Beth: Pizza crust 2

Just a quick note to talk about the 'wetness' of my crust. I've talked with a few folks about their experience and have come to a couple of conclusions.

First, I underestimated you all and I apologize for that. I had this really wet dough and thought I'd adjust it a bit for sane people. So I reduced the water from 1 3/4 cups to 1 1/2, tweaked the rest a bit and published it.

What a fool I am.

You all clearly are not sane! Anyone who doubts that can go read the comment thread on my first pizza post, down towards the end where the subject turns to pickles on pizza and sandwiches. Grilled pineapple sandwiches. That was just the beginning.

Also, I know my dough is wetter than what people describe, even with the decreased amount of water. I made several batches and it was pretty darned wet. Then I was talking to one of our breadies and it dawned on me.
I live in a fog valley at the edge of a rain forest.

Seriously, we get 120 inches of rain a year here in evenTinierTown. That's ten feet. Ten feet!

Why would this matter? Well, flour is absorbent and my air is wet. I'm guessing that this means my flour, thus my dough, is just wetter than most people's, even given the same measurements.

So for those of you who live in a drier climate - meaning everyone except Ariel the mermaid - feel free to add a bit of extra water (1/4 cup | 2 ounces | 56 grams) to get that fog valley effect. You may want to add a smidge of extra salt or swap olive oil instead of some of the additional water.

Then again, you may want pickles on your pizza...can't help you with that.

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Beth: Pizza Dough

Anyone who has been reading my writing for long probably knows that, while I think recipes have their place, I tend towards a somewhat improvisational approach to much of my cooking, including bread. After three decades, I possess a certain confidence when it comes to judging dough by feel. While this makes it simple for me to adjust, or even create, recipes on the fly, it means I am starting from a disadvantage here since I haven't written a lot of recipes down.

When I realized this had to change, I started by writing up what I knew of my pizza dough off the top of my head:

"Measure" 3/4 cup of water into bowl, pour about ~1/2 tsp yeast in my palm to measure it, toss that into water, stir. Add a couple of scoops of flour (~1 1/2 cups) and mix. Add more flour a little at a time until it feels right.Let it rest for a few minutes. Drizzle in some olive oil and sprinkle on some salt. Then knead it for a couple of minutes adding enough flour to make a very soft dough. Walk away again for a few minutes, come back and knead a few more minutes. Fridge. Bake.

Not very useful, is it?

My next thought was to reverse engineer some directions for what I normally do by feel. I made a few batches of crust, weighing as I went along and came up with something that resembled a pizza crust. Then I read Kevin's recipe and started wondering about what I'd come up with.

Dough: rest and motion

How would you like a simple technique that gives you better bread with less work?

Here it is: Step away from the dough.

Not forever mind you, just for a bit. After mixing the dough, but before kneading it, put your feet up and have a cup of tea. Come back in half an hour. (I know it has been long enough when my arms feel rested enough to knead the dough.)

This resting period, called an autolyse (aut-oh-lees), gives the flour time to fully hydrate. During this time, glutenin and gliadin - the two proteins in flour that combine to form gluten molecules—bond. Kneading time is reduced substantially because the flour is fully hydrated before you start, and gluten bonding has already begun. Kneading flour also causes oxidation, resulting in bleaching, along with loss of beta-carotene and a bit of flavor, so this improves the flavor of your bread as well.

Salt, which inhibits hydration and gluten development is often left out until after an autolyse, as is any old dough. These ingredients are incorporated while kneading the dough after the autolyse.

Less work for better bread—this is truly a transformative addition to any bread baker's bag of tricks. Some might call it magical.

See, my dough is wet. Not just a little wet, really wet.

To grab an example, Kevin's pizza crust uses ~10 oz of liquid to ~18 oz of flour, whereas I use 13 oz of liquid to roughly the same amount of flour. Like I said, it's wet.

