elog
06.04.10 : The Engine Room Pizza Dough Recipe
by TER Site Admin
For the more serious dilettante who appreciates Napolitana style.
Ingredients:
(yields 6 dough balls for me = six 12” pies.)
—- Flour: 1000 Grams ‘00’ High Gluten Flour + a little extra flour for misc.
—- Water: 23 oz; warm to the touch (but no more than 110°F)
—- Pkgd Yeast: 3/4 teaspoon
—- Salt: 1.5 tablespoons
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Making the Dough:
Put a couple pinches of flour into your standing mixer bowl, then add the yeast. Immediately then add the water and let sit a few min.
In a (separate) large bowl, whisk the salt into the flour.
Turn mixer on medium speed w/paddle attachment.
With mixer on medium… One tablespoon at a time, add approx. 3/4 of the flour mixture into the mixing bowl. No need to wait until flour completely incorporates. Just use your natural human motion of scooping and dumping. Improvise as you see fit. The key is that you avoid flour flying all over the place and that you get an even incorporation. It’s a gradual kneading exercise; obviating any long knead in the end.
Once you reach a consistency of very thick pancake batter (or 3/4 of the flour mixture), let mixer go for a few min.
Meanwhile… Prep 6-7 plastic lidded containers (4”-5” round) and brush their interiors with olive oil.
Turn mixer off. Switch to hook attachment. Spatula in any unmixed flour around the bowl.
Turn mixer back on low. Here’s where you dump in 1/2 the remaining flour; wait a bit; then dump in the rest. You’ll have to watch the dough consistency here because it can either remain too wet or become too firm. What you’re shooting for is a soft dough, but workable. With the mixer on, it should form a ungraceful tornado in the center. Knead, on Medium, for approx. another 3-5 minutes. You want to make sure dough is still kneading here and not just spinning around.
Turn mixer off. Flour your hands and turn dough out onto a floured surface. Do a few traditional knead moves to finish it off. Coach the dough into a slight oval shape then cut into pieces somewhere in between a baseball and softball size. Form into as perfect a circle as you can and put each one into its prepared plastic container and refrigerate. (check your fridge setting, make sure it’s on about a medium coolness setting.)
Let dough develop for at least 24 hrs. With this recipe, a 48hr - 96hr refrigerated dough is the best, but there are many variables to affect the outcome.
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Making the Pizza:
Approx. 1-2 hours before you want to bake the pie, remove container from fridge and set on counter. Upon removal from fridge, dough should be risen at this point. Degree of ‘fridge-rise’ will depend on 24hr, 48hr, etc. development time.
Preheat oven 1 hr. before pizza bake.
15-30 min. before you stretch the pizza, carefully remove dough from container with lightly floured hands. Try not to disturb the mass that’s already formed and reform into ball as needed and rest on lightly floured surface. Cover semi-airtight with something that doesn’t touch the dough (like a large upside-down bowl.)
Stretch pizza. This is very important obviously, but it’s an exercise in/of itself. Practice, practice, practice.