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Old 11-25-2019, 03:09 PM
Pez Pez is offline
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Default Pizza dough

Pizza dough / how I make pizzas at home

Ok, I think my pizza is better than any pizza I have had in this town. If you think differently, I want you to come over and we will make your recipe too. I'm including two formulae here. One has a pre-ferment and takes two days. The other you can start in the morning and finish in the afternoon. a good home-sized pizza weights about 300g when it's dough.

As far as techniques go, my method would probably shock your great great grandfather in Naples (Italy, not Florida). I've NOT been making pizzas every day for 40 years, I'm not super fast at it, and most of mine are not perfectly round. My method lends itself to a community / party atmosphere. People get to make their own pizza and all that needs done is 6 mins in the oven and they are nearly perfect.

I wont take credit for these recipes. The first is from Jeffrey Hamelman, the second is from Ken Forkish. If you make either of these and like them, support these guys by buying their books. Hamelman uses oil, and I like the texture this gives the dough. Forkish does not. It's my opinion that the Hamelman dough is more of a New England style of dough, Forkish's dough is more of a traditional Italian dough. Both are excellent. I slightly prefer the Hamelman, as I think the preferment imparts a level of flavor subtlety that is perhaps lacking in Forkish's also fantastic dough (note too, that Forkish has many pizza dough recipes that have a preferment, I'm just not sharing any here).

Note on flour: there are 3 acceptable types of flour. If you are making pizzas that require this level of effort with Generic Kroger brand flour, you should rethink a few of your priorities. The best flour for pizza is Caputo 00 Chefs flour. You can find this on amazon, it's expensive, but not prohibitively so. The second best flour is King Arthur All Purpose. KA is very serious about their flour and have acheived a very consistent process wherby each bag of KAAP flour has a consistent 11.7% protein content. Gold Medal Flour is also very consistent at 10.5%. (Caputo is 13.5%). I cannot speak for other brands. You might have a great experience with Kroger brand flour, however the experience between this bag of Kroger brand flour and your next bag of Kroger brand flour can the very different.

There's generally two proteins in flour, glutenin and gliadin. Add water to these and they make gluten. The amount of gluten in bread is proportional to it's ability to hold gas bubbles. The yeast eats and produces gas, the gluten strands make it difficult for this gas to escape, bubbles form inside the bread and it makes holes in the bread's crumb. Crumb is all the parts of bread that is not the crust.



Hamelman's Pizza Dough:

Biga (preferment)
102g Caupto 00 Pizza Flour
62g Water at 32 C (I used the metric system here, it's better thats about 90 F)
0.02g yeast. Hamelman cracks me up as he actually says the amount is 0.001 oz. If you have a scale at home that measures ounces out to the thousdandths place, you likely have to rethink some priorities. 0.02g of yeast is as much as you can fit between your thumb and index finger in a single (not greedy) pinch. It's a very small amount of yeast. (Yes I have a metric scale that measures centigrams, I had my own personal priority rethink whereby I decided that pizza is fantastic enough to be a nerd about it.)

1. Add the water to a smallish mixing bowl.
2. Add the pinch of yeast
3. wait 5 mins
4. add flour

Mix this up with a danish whisk, then follow up with your hands. This will look like it's too dry and will feel wrong. Dont sweat it, just focus on getting as much as you can incorporated into the ball. This will take a few mintes of kneading.

Put the biga into a clean bowl (will be easer to get it out tomorrow), cover and put on a high shelf in your kitchen (heat rises).

Do this step in the evening on Saturday, then sunday morning start at 6:00 AM if you want pizza for lunch, 10:00 AM if you want pizza for dinner.

Anyway, it's now Sunday mornining and time to make the final dough.

Final Dough:
289g water @ 32C
414g Flour
8.5g salt
3.7g yeast
24g EVOO
164g Biga you made last night (all of it)

1. Add water to the bowl of your stand mixer or mixing bowl. I use a kitchen aid mixer that is the best I could afford but is not that great of a mixer. When I win the lottery I will own a spiral mixer and then will have the joy of rethinking all my bread recipes.

