Pizza Pizza!

Living in a college town means that there are pizza places EVERYWHERE. Asides from the regular selection of chains pizza places like Dominoes, Papa John's, and Pizza Hut there is a never ending supply of pie on Franklin St. I'm pretty sure pizza is one of the basic food groups. While convenient, delivery pizza is incredibly expensive which inspired me to make my own at home. Attempt number one turned out like this

Attempt #1:

First attempt at homemade pizza

I made my first pizza using store bought dough. The dough was a little sticky but it out, threw on some pizza sauce and topped with green peppers, mushrooms, and pepperoni. Baked at 400 for about 20 minutes or until the cheesy was melted and started bubbling...

Verdict: Not bad if not a bit soggy on the bottom.

The pizza turned out a little thick and chewy and reminded me of sicilian pizza but the bottom was a little soggy and didn't seemed cooked. More like pizza bread than an actual pizza pie. It certainly did the job and cost me less than 10 dollars to make 2 pretty large pizzas. This was by far the quickest and easiest way to make home made pizza as everything could be bought and done in under an hour.

I guess you could say mission accomplished as my stomach was full and my pizza craving was sated, but I wasn't prepared to call myself a pizza chef. The sogginess really bugged me and while I did share with my room mates I don't think it wasn't going to compete with anything from any of the local pizza places. The next step was to make my own dough and modify my baking method. 

Attempt #2:

Second attempt at pizza. At least it's round!

Hey not bad! At least it looks more like a traditional pizza and it tasted more like an actual pizza! What did I do differently? Well that would involve making a dough with the dreaded y word...

Yeast

Working with yeast can be a terrifying thing and something I've always avoided because the darn stuff is alive and really picky. Nothing is scarier than the thought of working with a living organism and having it dying on you only to leave you with a lifeless, inedible lump. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the most time consuming part. The dough.

**Recipe Incoming!**

Pizza Dough

(recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis)

Ingredients

·         1 1/2 cups warm water, 100 to 110 degrees F, plus extra as needed

·         1 (1/4-ounce) packet active dry yeast

·         5 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra as needed

·         1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt

·         Olive oil, for drizzling

Directions 

1. Put the warm water in a small bowl. The temperature is important here! Too hot and you can kill the yeast and too cold and they won't wake up from their dried state. Measuring with a thermometer is a best but with some practice you can get used to the desired temperature range. It should feel lukewarm and not hot. Add the yeast and stir until dissolved. You should end up with a tan colored slurry that smells pretty strongly of yeast.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Add the yeast solution and incorporate until everything pulls together into a soft dough. This step may require some adjustment based on the humidity of your kitchen. If the dough is too dry and doesn't pull together into one big ball you may need to add extra water one tablespoon at a time. If the dough appears too sticky and starts sticking to the sides you'll need to add extra flour (1 tablespoon at a time just like the water). Using this recipe I've always had dough that is too dry and had to add at least one extra tablespoon of water to get a good product.

3. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and get ready for a work out! Flour up your hands and really give that dough a good knead until you feel the consistency change. This is a crucial step in making good dough and good bread because you are forming the gluten! This part takes some practice in learning when you reached that desired consistency and have kneaded the dough enough. The original recipe called for kneading for 10 to 12 minutes but I've found that really great dough takes a good 20 minutes of kneading by hand. Problem is you will get tired of kneading before 20 minutes but trust me, that extra effort really goes a long way. This step can also be done in a mixer with a dough hook but as a young professional living in an apartment I don't yet have my own mixer and I could always use the extra arm work out! 

Note: There is a really cool way to visually tell if your dough has formed enough gluten by doing something called "pulling a window pane". This technique involves taking a piece of dough and stretching it out until it's thin enough that you can see through it. If you have kneaded your dough sufficiently then the gluten will form a matrix and you should be able to see through the dough as if you were looking through a window. More likely than not your dough will tear before you can stretch it far enough and you will need to knead it some more. I really wish I had a picture of this, but bear with me and I will revisit dough making in the future and be sure to document this for you!

