I found this recipe a few weeks ago and it looked pretty good so I wanted to try it. It turned out to be one of the most complicated recipes I've ever tried. After some tries, I feel pretty comfortable with it now. I'm going to make it a little more digestible for the average reader.
This dough puffs up really nice and turns into a chewy crust. It's different than your typical pizza, but in a good way.
Bakers™ measure their ingredient by weight and not volume so the quantities in this recipe are a little odd as you convert weight to familiar measurements. I'll include the original weight as well if you want to try your hand at baking by weight.
Ingredients:
2 C + 1 Tblsp (250g) All Purpose Flour
1/8 tsp Active Dry Yeast
1/2 tsp (2g) Granulated Sugar
1 1/4 tsp (8g) Salt
3/4 C + 1 Tblsp (185g) Lukewarm Water
Pizza Sauce (recipe here)
Provolone Cheese
Pizza Toppings
Tools:
Mixing Bowl
Bowl Scraper
Parchment Paper
Pizza Stone
Pizza Peel
Directions:
This recipe must be started 24 - 36 hours ahead of time.
1. Mix the dry ingredients. Unlike most yeast bread recipes, you don't activate the yeast in the water before adding to mixture. Just add it to the main bowl with everything else.
2. Add the water.
3. Mix until just combined. The dough will look a bit lumpy at first, but that's fine.
4. Cover and allow the dough to rise at room temperature for 24 hours. I leave the dough in my mixing bowl and cover it with saran wrap.
After 24 hour rise, and 1 hour before eating.
1. Use a bowl scraper if you have one to transfer the dough onto a well-floured surface. Use enough flour to keep the dough from sticking.
2. Dust the top of the dough with flour and separate the dough into 2 even sections. If only making 1 pizza, wrap the 2nd half in saran wrap and refrigerate.
3. Take one half of the dough and begin pulling one end away from the other and folding it back into itself. Add flour as you do this to keep the dough from sticking. Don't worry about adding too much flour.
4. Repeat this motion alternating sides stretching all 4 corners of the dough. Do this to both halves if making 2 pizzas.
5. Fold the corners onto the bottom of the dough to make a clean ball. Set seam side down and let rise for 45 minutes. You may want to place it in a bowl and cover it during the second rise. Always keep rising dough in a room temperature -to- warm place. You can place it near the stove if it's cold out.
6. Prep the oven while the dough rises.
- Make sure the oven rack is on the center rung. It must leave enough clearance that the pizza is well away from the broiler when it rises while baking. Pizza stone should be on the rack before the oven is turned on.
*If you put the stone in after the oven is heated, the temperature shock will break your stone.*
- Pre-heat the oven to 550 degrees. Mine doesn't go this high, but 500 works too because we'll use the broiler.
- Allow the oven to sit for 30 minutes to let the pizza stone heat thoroughly. This is one of those extra steps that isn't entirely necessary, but recommended by the original recipe. If you do it at this point in the process, it will work out correctly so you don't have to wait.
7. Scoop the risen dough onto your well-floured surface keeping the dough in as round a shape as possible.
8. If your dough feels wet, dust more flour on top. Use enough flour so the dough doesn't stick.
9. Use your fingertips to begin pressing the center of the dough into pizza shape. Be careful not to touch the perimeter of the dough. By not touching the outside of the dough, it will puff up beautifully into a crust.
- Continue shaping and stretching the dough by lifting the dough and using gravity. Again, be careful not to touch the perimeter of the dough that will become the crust.
- Use your knuckles to hold the underside of the dough and rotate it, passing hand to hand. This will continue to stretch it into a familiar pizza shape. Keep it moving so the dough doesn't tear. Allow gravity to do most of the work. This part if fun because it feels like a real pizza chef.
- If your dough isn't stretching easily, let it rest for a few minutes to allow it to relax.
13. Keep using flour if your dough is becoming sticky. Flour is a friend in this recipe. Stretch your dough to about 10 -12" diameter.
14. Make sure your pizza peel is well-floured or it will become difficult to transfer to the oven. Alternatively, use parchment paper. I have used the parchment paper method, and the crust does not suffer. It still comes out beautifully. If you do use parchment paper, trim the edges so there isn't any paper sticking out from under the crust. It could catch fire if exposed.
15. The dough should resemble classic pizza with a puffy crust if you took care not to touch the edges.
16. Spread your pizza sauce in the valley of the dough. Quantity is to taste, but don't be excessive.
17. Add cheese and toppings. I put pepperoni on mine and then sprinkle a parmesan blend and oregano on top of everything. You can also spread butter, garlic, and parmesan onto the crust as long as you don't press it at all.
Keep in mind, the longer the dough sits on the peel, the more likely your dough will stick to the pizza peel so move swiftly.
18. Transfer the pizza to the pizza stone. Don't jiggle the pizza too much or the toppings will fall off and start to burn. Be careful with the heat of this pizza. I set off my smoke detectors several times during my first attempt at this recipe. Keep an extra eye on your oven during the whole process, especially after placing the pizza in the oven. Turn your oven light on and monitor the pizza.
19. After placing the pizza in the oven, turn on the broiler. Bake for 6-7 minutes monitoring the pizza closely.
20. The pizza is ready when it looks bubbly and charred on the edges, mostly golden.
Notes: Refrigerated dough should be given 2 hours to come back to room temperature before beginning the stretching. Making the dough 3 days ahead of time is supposedly the sweet spot, but I usually just make mine the night before.
This recipe is not originally mine, but I found the originators post to be a bit....involved. You can read it here. I wanted to share it and cut out some of the more unnecessary instructions because, of course,
these are more like guidelines anyway.