
Pizza Dough - hendricius
https://github.com/hendricius/pizza-dough
======
tgtweak
Another good tip, ask your local pizzaria if they'll sell you a dough blank -
usually they'll do this for $2-3 and then you can dress it the way you want,
bake it and have great quality pizza with top choice ingredients with a 25
minute wait, which is roughly as long as it takes for delivery. Most good
pizzeria's will have already let the dough sit for a day or so.

~~~
tptacek
I have a dumb question: what part of the rest of the pizza-making process can
you do better than the restaurant? I ask because the big issue in home pizza
production is that your oven is unlikely to reach the temps commercial pizza
ovens hit, and people go to all sorts of weird lengths to rectify this.

At the point where you're getting the dough from the restaurant, why not just
get the pizza from the restaurant?

~~~
tgtweak
Good and valid question.

For me it's a few things.

1) the kids love putting "their" toppings on "their" quadrant of the pizza,
and wow, like a lot of things in life, when you make your own there are 0
complaints.

2) You can really put premium toppings that no pizzeria would spend on our
even stock.

3) You can get it fresh out of the oven, like "burn the top of your mouth
(again, you dummy) cheese napalm" fresh.

4) You can put as much or as little of any combination of cheese as you like,
and it doesn't have to be the powdery pre shredded dry-frozen stuff that a lot
of pizza places use.

5) Really it takes like 5 minutes to dress a pizza, heating your oven up to
whatever it's highest settings is takes longer.

6) You can barbeque your pizza.

7) It's usually pretty cost effective when you consider most delivery places
are charging $15+ for a large (14") pizza with a few toppings. Plus you save
the tip and the emissions from a delivery driver (provided you buy a few and
pick them up on the way home!

~~~
ergothus
One thing ivr done since I was a kid is buy pizza sauce, toppings, and
pillsbury biscuits (or equivalent generic).

You can work each biscuit into a mini pizza, top it as you see fit, and cook
the lot for 8-12 mins (based on the biscuits instruction).

It was a great treat when I was a kid and I've kept it up as an adult because
dangit adulting has to have some perks.

------
NorthOf33rd
Is Github becoming a popular place for blogging simply because my coworkers
will think I'm doing a code review and not reading about Neapolitan Pizza?

If so, thank you for your service. It's working.

~~~
quickthrower2
It almost is, but the super large picture of the guy holding a pizza base
might give up the game.

On a serious note, Github could be a good place for blogging because you can
get CI to check your code examples, and even to lint your spelling, as well as
get readers to supply PR's to fix any errors they see.

~~~
jgtrosh
I always dream of being able to discreetly inform people of minor mistakes in
their posts/comments in a way that would make it dead easy for them to accept
the change. PRs sound very appealing!!

~~~
monksy
I think we need a new infrastructure for this on the internet. At least some
place to say where content is stored, and where to do pull requests against.

EDIT: GIT+Blockchain+Blogs for the future (patent pending)

------
rocheio
Thanks for sharing - lots of detail on the process and the pictures look
really helpful, although honestly I have no familiarity with pizza dough
making to judge by. Great read regardless.

I love the idea of Github becoming a more popular place for recipes. I
translate many of the recipes I end up cooking into Markdown files[1], and
love that Github renders them in a way that I can still share with my
relatives.

The real win though is that with git for VC, you can update these recipes with
the smallest changes and notes each time you cook it, knowing that each time
you're getting closer to the perfect version of each meal. I hope this idea
catches on enough that people might one day submit issues / PRs for each
others recipes much like we do with open-source code.

May try this dough out myself soon since I'm still on a baking kick from all
the Christmas cookies. Will open a PR / issue if I have any suggestions from
the experience!

[1]: [https://github.com/rocheio/recipes](https://github.com/rocheio/recipes)

~~~
craftyguy
I've been storing recipes in git for years, also in markdown so I can
edit/view on pretty much any device with a markdown viewer/editor. This post
has made me interested in using a markdown rendered to display them on my
personal site!

~~~
tgtweak
Is there an open recipe format? There really should be, if you think about it,
a recipe is basically a program: pragmatic, universally interpretable and
should produce identical output (provided similar input and execution...)

Would set us up nicely for automated chefs :)

~~~
craftyguy
I would be satisfied with any recipe format that doesn't include several
paragraphs of text about how the author feels about the food, what they did
the last time they made it, why they are writing about it, etc. Ingredients,
steps, period.

