How to Make a Professional Pizza - with Crust Like in a Pizzeria

Have you tried making pizza at home, but were disappointed by cake-y crust, ketchup-y sauce, poor cheese texture, and lousy overall taste? Well, those days are over. Use our tips, and your friends will bow at the alter of your pizza oven...

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• High gluten wheat flour
• Poland Spring Bottled water
• instant yeast
• olive oil
• kosher salt
• large can of Redpack crushed tomatoes
• shredded whole milk mozz.
• 48 hours prep time!

1. Be sure you use the listed ingredients! For example, using table salt (iodized) can harm the yeast, leaving you with off taste, flabby dough, and other problems. Follow these steps exactly and we can all but guarantee success!

2. To find high gluten flour, try King Arthur's "Sir Lancelot" flour, or just hit up your local pizzeria for a sack of flour. Friendly owners will often sell you some at cost. *** Don't use tap water, either. Even traces of softener, high calcium mineral content, or chlorine will mess you up. Go with bottled spring water.

3. Begin by putting 1 cup of room temp spring water in a bowl. Stir in (thoroughly) 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 3/4 tsp instant yeast. When all is dissolved, stir in 1 1/2 cups of flour. You will get a slurry that's rather thick. Let this sit 20 min at room temp, covered. Don't rush it.

4. Add another cup of flour, 1/2 cup at at time, kneading as you go. If the dough is still very sticky, you may add up to another 1/2 cup of flour, a bit at a time. This should take about 10 minutes. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, and then knead for another 5. The result will be a rather dry feeling dough ***The timing is important! If you over- or under-knead, the texture will be off.

5. Divide the dough in half. Knead each half into itself a few times to create a smooth ball. Don't worry about the dryness and lack of pliability, over time, the dough will become very elastic. Drop them into separate, well oiled, ziplock bags and store in the fridge for up to 3 days. 24 hour minimum for decent dough, but it gets better after 48!

6. When pizza day arrives, get your cheese and the Redpack tomatoes ready. The sauce is unbelievably simple - just put the crushed tomatoes in a bowl, add 2 tsp salt and one tsp. sugar & stir. Don't heat it up - just spread it on the stretched dough and sprinkle on the mozzarella! This will get you closest to real pizzeria taste. They do it this way - fast and no fuss, but it works.

7. Baking the pizza is a whole other topic, really. Some tips are below.

Tips & Warnings

• The amount of flour the dough will 'take' can vary slightly. This recipe requires about 3 cups of flour: 1 1/2 for the slurry, another 1 to 1 1/2 when kneading. The dough will 'take' what it wants, and you should wind up with a firm but not dry dough. It will become more flexible again after 24 hours in the fridge.
• Baking the pizza is a whole other task. A pizza stone is quite helpful. All in all, bake at high temps! (500F, but no higher)
• You should at least have a pizza stone to get a crisp crust. Bake for 8-10 minutes, oven performance will vary, so keep an eye out, experiment and have fun!
• CLEAN your hands well when handling food. In this case, you will ferment the dough for two days, so don't give bacteria a chance.
• Use oven mitts! I burn myself every time I forget to use them. We're talking 500 degrees here - burns happen fast and hurt for several days. Keep some Aloe handy if you're reckless as I am...

[harrykipper]

on 7/12/2009 Hi, just edited it - thanks for that! You'll be looking at 2 1/2 - 3 cups total. Cheers!