This is my current method for Real Pizza at home. It sums up the last 8 or so years of experimenting with different recipes, styles and technique. I owe what I call the “big breakthrough” to consistent old world style crust to Jeff Varasano’s Famous New York Pizza Recipe, and Peter Reinhart’s poolish instructions from his wonderful Crust and Crumb . Thanks Jeff for sharing your amazing summary! This recipe does take a minimum of three days from stating the poolish to burning the roof of your mouth, but I think it is damn well worth it. It also requires use of a stand mixer (may be able to use food processor, haven’t tried this though), pizza stone and pizza peel or other implement for delivering/removing pizza to/from oven. I’ll have to work on a lo-fi version where manual mixing and kneading can be used in place of the mixer. The only problem is the dough is very wet for most of the mixing and kneading steps.
Remarks:
For the sauce I typically prepare a simple marinara from canned whole peeled tomatoes and some seasonings/spices as the base sauce. Sauce is made at room temperature day before pizza day to allow flavors to develop.
For cheese I typically use balls of fresh mozzarella sliced thinly and patted dry. Keep cold just until topping pizza
Also try other cheeses as an enhancement: Gorgonzola, parmesan, pecorino, the list goes on
About toppings – go easy here. Try not to overwhelm the pizza (cured meats – pepperoni, prosciutto, sopressata, mortadella, cooked bacon; sausages; steak; chicken; veggies – onions, mushrooms, peppers, artichokes, olives; other sauces – pesto, alfredo, etc)
Use unbleached bread flour, semolina flour or cornmeal for dusting peel
Major Equipment:
Oven
Pizza stone
Pizza peel
Pizza wheel/cutter
Stand mixer with dough hook
6 cup plastic containers for proofing/rising dough and preparation of poolish
Food processor or food mill
Ingredients:
Dough/Crust
Yield: 5 – 13″ round pizzas
Procedure:
Day One
Poolish
| Ingredient | % | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Unbleached bread flour (King Arthur Bread Flour) | 100% | 81g/3oz(2/3 cup) |
| Water | 178% | 144g/5oz(2/3 cup) |
| Active dry yeast | 3.5% | 3g/0.1oz(1 tsp) |
Combine ingredients in a sealable container. Mix well to form poolish with smooth batter like consistency. Let poolish ferment at room temperature in draft free location for 5 hours. After 5 hours, poolish should be doubled in size and have foam and bubbles. Cover and place container with poolish in refrigerator overnight.
Day Two
Make the dough
| Ingredient | % | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Unbleached bread flour (King Arthur Bread Flour) | 100% | 855g/30oz(6 3/4 cups) |
| Water | 65.5% | 590g/21oz(2 2/3 cups) |
| Salt (Kosher) | 3.5% | 32g/1oz(1 1/2 tbsp) |
| Poolish | 9% | 81g/3oz(1/3 cup) |
| Active dry yeast | 0.3% | 3g/0.1oz(1 tsp) |
Weigh out 75% of flour, water, salt, poolish and yeast to mixing bowl (641g/23oz (5 cups)). Mix on low speed 1 or 2 minutes until combined. Let rest 20 min.
Turn mixer on low speed to start 8 min of kneading. Additional flour will be added 5 min into kneading.
Only add as much additional flour as required to get a slack, wet, soft dough. Of the remaining 25% (214g/7oz(1 2/3 cups)) flour, you may need less, all or more depending on conditions in your kitchen.
Let rest 20 minutes
Pour dough out onto floured surface and knead 30 sec to form dough. Portion and form dough into 310g balls.
Place portioned dough into very lightly oiled plastic containers, cover and refrigerate.
Make the sauce
| Ingredient | Amount | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Whole peeled tomatoes | 2 – 32oz cans | chopped in food processor |
| Garlic | 5 cloves | minced or grated |
| Salt (Kosher) | 1 tsp |
Day Three, Four or Five
Pizza Day
Set up pizza stone in oven and preheat oven to at least 500°F or as hot as your oven will go
Remove dough containers from refrigerator and let rest at room temperature to finish rising. Depending on room temperature, dough may need as long as an hour and a half or as short as 30 minutes to rise. Preheat oven for a minimum of 60 min and time start of dough proofing to allow proper dough rise. Don’t allow dough to “over-rise” and form bubbles. Better to err on side of “under risen” and check dough about 30 min prior to oven reaching temperature. You can compensate for under risen by placing dough in a warm environment (set in closed microwave with bowl of hot water, don’t turn microwave on!) for a shorter duration before oven is warmed.
Prep toppings if not done already. Stage in bowls for topping pizza including sauce and cheese.
Set up for pizza assembly on a countertop or cutting board. Stage peel, semolina or flour for peel dusting, flour for work surface and dough dusting, and a board, counter or pan for cutting and serving pizzas.
When ready to start pizza prep, flour work surface for stretching pizza and dust peel with semolina/flour.
Dust hands with flour and remove a dough ball to the floured work surface. Lightly flour top of dough. Pick up dough and stretch into disc leaving slightly raised rim for crust. Place stretched dough onto peel. Add toppings as desired. Slide pizza into oven and bake for approximately 7 to 10 min. Remove pizza to serving surface, cut and serve.
