Musings on Life & Cooking

It started with the classic question that couples worldwide ask each other every day, "What's for dinner?" The question went unanswered in the morning, and lingered throughout the day, as I took stock of the contents of our fridge and pantry. Leftover caramelized onions? Gorgonzola cheese? Potatoes? Fresh rosemary and basil? I knew there was a dish in there somewhere just waiting to jump out at me, but what? Then it hit me, pizza! I hadn't delved into the world of homemade pizza in a while, and last month's Daring Bakers' challenge had reminded me how much I love the smell of yeast and kneading dough. I went straight to my bookshelf and pulled The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook off the shelf, because I remembered having seen a pizza dough recipe in it's chapters, that I didn't have the alloted time for the last time I wanted to make pizza, but for which I had a whole day for now. I didn't feel like halving the recipe for my first attempt, so I made the whole recipe of Dean & DeLuca's Master Pizza Dough recipe, which makes 4 pizzas of about 6-7 inches. This meant we'd be having pizza two nights in a row, never a bad thing if you're a pizza lover like me; but even better I'd solved the "What's for dinner?" question two nights in a row as well!

Now I had only to decide how to top my pizzas. I'd been dying to try a potato pizza since I saw it over on 101 Cookbooks, so a potato pizza was definitely on the menu. Wafer-thin potato slices, fresh rosemary, Maldon sea salt, a sprinkling of red chili flakes and some olive oil. The leftover caramelized onions that had been finished off with a nice splash of balsamic vinegar and were seasoned with fresh thyme would shack up with the nice chunk of Gorgonzola in the fridge, and for the other two pizzas I'd go the traditional route with a tomato sauce, some Italian salami and bufula mozzarella.

Master Pizza Dough Recipe

Source: The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook

This dough recipe can be used for any size or shape of pizza that you wish to make. Our favorite, most manageable pizza for the home is round, approximately 6 to 7 inches in diameter---exactly the size you’re likely to find at pizzerias in Naples. This recipe makes enough dough for 4 such pizzas. When cooked, these round pizzas can be cut into appetizer slices, or each pizza can be served whole as a main course to one diner.

½ cup milk, at room temperature

¾ cup water, almost hot to the touch (about 125ºF/52ºC)

2 tbsp (24g) dry yeast or 1 ½ oz (43g) fresh yeast

2 ²/₃ cups sifted tip 00 flour or cake flour

¹/₃ cup sifted all-purpose flour

¾ tsp fine salt

olive oil for oiling the bowl

Proof the yeast: In a small bowl or coffee cup mix together the milk and water. Sprinkle in the dry yeast, or crumble the fresh yeast in your hand and mix it into the liquid. Stir once, and let sit in a warm place until there is considerable foam on top, about 10 to 20 minutes. (If your mixture doesn’t foam up at least a little, the yeast wasn’t fresh. Buy more and start over.)

    

Mix the yeast with the flour: In a large bowl combine the sifted flours with the slat. Mix well. Spill the foaming yeast mixture into the bowl and, working with a wooden spoon, mix together rapidly. Smooth out as many yeast clumps as possible during this stage. Your dough at this point will be very wet.

Knead the dough: Dust a work surface with flour. Add a little flour, about ¼ cup, to the dough in the mixing bowl. This should enable you to scrape the dough together and place it on the floured surface. Add more flour if necessary. Begin kneading the dough on the work surface with your hands and adding tipo 00 flour or cake flour, ¼ cup at first, less and less as your proceed. While you’re kneading, at first the dough will probably stick to the work surface and your hands. Don’t worry. Keep kneading and adding more flour. But don’t lose patience and add too much. Add slowly. The goal is to create a dough that is just past sticky; in fact, when it’s finished, it should be threatening to stick to the work surface. You may eve want to work with a spatula to remove the dough from the surface if it sticks slightly. All together, kneading time should be about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth, silky and just past stickiness. Do not end up with a very dry, very stable dough. --- It wasn't necessary for me to add the ¼ cup of flour to the dough, in order to remove it from the mixing bowl. I ended up adding about a ½ cup in total, but I think I could have done without any extra flour in dough, as it was never particularly sticky in the first place.

Let the dough rise: Lightly oil the bottom of a large bowl with the olive oil. Form the dough into a ball. Place the dough in the bowl, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Place the bowl in a spot that’s room temperature, neither warm nor cool. In 2 hours or so, the dough should be double in size. --- I chose the wrong sized bowl to let the dough rise in, it was just that little bit too small for the amount of dough, it was rising nicely and then at some point I think it hit the plastic wrap and sank back in on itself, while it's only been on the rise for an hour and twenty minutes. At that point I decided I'd better shape it, but I wasn't really sure if that was the right decision or not.

Shape the pizza: Cut the dough into 4 quarters. Place 1 quarter on a floured surface, pulling it gently into a round as you place it on the surface. Your goal is a round pizza that is 6 to 7 inches (15-18 cm) in diameter, approximately ¼ inch thick, except at the rim where it should be about ³/₈ inch thick. Use one of the following means to achieve this:

• Pull it from the outer edges until the desired shape is reached.

• Working it with your fingertips, push the dough away from the center toward the rim, until the center is ¼ inch thick and the rim has built up to ³/₈ thick. --- This is the method I used.
  

• Do it pizzeria style by placing the dough on your two fists, and revolving it on your fists until it has widened to the desired shape (be careful not to tear the dough at the center).

• Use these techniques in combination.

Do not roll your dough out.

Don’t worry if your pizza isn’t perfectly round; there’s much to be said for rusticity. If your pizza doesn’t have much of a rim, use your fingertips to crimp the dough and build a small one around the circumference; this is called the cornicione. If your pizza dough has a tear in it, transplant a small piece of dough from the remaining dough, smoothing it in. Run a wide spatula under the pizza to make sure you’ll be able to move it easily off of the surface later; add extra flour underneath if it’s sticking.

Repeat the process until all 4 pizzas are shaped.

Preheat oven with pizza stone in it to 525ºF/274ºC.

Let dough rise a second time: Place towels loosely over the pizzas as soon as they’re shaped. Let each pizza rest for at least 10 minutes and up to 60 minutes before cooking. The pizzas should puff very slighty.

When ready to cook, sprinkle a pizza peel with cornmeal. Carefully place the pizza on the paddle. Inside the rim, evenly distribute the sauce and/or toppings on your pizza. Slide pizza on to pizza stone. Bake 6 minutes. (If a softer crust is desired, dab rim with moistened brush after 3 minutes, then cook 3 minutes more.).

The end result was a thin and crispy pizza crust, not the chewy and soft  pizza crust I the Dean & DeLuca cookbook said to expect from the use of tip 00 flour. I  found myself wishing that the crust had a bit more chew, but I think I over handled the dough when shaping the pizzas. Overall, I thought the recipe was quite successful and I'd like to give several more goes before forming a definite opinion on the recipe, one way or another. Like all things practice makes perfect.