~~~
Thimothy
He. That's one of the things I love most about seriouseats. They separate in
different pages the recipe, as terse as it can be, and the "how it works",
that includes all the other fluff, and I read if I'm in the mood.

------
hendricius
Another great tip I wanted to share is to use a pizza stone. Even better than
a stone is a pizza steel. The steel releases the heat faster to the dough than
the stone. If you had a stone brick oven at 450°C you would not need this. At
a regular oven at home, a steel does wonders. I got my pizza from 80%
Neapolitan style to 95%.

~~~
baby
How long does it take to cook with that? A real pizza oven is supposed to cook
your pizza in 3 minutes tops.

~~~
advantager
I have a baking steel, I preheat the steel at 450 (my maximum oven
temperature) for at least 30 minutes. Pizza is baked in ~5-8 minutes.

Real pizza ovens are much hotter.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I thought the point of the steel was to throw it under the broiler to get it
above 700 deg, and then bake the pizza under the broiler?

~~~
hendricius
The steel releases the heat faster than the stone. Yes, heat it up as much as
possible. Still you will not manage to have the same air circulation as in a
stone brick oven. Thus you can not reach the same result. But it can get close
to a 95% version. I sometimes use a blow torch to sizzle my pizza further.

------
maury91
Quoting the article "There is no need for performing any sort of kneading.",
this is wrong, nearly every pizzaiolo (the person who makes pizza in a
restaurant) will tell you that you need to kneed for at least 25 minutes, this
is to reach what is called "punto pasta" and by kneading you will help the
dough to form gluten structure that will give elasticity and will preserve the
air inside.

A little tip, if you want to make Neapolitan pizza, and you don't have an oven
that can reach 460 Celsius, you should add extra virgin olive oil, this will
raise the amount of time in the oven before the pizza becomes biscottata
(crunchy and hard), in a professional oven the Neapolitan pizza cooks for
around 2 minutes, and if the oven is not in the right temperature and so you
need to cook it more the pizza becomes crunchy.

I recommend watching this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq90lUQUCUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq90lUQUCUo)
(it has English subs).

~~~
613style
The repeated stretching/folding/waiting process develops the gluten like
kneading does. You can tell that his gluten development is fine from the
windowpane effect in first picture.

~~~
hendricius
Over time the dough will also properly homogenise. The starch will absorb the
water.

------
hendricius
A great source to learn about pizza is reddit. I also frequently post my
results over there and receive valuable feedback:
[https://reddit.com/r/pizza](https://reddit.com/r/pizza).

Regardless you have to be careful, since people are very opinionated and might
not know all the variables of your pizza. An experienced baker understands the
dough and can react with changing variables.

How about a docker container for baking pizza?

~~~
aequitas
After countless failed attempts to make my own pizza dough I resorted to this
'docker' solution of prepped dough:
[https://www.ah.nl/producten/product/wi134027/ah-pizzadeeg-
en...](https://www.ah.nl/producten/product/wi134027/ah-pizzadeeg-en-
tomatensaus)

Somehow I always end up with to stringy dough after it has risen and it would
tear to easy when handling. I might give it another try with these
instructions, thx.

------
ahallock
Pro tip for making pizza at home: Use a food processor to knead the dough; it
will come together quicker and prevent oxidization, resulting in much better
flavor in the finished pie. Restaurants make large batches, exposing only a
small surface area of the dough.

~~~
shaklee3
You should use a stand mixer with a dough attachment if possible. Food
processors are very rough on the dough, especially if you use a metal blade.
They also can't handle a lot of dough at once without burning out the motor.

~~~
ahallock
A stand mixer will not yield the best flavor, which was the point of my
comment. Here is the original article that tests both:

[https://slice.seriouseats.com/2010/10/the-pizza-lab-how-
to-m...](https://slice.seriouseats.com/2010/10/the-pizza-lab-how-to-make-
great-new-york-style-pizza.html#comments-121754)

~~~
shaklee3
Interesting. Maybe that advice only applies to pizza, but America's Test
Kitchen, at least for making dough for bread recommends against using a food
processor. I usually make dough in fairly large batches, so I don't know if
the effect Kenji talks about would have changed anything for me. I've probably
made several hundred pizzas at home, and it definitely took a while to perfect
the crust.

------
plopz
I've had a lot of success following the advice on Varasanos pizza recipe
website.

[http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm](http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm)

