It’s a pandemic! We’re all stuck in our houses to keep from getting and spreading the coronavirus. And everyone is cooking like crazy. Here’s a pizza-dough-from-scratch recipe from Smitten Kitchen, who based it on the recipe from Jim Lahey (of No Knead Bread fame). The Smitten Kitchen author spent a lot of time working out how to get the balance of time v yeast so you don’t have to do the gymnastics of figuring out when to start your pizza, plus it’s a smaller recipe. It worked well for me, so I’m sticking with it.
I plan to make a separate post for the stuff on pizza – Smitten Kitchen makes a good point, though, that fresh mozzarella is too watery and will make the pizza soggy.
Pizza Dough
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Loading...Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- active dry yeast - 1/8 or 1/4 or 1/2 t slightly heaped, size depends on rise time of 22 hours, 12 hours or 6 hours
- 1 1/2 t kosher salt
- 1 1/4 c water (more if needed, by the tablespoon)
Instructions
Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. It will be "craggy and rough" - this is normal
Cover the bowl with plastic and leave at room temperature for the length of time above (22, 12 or 6 hours).
About 30 minutes before the dough is ready, start your pizza making ingredients (like, draining a 28 oz can of tomatoes)
Heat the oven as hot as it will go - I used both 500° F and 550° F - with pizza stone in oven. Note: TURN ON THE FAN OR YOUR SMOKE ALARM WILL GO OFF. Just sayin'.
Flour the counter (I use a silicone mat on my counter for this) and scrape the dough onto the floured surface.
Flour the top of the dough and divide into pieces - I used 3, and this was about the perfect size. 4 might even be better for a personal pizza.
Form them into balls. At this point, you can cover them in plastic and put in the fridge or freezer, so I put 2 in the fridge for later. Let it come to room temp before using, like 2-3 hours, covered.
Prepare the baking sheet or pizza stone with corn meal - note, any corn meal and flour not covered by pizza will burn in a 550° F oven. [insert grimace emoji here!]
I looked at a few YouTube videos on how to do this - sort of toss the pizza from one hand onto the back of the other hand/knuckles, and it will stretch out. Do this until it's about as thick as you'd like, then put it on the pizza peel or baking sheet or whatever. I don't have a pizza peel, and using a baking sheet was no substitute so I baked it on the back of the baking sheet. 3 times.
Use fingers to shape the crust the way you want - this took me a couple times to get right - a small rim will bake up to a large crust.
Add fixings and bake 12-15 minutes, keeping an eye on it. When the crust is golden and the top is "blistered" it's ready.
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