2. Add the yeast to the water and set a 5 mins timer

3. measure the rest of your ingredients, then wait for the timer to go off

4. Add the flour

5. Add the salt

6. Start mixing on low speed with the dough hook

7. As it's mixing scrape down the sides to make sure it's properly incorporating. Set a timer for 5 mins.

8. once it's well on it's way, start tearing the Biga into pieces, add a piece, wait for it to mix, add another, add another until it's all in there

9. After your five min timer goes off, stop. Take the mixer bowl out and check for flour on the bottom. You may need to use a bowl scraper and get the mass turned over in the bowl. You can also knead a couple times by hand here. Kitchen Aid makes a great mixer that is designed for a wide range of uses. It's great for bread but it's not perfect for bread.

10. Put the bowl back in the mixer and mix on your second speed for 5 mins. My second speed on my mixer is 3. While this is mixing, slowly drizzle in the EVOO at different places in the bowl. One of the problems I have is that the EVOO tends to overly lubricate the sides of the bowl as well as the dough hook. Its possible that the dough hook will just start moving over the dough and will be no loonger mixing it. If this happens, stop and turn the dough ball over in the mixing bowl, then resume. LIke soccer, make note of such stoppage time and make up a figure at the end that is how much additional time needed to assure that you got your dough mixed on second speed for a full 5 mins.

11. Remove the bowl from the mixer and give it a couple hand kneads to help incorporate the stray oil. Proceed to step 12.


Forkish's "Saturday Pizza Dough"

This is meant to be a single day dough, Start in the morning and finish in the evening. This dough is much more gently mixed, and is mixed by hand over a mixer.

350g water at 32C
15g fine sea salt
0.3g yeast
500g caputo 00 Pizza Flour

1. add water to mixing bowl

2. add yeast to water, set 5 mins timer

3. measure flour and salt

4. After 5 min timer, add flour and salt to bowl

5. mix by hand, sittring first, then kneading for 30 seconds to 1 minute.

6. let rest for 20 mins

7. knead again for 30 to 60 seconds

8. proceed to step 12



Steps common to both doughs:


12. Dump the dough into your proofing bin and set a 1 hour timer. I use a an 8 quart lidded cambro square for this.

13. After the 1 hour timer goes off, given the dough an 8 way fold with a wet hand. wet you hand, fold north over south, northeast over southwest, east over west etc until you have folder it 8 times. The sexiest thing here is that the dough will figh you more and more with each point of the compass. This is a muscular dough and will fight you. Sometimes instead of folding, the entire dough ball will come out of the bin. Dont sweat it, just get it folded. Re-cover the bin, high shelf, one hour timer

14. repeat step 13

15. Get your scale and a large bowl. Heavily flour your work surface and dump the douhg in the middle of it. Flour the top of the dough as well. Ue your bench knife to fold the dough on itself all around, then flip it over and over until it's reasonably well floured and you can pick it Up with your hands.

16. Weigh the dough and divide by 3. cut the dough into 3 equal chunks that weigh approx 294g.

17. fold the individual balls onto themselves so each is a coherent mass in the shape of a ball. Get 3 ceral bowls and spray them with canola oil cooking spray (get the bottom and the sides).

18. Drop the dough ball in seam side up and swirl it around a bit, then flip it over so it is seam side down.

19. If you used Hamelman's recipe: Cover, let rest 1.5 hours. If you used Forkish's recipe, cover, let rest 6 (yes, six) hours.

20. Put your pizza stone in the over and preheat to 550.

21. once preheated, flour your work surface again and shape one dough ball into a 10-12 inch pizza.

22. Load this crust onto your peel and slide onto you stone

23. par bake 3 mins, then remove to cooling rack

24. repeat with other two crusts

25. Cover until you are ready to make pizzas.

26. To the par baked crust, add sauce, toppings, cheese

27. baked topped crust for 6 mins, enjoy
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