~~~
Shebanator
Heh. I just posted this at more or less the same time as you. But I deleted my
comment to clean things up.

~~~
plopz
Haha :) I think I originally found it somewhere on this site. I didn't try to
hack my oven but I did buy a blackstone pizza oven a few years ago after
reading about people using it on the pizzamaking.com forums.

------
JshWright
Alex French Guy Cooking has a great video series on Neapolitan pizza that
would pair well with this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h3uzIs4C2w&list=PLURsDaOr8h...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h3uzIs4C2w&list=PLURsDaOr8hWV_M3AUhvpEwTcE9865Uwk1)

------
nathancahill
Oh boy, a couple years ago a took the deep dive in to neapolitan pizza. Like
any niche people are passionate about, there's tons of different and sometimes
conflicting ideas about how to do it best. Along those lines, I love the
disclaimer on this post.

Useful app if you go down the pizza dough rabbit hole:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pizzapp/id1228158792](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pizzapp/id1228158792)

------
galfarragem
My take, optimized for one 'square' pizza done in any home oven:

    
    
        100 ml of tepid water
        275 ml of flour (yes, mililiters)
        1 full teaspoon of salt
        2 grams of yeast
        Minimum of 4 hours of dough rising

~~~
tgtweak
It's generally more reproducible to measure out ingredients that could vary in
density (flour being one of them, for a number of reasons) by weight. You can
still be a global elitist and put it in grams.

------
shaklee3
Better than pretty much any book out there on pizza, is reading through the
pizzamaking.com forums. They have people that have been on there for over a
decade, making thousands of pizzas, and know every last detail of what does
and doesn't work. They're also very helpful if you post pictures, and if you
get really into it, there's a whole subforum for wood-fired ovens (WFO).

~~~
sunnyP
I have not found a better site than pizzamaking.com if you want to dive into
pizza styles and methods. The gluten free forum was a great resource for me.

------
skwb
If you are patient, you can do your bulk fermentation for 72 for additional
flavor. Bonus if you also add some "discard" sourdough starter at the
beginning for a more sourdough tang.

~~~
hendricius
Oh yes, this is a great tip. In fact you can also use sourdough right away for
the pizza, it creates a different flavor. Can't say it is better, it is
different. With the sourdough you have to be careful with not having a too
acidy dough. At some point the acid will attack your gluten matrix and result
in your dough becoming super sticky.

------
subpixel
If like me, you don't really think that highly of Neopolitan pizza dough, this
recipe may have more to offer you:

[http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm](http://www.varasanos.com/pizzarecipe.htm)

~~~
canterburry
That is interesting.

I adore Neopolitan pizza and have always considered it better than anything
else. However, judging by the ratio of "regular" pizza places vs Neopolitan
pizzerias it would seem i'm in a minority.

I was never quite sure if the relative lacking number of Neopolitan pizzarias
in the US is due to different taste preferences of the consumer, it simple
hasn't caught on yet or it maybe more difficult/expensive and therefore
prohibitive?

~~~
subpixel
In my book the alternative to Neopolitan isn't 'regular' but a good sourdough
base that has far more in common with a baguette than a piece of naan.

There's a fetishization of Neopolitan technique that, while natural, has
diminishing returns in terms of variety and innovation. Small brewers don't
all slavishly recreate age-old European beer recipes...

------
wnissen
Napolitano pizza is really hard to replicate in a home oven so why try?
However, NY-ish pizza is possible. I use this recipe, which uses ordinary AP
flour and calls for a rise of several hours or overnight so you can make it
without a big production. It's in metric, which makes it much easier to
produce a consistent dough.

[https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017931-pizza-
dough](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017931-pizza-dough)

Low-moisture, full-fat cheese is essential. Again, you could drain mozzarella
di bufala, but that is one more step. Finally, sauce is what you can really
play around with. I've gotten good results using just a tablespoon of tomato
paste from a tube, or premade "pizza sauce" or cooked down marinara pasta
sauce.

I make the pizza on a pan, stick it in there to start, then pull the pan as
soon as I can shake the pie free. Depending on how it cooks I'll use the
broiler as well. Turns out great.

