8 September 2020
Welcome friends. I hope that you are doing well during this pandemic. I don't know about you, but when this first started, I thought that I would stay home for a couple of months and it would blow over. Fast forward and it is the end of summer, but the pandemic continues. It has made things that were easy, much more complicated. I'm sure the complexity is exponential if you have children. I missed out on the farmer's markets and all the fresh produce this spring and summer. I've been living on gnocchi with baby spinach and walnut pesto, roasted chicken with fennel, and salad nicoise.
But the end of summer brings tomatoes, and I love the heirloom tomatoes that show up. I love them in salads and on pizzas, and it starts my late summer romance with pizza. Some days are too hot to have the oven on, and I find myself checking the weather forecast to see when I can make a pizza. I have three or four dough recipes, but this is my favorite. It is easy and quick to make. The dough has a nice, stretchy, texture and it is fun to work with.
I have a stand mixer with a dough hook and I use it to make this. It really speeds things up. If I was making this just by hand it would take twice as long.
I may not be the best person to give advice about toppings. I tend to use mostly vegetables and keep the pizza light. I will do another post that gives a few suggestions about toppings. I will also talk about shaping the pizza there. I like the pizza crust when it is stretched by hand.
Pizza Dough
35 min. proof time | 20 min. prep time | 2 hr chill time | 20 min. bake time
Ingredients
makes 3, 8-inch crusts
- for the dough
- 1/2 cup lukewarm water
- 1 tsp yeast
- 3 Tbl plus 1 Tbl all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup cold water
- 2 Tbl olive oil
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- about 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
Directions
combine the water, yeast, and flour in the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk them together until smooth. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour over the top and cover the bowl with a towel. Let this set for 30 minutes.
remove the towel and check the starter. If the top of the mixture is kind of bubbly or your mixture looks kind of foamy or your mixture looks spongey, proceed to the next step. If it doesn't look different from when you started, the yeast is not alive and you need to start over with new yeast.
add the ingredients from the cold water through the sea salt. Use a whisk to blend the mixture together.
place the bowl into the stand mixer and attach the dough hook attachment. I like to keep track of how much flour I add. I measure out the remaining flour into a bowl and add from there so that I don't add too much flour. Add 3/4 cup of all purpose flour and kneed on a low speed until all of the ingredients come together and the dough sticks to the hook. Turn the mixer off and scrape the dough off of the hook with a rubber spatula.
add 1/4 cup of flour to the dough. Kneed at low speed until the flour is incorporated into the dough. The dough may fall apart and then come back together. It will stick to the dough hook after this happens. Turn the mixer off and scrape the dough off of the hook with a rubber spatula.
add 1/4 cup of flour to the dough and repeat the process.
pinch the dough with your fingers. If the dough is kind of sticky and holds its shape, it is ready for the next step. If the dough is extremely sticky and doesn't hold its shape, add 1/4 cup of flour to the dough and repeat the process. I stop when I have added all of the measured flour regardless of how sticky the dough is.
place the dough on a lightly floured surface and kneed it using the heal of your palm until it is smooth and springy. Sprinkle more flour over the dough as needed. This will take about 5 minutes.
divide the dough into 3 pieces using a pastry cutter. I have a plastic container that I use to store my dough in the refrigerator, but a 9 by 13 inch pan will work. Dust the bottom with pastry flour or semolina flour. Kneed each piece a few times and flatten them into pucks before placing them into the dish. Cover the dish with a lid or plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours or up to 5 days. The dough can also be frozen at this point for up to 1 month.
place an oven rack at the lowest position. Place a pizza stone or baking sheet on the rack and preheat the oven to 425 °F.
shape the dough into an 8 inch round and place the round on parchment paper. Add your toppings. Slide this onto the sheet or stone. I like to use fresh vegetables and they have liquid in them. I bake the pizza for 12 minutes and this gives some of the liquid a chance to evaporate. I pull the pizza out of the oven and add toppings like pesto and cheese. Then I return the pizza to the oven and bake it for 8 minutes.