Don't let that scare you away, though. While this dough is a bit sloppy to work with and requires a bit of faith the first time you bake it, it's not as slack as the infamous no-knead bread everyone—maybe even you—is baking. Because this dough is so wet, it is more extensible (stretchy) and tolerant (resistant to breaking down) than a lot of other recipes. Better yet, and a critical payoff to this approach, is that it is incredibly tolerant of delay, which you can plan to fit your schedule.

This dough also employs cold fermentation, which is when a bit of magic happens. During the first fermentation of any bread dough, enzymes are broken out of the flour, releasing sugars and flavor. Normally, with bread rising at room temperature or warmer, these sugars are gobbled up by the yeast so you only get a hint of those flavors in the resulting bread.

Not so with this technique. Cold dough means the yeast is sleeping (shhhhh) and can't eat a darned thing! All those lovely sugars that give bread its flavor and beautiful caramelized crust. are yours to enjoy when the bread is baked. Keeping the dough cold also makes it a bit easier to work with, as I wrote about while experimenting with the very wet no-knead bread. (and it even rises slowly, as you can see from this picture of dough that was refrigerated for about 36 hours)

I usually make this dough the night before I want to bake it. It takes about 10-15 minutes (spread out over an hour or two) after which the dough is refrigerated until shortly before baking. The dough needs at least half a dozen hours to ferment after mixing, and can tolerate up to 3 days before baking. Unused dough freezes well too, (see my notes on freezing at the end of this article)

Finishing the pizza takes an hour or so from when you hit the front door after work. This is mostly determined by the time it takes to heat your pizza stone. If you freeze your crust as I describe below, you can even defrost a frozen crust in that same hour. That makes this a great crust for people who are juggling work, kids, blogging, and a social life.

kitchenMage's Overnight Pizza Crust
ice water 1 1/2 c | 355 ml | 12 oz | 340 g
bread flour 4 c | 0.95 l | 18 oz | 500 g
instant yeast 1 tsp | 11 ml | 1/8 oz | 3+ g
olive oil 2 tablespoons | 30 ml | 1 oz | 28 g
salt 1 tsp | 5 ml | 1/4 oz | 8 g

(These directions are for mixing by wand, err, I mean hand. Parenthetical directions are for those of you who are using a stand mixer.)

Mixing the dough

Important: Water temperature matters—the colder, the better. About 15 minutes before starting, combine 1 1/2 cups of water and add a handful of ice cubes. By the time you are ready for it, there will be very cold ice water waiting. Remember to remove any remaining ice before measuring. If you have room in the freezer, you can put the measured flour in it to chill for that same 15 minutes.

In mixing bowl, stir flour and yeast together just to distribute yeast. Add ice water and mix to combine into wet dough, about 1 minute. (mixer: use paddle attachment on low for 30-60 seconds) It will look like sort of like thick, lumpy pancake batter. Cover and stick back in refrigerator for 10 minutes.

Remove from refrigerator, drizzle oil on one corner of dough, drop salt on top of the oil, and stir to combine. Turn dough out on well-floured counter and knead for a couple of minutes. (You can add more flour if you need, or want a substantially thicker crust—I do at times—but this is better with less so give it a shot.) Place dough in clean bowl, cover and return to refrigerator for at least 5-6 hours, preferably overnight. (The dough can stay refrigerated for up to 3 days.)

Baking the pizza

When you get home from work, turn on the oven as high as it goes to get the stone really hot. Make sure the stone is in the oven (or is that just me who forgets?) It takes about an hour to thoroughly heat the stone. Fortunately, this is about the same amount of time it takes to finish preparing the crust, toppings and assembling the pizza—even allowing for interruptions from the small people. You can even toss a salad together.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and turn out on floured counter. Divide dough in half (or thirds for smaller pizzas) and refrigerate the portion you will not be using.

With well-floured hands, shape each portion of dough into a flat disc as large as possible without tearing the dough. When the dough starts to shrink back immediately after stretching, let it rest on counter for five minutes before continuing with shaping it.