------
module0000
So.. if we have a computer-controlled mixing device and ingredient dispenser -
could we setup CI/CD for this repo? :)

------
Dowwie
Is there someone out there who is familiar with business listings and could
tell me which city has the most pizzerias per capita? I lived in Hoboken, New
Jersey for 8 years. There are so many pizzerias there and the city is home to
about 50,000 people. I suspect Hoboken has the #1 slot but require
confirmation.

~~~
Kagerjay
Generally speaking, business listings per capita of a specific industry is
dictated by zipcodes. One city can have multiple zipcodes though.

I made a few searches online and was surprised that new york / new jersey was
not among top 10 zipcodes.

[https://welcomematservices.com/top-10-zip-codes-for-pizza-
re...](https://welcomematservices.com/top-10-zip-codes-for-pizza-restaurants/)

If you really wanted all the listings I know the national-restaurant-
association (NRA) has all of this data. You can also find the full data set on
yelp as well.
[https://www.yelp.com/dataset/documentation/main](https://www.yelp.com/dataset/documentation/main).
the json data set indicates a category value you can use too. Zomato didn't
have the data source, kaggle's datasets were limited, didn't find anything on
data.gov worthwhile. You can also find number of people living per zipcode
from public datasets on data.gov

Also, Hoboken, NJ is technically two zipcodes.

~~~
evanelias

      > Also, Hoboken, NJ is technically two zipcodes.
    

Source? I've lived here for years and only know one. USPS.gov seems to agree
:)

Anyway, re: your first link, the data source sounds very questionable:

    
    
      > Scoring of the Top Ten U.S. ‘Pizza Hoods’ in 2016 was determined by internal data on number
      > of pizza restaurant redemptions through Welcomemat Services as well as the number and
      > strength of pizza restaurants and businesses in each zip code covered by the brand
    

Welcomemat seems to be a company that sends mailers to people upon moving to a
new address. In the NYC metro area, those new-address mailers rarely include
restaurants. Margins are already tight for restaurants here, and many
restaurants can rely on foot traffic without any need for this type of
advertising.

~~~
Kagerjay
I too question the source of "pizza hoods". I found no other better sources
online though compiling the information though. Going through yelp's dataset
would probably yield the best results, since its not as biased.

The two zipcodes, google (itself) stated there were 2 zipcodes, 07030 and
07086 . That has a lot of merit to it to me at least

~~~
evanelias
Ah, afraid Google is wrong. 07086 is strictly Weehawken NJ... check
[https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-
lookup.htm?citybyzipcode](https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-
lookup.htm?citybyzipcode)

------
lichtenberger
In addition I can only recommend The Pizza Bible from Tony Gemignani. He even
recommends letting it rise in the refrigerator for 36 to 48 hours and it's
great (very cold around 3 degrees and probably don't add the amount of yeast
Tony recommends). I'd say about 4g per 1000g flour when you also add poolish.
He also recommends using warm water mixing the yeast in but ice cold water
when mixing the water with the flour. And around 2% baking malt if your oven
doesn't go beyond 350°. It gives a better browning effect in my opinion than
olive oil and has some kind of sugar molecules in it.

I've had best results with a 8mm thick backing steel and the broiler method in
a home oven, but some day I want a wood fired oven :-)

~~~
lichtenberger
Oh and for the toppings I'd go for mozzarella di buffalo, some parmegiano and
for instance Mutti tomatoes for the sauce. I'd also sometimes add Burrata
after around two minutes in the oven :-)

~~~
hendricius
This and homemade mozzarella. There's nothing better than telling people all
the ingredients are homemade.

I need a farm with water buffalos, and enough space to grow my own grain,
haha!

~~~
lichtenberger
Oh yes, and make the tomatoe sauce in the morning when you eat in the evening,
adding extra virgin olive oil, pepper, salt, oregano, whatever you like, but I
think the flavors are getting better with more time, just like the dough. That
said some pizzaiolos from Napoli seem to make the dough at room temperature or
18° with around 8 to 12 hours rise, which is not that much. I've had great
problems last summer, even with 2g fresh yest per 1000g flour it was crazy how
fast it has risen... way too fast at around 24 degrees room temp... then in
the basement at around 19, but still

For me the refrigerator works way better with a constant temperature :)

~~~
dwd
I worked for an Italian family pizzaria going through Uni and their tomato
base they referred to as having the three-Ps: pepper, paprika and parsley.

~~~
tgtweak
That's the magic of pizza, inexhaustible combinations.

------
k__
My flatmate makes it all the time.

But I have the feeling a good oven that can get really hot is just as
important for good pizza as the dough.

I don't think there are many consumer grade ovens that get to pizza-oven
temperature :(

~~~
hendricius
Try to use a pizza stone. That's already good. If possible, go for a pizza
steel. However, in a traditional Neapolitan oven you also have a particular
air circulation that is very hard to reproduce.

