Looking to Get Back Into Pizza Making

I got on a pizza kick a few years ago. Was just saying yesterday that I’m ready to go again. Gonna try pizza steel on Weber Genesis, with the steel elevated on fire bricks. Too hot for cranking the oven indoors.

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What’s your dough recipe?

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I use Peter Reinhart's recipe and double it in my 5 qt stand mixer:

Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough

"This is the dough for making New Haven–style pizzas and pizzas in the style of Lombardi’s, Totonno’s, John’s, Grimaldi’s, and Tacconelli’s. It makes a thin, crisp crust with airy pockets in the crown. It’s a little sticky and a touch tricky to handle, but the payoff is in the snap when you take that first bite. This dough stays crisp better than Napoletana dough, which softens under the toppings. Neo-Neapolitan dough requires high-gluten flour (about 14 percent protein), or strong bread flour if you cannot get high-gluten, rather than the all-purpose flour used in Napoletana."

5 cups (22 ½ ounces) unbleached high-gluten or bread flour
1 Tbs sugar or honey
2 tsp table salt or 3 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
1 tsp instant yeast
2 Tbs olive or vegetable oil or solid vegetable shortening
1 ¾ cups plus 1 tablespoon room-temperature water (70°F)

Procedure Using a Mixer

1. With a large metal spoon, stir together all the ingredients in a 4-quart bowl or the bowl of an electric stand mixer until combined. If mixing with an electric mixer, fit it with the dough hook and mix on low speed for about 4 minutes, or until all the flour gathers to form a coarse ball. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then mix again on medium-low speed for an additional 2 minutes, or until the dough clears the sides of the bowl and sticks just a little to the bottom. If the dough is too soft and sticky to hold its shape, mix in more flour by the tablespoonful; if it is too stiff or dry, mix in more water by the tablespoonful. The dough should pass the windowpane test.

Procedure By Hand

1. If mixing by hand, repeatedly dip one of your hands or the spoon into room-temperature water and use it much like a dough hook, working the dough vigorously into a coarse ball as you rotate the bowl with your other hand. As all the flour is incorporated into the ball, about 4 minutes, the dough will begin to strengthen; when this occurs, let the dough rest for 5 minutes and then resume mixing for an additional 2 to 3 minutes, or until the dough is slightly sticky, soft, and supple. If the dough is too soft and sticky to hold its shape, mix in more flour by the tablespoonful; if it is too stiff or dry, mix in more water by the tablespoonful. The dough should pass the windowpane test.

2. Immediately divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. Round each piece into a ball and brush or rub each ball with olive or vegetable oil. Place each ball inside its own zippered freezer bag. Let the balls sit at room temperature for 15 minutes, then put them in the refrigerator overnight or freeze any pieces you will not be using the next day. (Or, if you are making the pizzas on the same day, let the dough balls sit in the bags at room temperature for 1 hour, remove them from the bags, punch them down, reshape them into balls, return them to the bags, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.)

3. The next day (or later the same day if refrigerated for only 2 hours), remove the balls from the refrigerator 2 hours before you plan to roll them out to take off the chill and to relax the gluten. At this point, you can hold any balls you don’t want to use right away in the refrigerator for another day, or you can freeze them for up to 3 months.

Yield: Makes four 10-ounce dough balls

Author: Peter Reinhart
Source: American Pie

BTW, I got a good deal on the flour. It only costs about $50 including shipping from Honeyville.

I have found the book Elements of Pizza to be a very good pizza recipe books.

The author gives recipes for several different pizza dough styles.

Also, a 50 lb sack of flour fits into 2 Cambro 22 quart tubs. Definitely get it out of the sack and into lidded airtight storage. Even better if you can put it in the freezer, unless you’re blowing through it quickly. Flour mites will show up crazy fast in warm weather.

I get on a pizza jag every few months, but I try to confine it to cooler weather, or when I’ve got the oven already heated for bread. Sheet steel plus broiler is the only way I do them now.....since my mud oven returned to being just mud, LOL.

But I might get a wild hair and buy one of these at some point: LINK

Yes to Forkish’s Elements of Pizza, plus:
Tony Gemignani’s The Pizza Bible (great info on various regional pizza styles)
Lahey’s My Pizza (source of the broiler plus stone method)
Lagsdin’s Baking with Steel, if you have a steel sheet

Yep! I would've suggested Koerner's too.
Restaurant Depot has OO flour too. You should check them out for your pans and other supplies. BTW, Koerner sells that stuff too.

And if you want pizza boxes RD has those too!
I'd like a large with extra cheese and pepperoni please!

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Rat what type of oven are you using for this pizza?

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It's just a standard electric oven, but I have an oven insert, which is like a pizza stone on steroids. It's called a HearthKit, but the company went out of business and they're getting hard to find now. For a while, you could get new ones on Ebay.



My mixer is a commercial Hobart 5 quart mixer that I got at a garage sale for $30.

I don't get too fancy with my pizzas. I'm looking to get back into it because Papa Johns, Dominos and even the local places are getting crappy and expensive.

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pizzamaking.com

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Terrific site.