Kevin: Pizza II

This is gonna be quick 'cause I've a got a column to write, but I promised a follow-on to yesterday's pizza dough recipe and some addition tips. So…

Too hard?
Susan (she's A Year in Bread's self-appointed, pointy-haired manager — bless her heart) expressed some concern with the amount of time my dough recipe takes. Two rises and a partial third one seemed a bit long (and possibly intimidating to new bakers) for a pizza supper. She may well be right, but this recipe, to me, really conveys the essential breadiness of pizza dough. It has a very thin, but crackling layer on the bottom, it's thick enough to provide real bread flavor, it's chewy like a good rustic loaf, and the honey offers a light sweetness that again brings out the breadiness but also compliments savory toppings.

And it freezes well — so make a double batch and freeze part of it to make a quick pizza later on.

Too mechanical?
Susan also raised the issue of mixing by hand, which I'd promised to cover. Easy enough:

Kneading Dough

Kneading bread is a serious upper-body workout. You'll burn off your first hot slice of bread slathered with butter before you even bake the bread. The process is the same whether you're doing the entire dough by hand or using a stand mixer and only finishing up by hand (something I highly recommend). Here's how I knead dough, if Beth or Susan has a different approach they'll chime in.

Place the dough on a floured surface, use lots of flour at first if you're doing the entire job by hand or only a little bit of flour if you're finishing a dough made in a stand mixer.

Press the dough flat with the heal of your hand. Fold the dough in half, top-to-bottom, and press again with your palm heals four or five times. Put your whole upper body in it.

Rotate the dough a quarter turn, fold in half, and press again.

Repeat until the dough feels as firm as an athletes' butt and as smooth as a powdered baby's butt. If you're doing the whole thing by hand, this will take 10 to 15 minutes. If you used a stand mixer for most of the kneading you may only do it once or twice or for as long as 5 more minutes.

Combine the honey, warm water, and oil, in another large bowl, stirring to mix. The water should be about 95 to 115° F. It should feel very warm, but not uncomfortably hot. Then whisk in the yeast.

Add 2 cups of flour and mix thoroughly with a mixing spoon. Add another 1/2 cup of flour in 1/4 cup increments. Then turn out onto a well floured counter, board, or pad. And beginning kneading (see the sidebar) Initially the dough will be very sticky and absorb flour quickly — use more as needed — but will require progressively less flour as you knead. Continue kneading for 10 minutes.

Form into a ball by holding the dough in the palms of your hands and squeezing your fingers inward to shape it, forming a seam. Pinch the edges of the seam together.

Spray a large bowl with baking spray, add dough, seam-side down, and lightly mist top of dough with baking spray. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise (ferment) in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in size — 45 minutes to an hour.

Punch the dough down and transfer to a lightly floured board. Knead for about half a minute, then reshape into a ball. Respray bowl lightly, return dough to bowl, spray, recover, and allow to rise again until doubled in bulk — an hour to an hour and a half.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two equal portions. Set 1 aside and cover with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out. Shape the other portion into a round by hand.

Place the rolling pin in the center of the round and push outward. Rotate the dough 1/4 turn and repeat. Continue until dough is about 12 inches across.

Where to Knead

When I baked croissants for a living I worked the dough on a heavy farm table. Using the table killed my back, but was my only option. Before I bought my KA I kneaded bread on a kitchen counter (and still do the last bits there) and it killed my shoulders.

I'm 5'7" and a table (at 30 inches) is too low for me, while a counter (at 36 inches) is too high. I think 33 1/2 inches would be perfect for my height and build. Since having a custom baking work area installed in each of the seven homes I've lived in during the past 12 years would have been either impossible or prohibitively expensive, a KA was an excellent investment.

Nevertheless, I still complete my kneading by hand. Some years ago I purchased a bread board from King Arthur Flour and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, my current kitchen is too small to accommodate it easily. Then I found this large Silpat. It's not as great a surface because it tends to be either too slick or too sticky — often during the same session of kneading. However, it's cheaper than a board, easier to clean up, and rolls up into something that fits in a drawer.

Toppings!
For this first pizza in the series I decided to do a traditional American take: Tomato sauce, cheese, sausage, green pepper, onion, salami, and olives. But it's not quite that simple. After all, if you’re going to the trouble of making your own dough you want to be sure the ingredients are worthy of the dough.

You can find my standard tomato sauce here. It's a rich flavorful sauce and I usually have some in the freezer.

Next I added the four cheeses. I've played around a lot with this to get the right balance and what I arrived at over the years was this for two 10 to 12 inch pizzas:

shredded mozzarella 4 oz | 115 g | 1/2 c | 60 ml
shredded provolone 4 oz | 115g | 1/4 c | 30 ml
shredded sharp cheddar 2 oz | 57 g | 1/4 c | 30 ml
shredded Parmigiano 1.5 oz | 40 g | 1/4 c | 30 ml

Choose a low-fat mozzarella, and an assertive provolone. The cheddar isn't traditional but adds a nice flavor spike. I mix these three cheeses together and sprinkle them over the sauce. Then I add the other toppings and sprinkle the Parmigiano over them because I like the way it looks.

For the other toppings, I used small red and yellow onions that I cut in quarters and then into quarter rounds. I cored the bell pepper, cut half of it into 3/8 inch strips, and then cut each strip in thirds. I like the flavor burst with larger pieces of onion and pepper. The salami was a good one from a deli, and I used my own Italian sausage.

Beth will be posting her pizza dough recipe next Thursday (3/29) and Susan will follow a week later. And for any incipient food photographers out there, we have a Flickr group and would love to see your photos of pizza and other breads as we spend A Year in Bread.

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