------
bart42_0
I can recommend Heston Blumentahl 'In search of the perfect Pizza'

[https://vimeo.com/34433092](https://vimeo.com/34433092)

------
KozmoNau7
I've had great luck with this guy's recipe/method: [http://www.perfekte-
pizza.de/](http://www.perfekte-pizza.de/) (in German)

I cut down on the salt a little, and add a bit of olive oil since I don't have
a proper high-temp pizza oven, just an ordinary ~275C home gamer unit.

------
mhh__
[https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php](https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php)

Forum with far too much information on Pizza dough and preparation +
Experimentation on how to imitate famous Pizza e.g. reverse engineering Papa
Johns

------
hendricius
Make sure you add all the toppings on top of the cheese. You want to achieve a
good crispy salami. That happens because of the Maillard reaction if there is
enough heat available in the oven. Plus it looks more beautiful in my opinion
if the toppings are visually viewable.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Who puts their toppings _under_ the cheese!?

Heathens! _shudders_

------
rv-de
This is _the_ source:

[http://www.pizzanapoletana.org/public/pdf/disciplinare%20200...](http://www.pizzanapoletana.org/public/pdf/disciplinare%202008%20UK.pdf)

Most popular mistakes are:

\- too much yeast \- no salt \- cheap ingredients

------
hendricius
Another pro tip is to make your own homemade mozzarella. It really ups the
game (takes 1 hour).

Regardless for the Mozzarella, stretch it into really small pieces and wrap it
in kitchen paper for at least an hour. That way you don't create a watery mess
on the pizza.

~~~
kazinator
How about ditching the mozarella and branching out into different cheeses. A
"swiss melt" pizza with Emmenthaller sounds nice.

~~~
mhh__
Don't know about ditching altogether, but I had a pizza with a lot of
Gorgonzola in Italy (Among other cheese): 'twas very good

The whole joy of making Pizza at home, is that it's pretty easy so you can
really just yeet any old ingredients available on and just see what sticks (Or
more realistically, smells right)

------
nbzklr
Related and also very interesting: The Physics of baking good Pizza [1]

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.08790](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.08790)

------
lichtenberger
Oh and try two pizza / baking steels ;-)