With a bit of tweaking, this is a fairly versatile crust. If you like cracker-thin pizza, use less dough and stretch it thinner. (Amusingly enough, this is one of the few doughs I make that I can get a good windowpane from.) For thicker, breadier pizza, use a little more dough and stretch it less. (If you like your crust even thicker, go ahead an use more flour, starting with an extra 1/4 cup.)

When the crust is about the right size, place it on a parchment sheet, cover and let rise until you are ready to top it. If you turned on the oven when you took the dough out of the refrigerator, this should be another 30-45 minutes. It will not rise substantially, but it should warm to room temp and poof just a bit in spots.

In honor of theKid, my toppings for this pizza are Canadian bacon and pineapple. She usually adds black olives but I was out. Oh well. I'd say a 12" inch pizza takes 6 ounces of Canadian bacon, 2/3 of a can of pineapple, and a handful of olives. (feed the rest of the pineapple and olives to the kids who are helping you make it)

My standard marinara, which I make in my largest stockpot using cans of crushed tomatoes and herbs from the garden, goes on first. (Sorry there's no recipe for this, but Kevin's tomato sauce looks like it would work just fine if you need one.) Next, I put on the pineapple and olives so they will be underneath the meat and cheese. Half the cheese is next. If I have parmesan, I might grate some over the pizza at this point. Otherwise, I am a mozzarella purist. Following the first part of the cheese is the meat. By leaving the meat partially exposed amongst the cheese, you promote browning on the edges, which is both pretty and flavorful. Finish off with more mozzarella.

(Kevin and I are going to have a throwdown one day about the relative unholiness of each other's pizza toppings. He has been known to snark about pineapple, while I simply can't fathom cheddar cheese on pizza!)

Carefully slide pizza (still on parchment) onto the hot stone. Bake at 500-550 degrees (hotter if your oven does it) for 3-4 minutes then check to see if the pizza needs rotating for even baking. Continue baking until cheese is melted and bottom of crust is brown and of desired crispiness, usually another 4-5 minutes, depending on how carried away you got with the toppings.

Freezing dough

This dough freezes nicely, although I don't know what is up with forming them into little balls first. I shape dough into 5 inch disks so they thaw quickly, leaving you with just a bit of stretching before your crust is ready to top and bake.

When I am in a hurry to thaw a crust, I take advantage of the preheating oven to kick-start my dough by placing a wooden rack over the burner where the heat vents, and putting the peel with the crust on it on top. Once the peel is warmed a bit (about 10-15 minutes), you can move it to a counter to finish it's mini-rise while the oven finishes heating.

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(my apologies for the wonky image formatting, i don't usually use Blogger and Kevin has this spiffy custom template and I am confused! with any luck, Kevin will come along and fix it before I wake up...and this will all have been a dream...)

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Kevin: Pizza Dough

Settle down folks, settle down. I've never seen so many eager pizza bakers in my life — and my first job was at a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor.

This is real world baking so let's get straight to my screw-up. I planned on making my pizza Tuesday evening, but first I got distracted tweaking this blog's template for the Wednesday launch, and, when I finally got around to making the dough my house was cooler than it should have been (probably around 65F).

In general, this is fine, the dough rises more slowly than it would if the temperature were 72 - 75F, but the slower fermentation (rise) simply imparts greater flavor to the dough. In fact, we'll get into deliberately "retarding" the dough in future recipes (Beth is particularly fond of retarded dough). However, I'd planned on having pizza for supper that night.

Again, no problem. Place the dough in the oven and turn on the oven light. The oven light is typically a 40 watt bulb and generates enough heat in the enclosed oven to promote a fairly quick rise — at least in most ovens, but not in mine, apparently. I've only been here a year and hadn't had a reason until Tuesday to speed up fermentation. Another option is to put a 40 watt bulb in a standard socket attached to an electrical cord and plug into the oven — but I couldn't find mine (not having needed it since moving in here).

At 7:00 pm the first rise wasn't complete and the dough needed another rise before making the pizza. I ate leftovers for supper, and at 8:30 when the dough had finally doubled in size, I punched it down, briefly kneaded it again (to distribute the gluten and eliminate large bubbles), and stuck it in the refrigerator.

