Making and baking a good pizza

I have been trying for so long to make a half decent pizza dough. My standards are high because I'm half Italian and the people in my family make fantastic pizzas, especially my dad. Not bothering to compete with the best, I wanted to find my own unique way of creating a good pizza. And after many, many failures and handfuls of cornmeal scattered around the floor of my kitchen, I can finally say with pride that I know how to make a damn good pizza!

I want to share with you what worked for me and hopefully save some of you the hardships that I had  to endure. Just like any recipe, you have to find out what works best with your tools and your own style of cooking. Please note that the following instructions work best for a thin crust pizza. I think that I have a lot of helpful information in this post, but feel free to experiment and change things up to figure out how to make your pizza even better!

Okay, here goes.

 Step 1: Making the dough

First of all, the flour you use makes a big difference. There's a lot of science behind what makes a flour better than another for pizza dough. One big factor is the percentage of gluten in the flour. Gluten is a protein that will make your dough rise and give it elasticity. In the case of pizza, you need a flour with more gluten than regular white flour, but less than bread flour (which can make your crust too heavy). The answer: TIPO 00 flour.

There are different brands of this type of flour. I used this one and it's works beautifully, but any TIPO 00 should be fine. This typo of flour makes the dough easy to stretch and performs well at high temperatures. It may be hard to find in big grocery stores. I bought this at a little shop on Monkland called Le Garde Manger Italien.

Now that we have the flour covered let's move on to the recipe. I like to use a slightly adapted version of the Neo-Neapolitan pizza dough recipe from Peter Reinhart's American Pie. 

For four 10 ounce dough balls

• 5 cups of TIPO 00 flour

• 1 tablespoon sugar or 1 tablespoon honey

• 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon instant yeast (same as rapid rise yeast)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 2 cups room-temperature water

Stir together all the ingredients in a 4-quart bowl or the bowl of an electric stand mixer until combined.

Fit mixer with dough hook; mix on low speed for about 4 minutes, or until all the flour gathers to form a coarse ball.Let dough rest for 5 minutes, then mix again on med-low speed for 2 more minutes, or until the dough clears the sides of the bowl and sticks just a little to the bottom.

If the dough is too soft and sticky to hold its shape, mix in more flour by the tablespoonful; if it is too stiff or dry, mix in more water by the tablespoonful.

Divide the dough into 4-equal portions; round each piece into a ball and brush or rub each ball with olive oil.Place each ball inside its own zip-lock freezer bag; let the balls sit at room temperature for 15 minutes, then put them in the refrigerator overnight.

Yes you read right, you let the dough rise in the fridge for roughly 24 hour. This rising method is becoming increasingly more popular with pizza makers. The theory behind it being that a slow rise will yield a more flavorful dough. I have tried this and it works. Don't worry if your dough doesn't rise as much as it would at room temperature, this is normal. 

Step 2: Baking the dough

The next day, freeze any dough balls you won't be using and remove from the fridge two hours in advance the ones you will use. The dough needs to be at room temperature before using.

If you don't have have pizza stone, you should get one. I'm not saying that you can't make a good pizza without one, because that's completely untrue. However, it does make a huge difference if you're looking for a wood oven style pizza from your dough. Pizza stones are not expensive (I bought mine for 15$). 

Mine is starting to get"seasoned", meaning that a non stick coating is building up with time and usage. On a side note, never wash a pizza stone with any kind of detergent because it will seep into the stone and give your pizza an unwanted je ne sais quoi flavour. Just scrape off any residue and rinse with warm water.

You'll want to preheat your oven with the pizza stone in it. You want your pizza stone to be hot before using it, or else it'll defeat it's purpose. Don't put a cold pizza stone in a hot oven, because it may crack. Crank up your oven to at least 500°F and once it reaches this temperature, wait at least 30 minutes to give the stone enough time to heat up. As for the positioning of the stone in the oven, there are a lot of different opinions about this. Some say if you place the stone too low, the bottom of the pizza will cook too fast and the top will be undercooked. Others say the opposite if you place it too high, so I just put in the middle. I say it all depends of what kind of crust you want and what type of oven you're using.

Another very useful tool is a pizza paddle.

You have no idea how many times I completely messed up my pizza trying to transfer it onto the hot pizza stone (hence the earlier reference to cornmeal all over my kitchen floor, I was using the back of a pizza pan). This baby is a life saver. Just sprinkle some cornmeal on it and you can easily transfer your pizza onto the stone will very little fuss. 

Next, form the dough. Pat dough into flat disk and let it rest to make gluten relax. 

Roll out dough on a heavily floured surface. If the dough starts to retract too much, let it rest for a few minutes before continuing. Shape your dough as you desire and transfer it to the pizza peel. At this point, it's good to have your ingredients ready in advance so that you can garnish the dough quickly. 

If you take too much time, the dough may start to stick to the pizza peel. When you're done, give the peel a few shakes to make sure the dough is loose and slides easily.

Now take you pizza peel and with a few jiggles transfer the pizza onto the pizza stone in the oven. 

Another side note: Don't use parchment paper. It may make it easier to transfer the pizza onto the stone, but the texture of the dough will be affected. Others disagree online, but I've baked two at once, one with parchment paper and one direct on the stone and there was a major difference. 

Bake the pizza for roughly 6-7 minutes, but again this all depends on how crispy you like your dough and how thick it is. Remove from oven and enjoy the wonderful, thin crust restaurant style pizza right in the comfort of your home. Takes 28 hours to prepare, 2 minutes to eat, and it's worth it.

Now that is one fine pizza, booyah!