------
augusto-moura
Just forked it

Pun intended

~~~
rv-de
people high on the autism spectrum don't get those jokes. in case you have
been wondering why you were downvoted. +1 from me.

------
augusto-moura
Just forked it

No pun intended

------
graycat
Timely! I've just been working on pizza! Compared to restaurants and
especially to carryout or delivery or frozen I have some good results.

Due to the yeast and eating the pizza just after cooking, the star of the show
is the dough. Making the dough is fast, fun, easy, and shockingly,
astoundingly essentially just dirt cheap! With the dough and sauce ready,
making a pizza is faster than delivery, carryout, or even frozen.

So, I've wanted a pizza for one, one pizza for a whole lunch or dinner. I end
up with a pizza about 6 1/2" in diameter with sauce, Mozzarella cheese, and
pepperoni. It's darned good. It's a filling meal, about 600 C (food calories).

Shock #1: The cost of the flour is, in the US, shopping at Sam's Club not
counting the cost of the club membership, via 25 pound bags, sit down for
this, 9 US cents per pizza. Shopping at usual US grocery stores, the cost is
about double that, 18 cents per pizza.

Shock #2: The 9 cents was so surprising that last night just out of curiosity
I added up the cost of the ingredients for one pizza, just under 40 cents.

Shock #3: With the ingredients ready, can have a hot pizza ready to eat in 20
minutes with less than 15 minutes of being busy with the work and the other 5
minutes, say, reading Hacker News!

Shock #4: Don't need or want to use an oven! Still get the coveted crisp
bottom crust from a high temperature oven with a pizza stone, but are done
with the pizza even before an oven could get hot!

Yesterday I typed in some extensive notes as part of what software developers
know well -- now that I'm making these pizzas, only myself and God understand
how I'm going it, and without my notes in six months only God will still
understand. So, I have the notes.

Here I will give a brief version.

The ingredients are:

For the dough, flour, water, yeast, and salt.

For the sauce, canned crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, some of the usual
seasonings, and a little olive oil.

The cheese is just common shredded, part-skim Mozzarella.

The pepperoni is, well, just four slices of pepperoni widely available sliced.

The three most important tools are a common microwave oven, a restaurant style
stamped steel saute pan with a bottom round and 7" in diameter and with a LONG
handle, and a small burner on a common electric stove with power level set on
medium.

Briefly here's what to do:

First make a batch of dough and divide it into 8 pieces, one piece per pizza.
And make a batch of tomato sauce.

For the dough, use 1 Kg of flour. Likely by a little should prefer "bread and
pizza" flour, e.g., at Sam's Club. To a bowl of about 5 quarts, add 1 T
(tablespoon) of active dry yeast (either the standard stuff or "quick-rising"
intended for bread machines). Can get the yeast in little paper envelopes --
the contents of one envelope, about 8 grams, works fine. Or can buy yeast in
jars of about 4 ounces -- for that just use a tablespoon. Then add 700 ml of
water at 110 F. Mix. Add 1 1/2 T table salt. Mix. Quickly before the salt
kills the yeast, add the flour in roughly (can be VERY rough) 1/3rds. After
each 1/3rd, mix with a kitchen cooking spoon. Will end with a lot of moist,
sticky dough with little pieces not yet stuck to the main mass. No need to use
fingers.

The proportion of flour to water, e.g., the 700 ml of water for the 1 Kg of
dough for the flour I have, is critical. Should measure carefully. Since the
water content of your flour may vary from mine, or may vary from one source of
flour to another or just with the humidity where you store your flour, you may
have to adjust the proportions a little. The flour I'm using may have
relatively high water content; if so, you may have to use a little more water.

Put about 1/4 C (cup) of flour on a pastry board, spread the flour roughly to
a rough circle roughly 1' in diameter. Scrape and or roll the dough out of the
bowl and on top of the flour. Sprinkle about 1/4 C flour on the top and sides
of the dough.

Now _knead_ the dough for 8 minutes; the kneading completes the mixing of the
flour, water, yeast and salt; 8 minutes can make a nice pizza; more than 8 can
result in a pizza a little tough to chew.

To _knead_ ,(A) Using hands and fingers, press the dough to roughly (can be
very rough here) twice its area on the board. (B) Pick up the far edge of the
dough and pull it to you to fold the dough in half. (C) Now the dough is
likely wider than long; if so, then rotate it 90 degrees. Repeat (A)-(C) for 8
minutes.

The first few steps of all of (A)-(C) will get the dough into one relatively
smooth mass. About this time fingers and hands may be coated with dough; in
this case rub hands and fingers to let the dough fall to the main mass. From
now on will have little or no problem with a lot of the dough sticking to
hands or fingers.

BIG, HUGE, point: When you start, think of the outside surface of the dough.
Well that is ALL you EVER touch!!! The _inside_ of the dough is sticky, but
you NEVER touch it! See, as you fold the dough, you are making the outside
surface that was next to the board ALL the surface. As you keep doing (A)-(C)
for 8 minutes, the outside surface from the board will get stretched enough to
start to become sticky. Okay, then add a few T of flour but ONLY to the board
and UNDER the dough, NOT to the top of the dough!

After 8 minutes, the dough will feel _elastic_ and start to spring back. The
usual test is to press the dough with a finger and get some _spring back_. You