Yesterday afternoon at 1:00 I pulled the dough out of the refrigerator and left it sitting on the counter. The dough had, as I expected, risen slightly in the fridge —

Using a Pizza Stone

A pizza stone serves as a heat bank. It's slow to warm up, holds a lot of heat, and is slow to cool down. It's the business of storing a lot of heat that makes a stone so great for pizza and hand-formed loaves of bread. The bottom of the pizza (or bread) gets a huge blast of initial heat and yet, unlike a pan, the stone isn't cooled significantly by the much cooler dough so the heat keeps on cooking. However, you should give the stone at least an hour to heat up fully before baking on it.

A stone is one of the best investments a baker can make — and far cheaper than a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

before the yeast slowed down in the cold — but not much. Three hours later (at 4:00) the dough and bowl were at room temperature (about 70F, yesterday) and the dough was again rising. By 6:00 it had again doubled in size and was ready to make pizza with.

So, lessons? Making yeast bread of any sort requires patience. Bread is a living, breathing, breeding thing and although you can speed it up (with heat) and slow it down (with cold) it takes time for it to react to the new environment. If you want bread ready at a specific time then you need to plan and control all the factors — this is what I failed to do. You also need to know your options. In this case I didn't know my oven light wouldn't have much effect. I need to find that socket with a plug and know where it is the next time this situation occurs. Knowing what to do is half the battle, but the other half is being able to do it.

I did get my pizza made. The dough has a nicely sweet lilt that accentuates the other ingredients and is wonderfully chewy, but with a nice crack in the base. I ate too much.

Pizza Dough
Adapted from a recipe by Mitch Mandell of Fabulous Foods.

bread flour 3 1/2 c | 0.8 l | 18 oz | 500 g
warm water (between 95 and 115 F/35 and 46C) 1 c | 240 ml | 8.5 oz | 240 g
instant yeast 2 1/4 tsp (1 US pkg) | 11 ml | 1/4 oz | 8 g
honey 2 tbsp | 30 ml | 1 1/4 oz | 36 g
olive oil 1/4 c | 60 ml | 1 1/2 oz | 48 g
salt 1/2 tsp | 8 ml | 1/8 oz | 4 g

Combine the honey, warm water, and oil, stirring to mix. The water should be about 95 to 115° F. It should feel very warm, but not uncomfortably hot.

Put the 3 cups of flour and yeast in the bowl and, using the paddle attachment, mix on low for about 20 seconds. Add the salt and mix on low for another 20 seconds. Note: salt is poisonous to yeast, so you want the yeast well-distributed before adding the salt.

With the motor running on low, pour in the liquids. Continue mixing until a shaggy dough begins to form. Clean off paddle and switch to dough hook. Continue mixing on low until the dough comes together.

Increase speed to medium and knead for eight minutes. The dough should completely clear the sides and bottom within 2 minutes if it is too sticky, add additional flour 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing in thoroughly before determining if more flour is needed. If the dough seems too dry, spritz with water from a spray bottle a couple of times, mixing in thoroughly before determining if more water is needed. continue kneading for 6 minutes. You'll find the dough wraps itself around the hook, so every 2 minutes, stop the machine, scrape the dough off the hook, and then continue kneading.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it a few more times by hand to be sure it's tight and elastic. Form the dough into a tight ball.

Wash and dry your mixing bowl then mist it with oil. Place the dough, seam-side down, in the bowl 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.

Heat the oven to 450F (230C).

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. Alternatively, you can stretch the dough by hand, which I do. The dough is quite elastic and will want to shrink, so don't rush it. Pause every now and then while shaping (whether by hand or with a rolling pen) to allow the dough to relax.

Coat with sauce, cheese, and toppings. Then, ideally, let the pizzas stand, covered with plastic wrap, for about 30 minutes before baking. This delay highlights the bready character of the dough. Before baking, use a knife to poke holes in any noticable bubbles.

Check back tomorrow for my recipes for sauce and cheese as well as some additional tips.

Updated at 11:12am EST.

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