Home Pizza Done Another Way

I enjoyed the various pizza threads that folks posted a month or two back. I even considered buying a pizza steel - like I need another something in my kitchen stuff collection.

We do home made pizzas every so often and stick to a fairly plain recipe that I'll share with three photos of the finished pizza we had tonight. I had no intention of posting anything today, and then decided I would at least show the final result. This will make one 14 inch pizza.

Our Dough: Start with 2 grams active yeast in a glass bowl. Add 2 teaspoons sugar and a half cup of tepid water. I just run the hot water and get my water from the faucet when it feels right. Stir and let this sit for 15 minutes and then hand mix (wooden spoon) about a cup and a half of AP flour into the yeast mixture. I stop adding flour when the dough is still sticky and a little too wet to work with.

I dump this into a lightly (olive oil) oiled 4 cup pyrex measuring cup and turn it with my wooden spoon to get all sides oiled. This is covered and allowed to rise in a warm place until doubled - about two hours.

To the doubled dough I add two teaspoons of kosher salt, punch it down and turn it out into a floured (1/2 cup AP flour) bowl. I press and turn the dogh ball, picking up a little more flour each time, until I have a fairly dry dough ball. I try not to work the dough much because I don't want to develop the gluten. When all is good, I probably have added another half cup of AP flour.

This is oiled to cover all sides of the dough ball, which is now dry enough to hold and returned to the pyrex measuring cup, covered, moved to the warm place and allowed to double again. Probably an hour.

If I have done everything right, there wil not be much gluten in the dough and it will press out into a thin crust without much trouble.

Sauce:

When I start the dough, I mix a half teaspoon garlic powder, 2 teaspoons of dried oregano and a teaspoon of chopped or chiffanode basil in 3 tablespoons of tomato puree and set it aside. That is my sauce.

Oven:

Place pizza stone in oven and preheat oven to 500 then hold at temp for 20 minutes to heat the stone.

Building the pizza:

I have a large Calphalon pizza pan I like to use. Most of the time I do not cook directly on the stone. I oil the pan lightly and place the dough in the pan after forming the round. Quickly spread the sauce, add 3/4 cup shredded mozarella, pepperoni and a tablespoon or two of parmesan sliced with my potato peeler.

I probably cooked tonight's pizza for 10 minutes after checking it a couple of times, because I don't like burned crust.







Pizza, done a different way.