are DONE. Put the dough back in the bowl (don't have to bother to clean the
bowl), cover the bowl to keep kitchen air away from the dough (the kitchen air
could dry the surface of the dough too much), and let the dough _rise_ , that
is, let the yeast grow and generate CO2. The dough will rise well at any
temperature from a refrigerator to 100 F or so. But at 115 F, the yeast will
start to die. Let the dough rise until roughly (can be very rough) double in
volume.

Now divide the dough into the 8 pieces. Flour the pastry board again, use
fingers to separate the dough from the surface of the bowl, and roll the dough
onto the flour. Dust the surface of the dough with 1-4 T of flour. Form the
dough to a long log, say, the length of the diagonal of the board. Cut the log
in half; cut each piece in half; cut each piece in half. Now have 8 pieces,
hopefully all about equal in weight. For the cut surfaces, touch them to the
board to lightly flour them. Put each piece in its own covered bowl, e.g., the
24 ounce, covered, plastic bowls from ZipLoc (mine are years old -- maybe they
are still for sale). Apply, snap on, the covers, let the dough rise, say, each
piece to half fill its bowl, and refrigerate until ready for a pizza. Note:
Pressure from the CO2 can pop off the lids; so occasionally snap the lids back
on, again, to keep kitchen air from the dough.

For the tomato sauce, in a 3 quart pot, add 3 T of olive oil and lightly cook
however much garlic you like. Add two cans of crushed tomatoes, 28 ounces net
weight per can. Add 12 ounces of tomato paste. Add whatever seasonings might
like, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, parsley. Mix. Heat slowly with occasional
stirring to sterilize the mixture, say, to 180 F, cover, let cool, and
refrigerate.

For a pizza, take a microwave proof plate about 7" in diameter, with fingers
gently separate the dough from its bowl, place the dough in the center of the
plate, and spread the dough to a disk about 7" in diameter (larger if you
prefer a thinner pizza and have a larger plate) with a rim. Microwave on high
for 1 minute; for even heating, rotate 180 degrees and microwave on high for 1
more minute. The dough will puff a LOT. Using a fork, gently separate the
dough from the plate and place the dough in the saute pan with the flat side
of the dough, the side that was next to the plate, down. Maybe press down some
on some of the larger puffy parts of the dough.

Add and spread about 2-4 T of the tomato sauce. Add and spread about 1 ounce
of the shredded Mozzarella, in volume of the loose shredded cheese maybe a
little less than half a cup. Put on four slices of pepperoni. Put a lid on the
pan; put the pan on the burner; wait about 13 minutes.

So the steel pan yields the desired crust on the bottom. The lid creates a
small oven that cooks the rest of the dough and heats the sauce and pepperoni
and melts the cheese.

Want the bottom of the pizza to be crisp but not burned. Want the rim of the
pizza puffed and cooked enough not to be raw but also not too tough to chew;
want the sauce hot and the cheese melted. I get these results, but with your
equipment, not exactly the same as mine, you will likely need some trials (I
did a lot of trials with my equipment).

Use a spatula to move the pizza to a cutting board and cut it into 4 slices,
each with a piece of pepperoni. Slide to a luncheon plate, call your
significant other to share this, and start a second one!

For the plate I use in the microwave, that is from a very old collection of
from some frozen dinners. The plates are essentially paper with some plastic.
They are about the right size and are microwave proof, and the dough, once
heated in the microwave, does not stick strongly. A glass pie plate might be a
good alternative.

The pizza, once cooked, won't stick strongly to a well _seasoned_ saute pan.

Making the batch of dough takes only about 20 minutes and is fun.

Most of the time for making the sauce is just opening the 3-4 cans.

Each pizza is ready in a little less than 20 minutes. Eaten just after cooking
it's GOOD.

From my notes from yesterday, here are the costs for the main ingredients and
the total cost (US cents) per pizza:

    
    
             9.524 Flour
             1.100 Yeast
             0.684 Olive Oil
             5.320 Crushed Tomatoes
             2.213 Tomato Paste
            11.900 Mozzarella Cheese
             8.462 Pepperoni
           -------
            39.203
    

cents per pizza.

It's fast, easy, fun, cheap, and good!

~~~
ncmncm
It turns out to be remarkably easy to make a good pizza, as long as you let
the water soak into the flour for at least 40 minutes before you start to work
it. If you don't, nothing else you do can save it.

In a pinch (in Waipio Valley, Hawaii) I made 30 little pizzas of Pillsbury
flour (scooping runny dough, almost batter, from a bowl), cheddar cheese, and
Wesson oil on parchment on a stone perched atop a big, inverted soup pot under
a broiler. It came out great! I wouldn't do it that way again, but most
details matter less than you would expect.

~~~
graycat
> It turns out to be remarkably easy to make a good pizza, as long as you let
> the water soak into the flour for at least 40 minutes before you start to
> work it. If you don't, nothing else you do can save it.

As in my post just above, I have good news for you and everyone else: By
actual experience, for about a dozen recent trials, done need to let the water
"soak" into the flour at all. Instead, just as I documented, just add the
flour to the water in 1/3rds, mix after each 1/3rd, and then proceed with the
kneading, rising, dividing into 8ths, let rise again, and get on with making
pizzas. The dough in the pizzas is terrific, puffy, fragrant, etc.

