stick to the peel and then flop over on the stone, spreading rapidly melting and then bubbling cheese everywhere. It slid off on that sucker, just like it’s supposed to!
And since making pretzels and other kinds of breads, I have finally understood the chemistry of gluten (a bit) and the reason behind a rest period. Even a few seconds makes all the difference between war and peace when it comes to dough. Quite simply, the more you fight it, the more it fights back.
They were small, and I cannot make a round pizza to save my life (yet), but tonight? A great victory in the pizza wars.
3:30 pm.
4:15, before we leave for Mass
6:00, back from Mass.
6:30.
I will say that I have also used this fabulous foccaccia as a pizza, and it works, of course. The kids love it because they love the thick, airy crust. Bread is what they like, basically. But that’s an all-day project, which can’t start four hours before the hunger games begin.
Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza crust is also on the list (I’ve never actually made the bread), but that requires more planning than I usually am capable of, as well.
Oh, and my ice cream maker died on me yesterday. I finished the batch in the freezer, the old-fashioned way – stirring it every thirty minutes to break up the ice crystals – and it was good. But I will definitely take my nice new little unitasker machine when it arrives on Tuesday. Thanks.
Amy, if you own a food processor, I have a great recipe for pizza dough that requires no rising and it’s really good. But I can’t make a round pizza to save my life either!
I’d love to have the recipe, Mila – thanks!
Is it all right to e-mail it to you? I think it’s a little long to post here.
Of course!!! amywelborn60@gmail.com
Amy, The first time I ever tried to make pizza I used a recipe I lifted from Darwin Catholic. http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2008/06/pizza-chez-darwin.html I liked it so much that I’ve never searched any further for a better recipe. I’ve tinkered a bit and I substitute a cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of the bread flour. Oh and I don’t knead by hand anymore. I use my Kitchen Aid. My pizzas have never been very round except that the last few times I made pizza I skipped the tossing and stretching and just rolled it out with my rolling pin. It made a pretty circle and had a nice crisp crust. My kids all think it’s the best pizza ever and even my husband the pizza snob likes it pretty well.
We’ve been making pizza almost every Friday night for the last year or two. Our “light bulb” moment for pizza dough was the post on the Darwin Catholic blog: http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2008/06/pizza-chez-darwin.html
We now have it down to a pattern — the recipe’s memorized, we use the kitchen aid mixer… Funny thing is that it varies a bit week to week — either the humidity is different or we are a little careless with the flour… But it always works. We let it run in the mixer a bit to build the gluten. But even if it rips a little when we stretch it, we can stick it back together.
The one thing we changed that we like a lot is that we don’t use corn mean on the peel. For us it made a mess on the oven door, in the oven, and burned. We form the pizza on the peel on parchment paper then slide the whole thing — on the parchment — directly onto the pizza stone. Then once the bottom crust starts to set, the paper slides right out and the crust crisps up on the stone.
We reuse the paper for several pizzas and even use them again the next week, until the edges start to get too dark.
It’s delicious!
Thanks for the tip on the parchment paper, Elizabeth. I will try that next time. I don’t use corn meal, but flour which is less messy. But still, it doesn’t always work.
Elizabeth, Another Darwin Catholic Pizza fan!
I usually use semolina flour instead of corn meal; but parchment paper sounds much less messy.
Amy–tip I recently tried with success Fleishchmann’s makes a “Pizza Crust Yeast” that results in a dough that does not pull back nearly as strongly as regular dough when you are spreading it out. Thinner, crisper crust, crunchy and airy. Same price, too.
Here’s a great pizza dough recipe: 3 C flour (I use bread flour) , 1 tsp salt. Add this to 1 1/3 C warm water to which yeast has already been added adn allowed to sit a few minutes. I do the whole thing in a mixing bowl with dough hooks. Add more flour as needed to make a soft, slightly stick dough. Place in a large bowl with a little olive oil in the bottom. Turn dough a few times to lightly coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap. Let rise about an hour. Roll out on corn meal. I use the super coarse red mill kind but any kind works. This dough can be rolled super thin or patted out to make a thicker crust. Buon appetito!