4. Coat the inside of a clean bowl with olive oil and toss the freshly kneaded dough in the bowl. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel. Set the bowl in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size. This takes about 2 hours.

5. Once the dough has double in size, deflate the dough using a fist and get out all the extra air. This is such a scary step because it depends on your yeast and whether the little guys were woken up. I've had a couple batches not rise at all because I either killed the yeast or used expired yeast. Be sure you check your expiration dates! 

6. Once you have your deflated dough you can separate it into multiple pieces and you have ready to use pizza dough! Extra pieces can be wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 24 hours.

7. To make actual pizza from your dough, Place a pizza stone on the bottom rack of a cold oven. Then set the temperature to 500 degrees and allow your pizza stone to heat up along with the oven. Never place a cold stone in a preheated oven because this can cause cracking and you'll have to get yourself a new stone.

8. Roll out dough to desired thickness and top with desired sauces and toppings. I personally like pesto pizzas with mushrooms. 

9. Transfer pizza to pizza stone and bake pizza for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and starts bubbling. A pizza peel is crucial here but a spatula can be used in a bind but can be tricky to transfer pizzas with lots of toppings. 

10. Slice pizza into desired slices/wedges/sections and enjoy!

I went ahead and made a couple pizzas to test my home made dough. My first use of homemade dough was a pesto pizza topped with mozzarella and feta cheese. It looked like this prior to baking:

My first pizza using home made dough. Pesto Pizza with feta cheese.

After baking on a pizza stone at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes the finished product looked like this:

Freshly baked pesto pizza from Attempt #2

The results weren't too bad and it definitely looked more like a traditional pizza and tasted much better than my pizza bread experiment from attempt #1. I also had plenty of dough and made another pizza with a red sauce, pepperoni and green peppers. When placed on my pizza stone it looked like this:

My kind of Pepperoni Pizza on a pizza stone.

Another 10 minutes later and we have this:

Almost looks like a Digiorno !

Overall the second attempt was much better than the first and making dough from scratch wasn't as scary as I initially thought it might be. However, I rolled out attempt #2 with a rolling pin and the pizza ended up a little thick. It was a little chewier than I like my pizzas and I was determined to keep getting better. In my mind I had upgraded from pizza bread to frozen pizza and I still wanted to reach pizzeria quality pie! You know what that means...

Attempt #3

My latest attempt at pizza!

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Looks like a pizza, has a noticeable outer crust and has a nice crunch to the crust and I made it all from scratch! 

For this last attempt I tried a couple different things. First I kneaded the dough for a full 20 minutes. I found that when you don't knead dough long enough you get dough that keeps retracting and won't flatten when you try to form the pizza. Sometimes this is a result of gluten seizing and it just needs a rest. If you ever find that your dough won't roll out, cover it and let it rest for 20 minutes and it should relax a little bit. If it doesn't after a good rest then you may have needed some additional kneading. For attempt #3 I made sure I kneaded the heck out of the dough and got a really nice consistency that I can only describe as ideal pizza dough. 

Once I had my dough the right consistency and flattened out into my circle I brushed the top with a little bit of olive oil and topped it with sauce, cheese, olives, and pepperonis. I also brushed the crust with some olive oil to give it a nice sheen. I also baked it at 500 degrees on my pizza stone for 10 minutes and was rewarded with pizza I was proud to claim as my own. I was happy with the look and taste of it and really can't see myself ever ordering expensive delivery again! 

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Whew!

If you've made it this far then you must be either really dedicated to pizza or like me enough to trudge through 3 pizza attempts and my long winded writing! Thanks for sticking with me through my first official recipe blog post. It's still a learning process and I'm trying out some different styles and organization principles for my posts and I will definitely be retooling future posts. I definitely need more pictures so stay on the look out for future updates as I will be sure to take more in progress pictures. My pizza project was really a 2 week process in which I only recorded the finished product and I will be sure to take more pictures for future projects. Thanks for reading and looking for another post soon! 

- Wyt