I decided to do a step by step pizza tutorial with pics. I get so many people wanting my recipe and I have given it out a lot but many have said that it's not quite the same. It's really an art and its taken me 9 years to finally come up with a pizza crust that I deem worthy but hopefully with my pics and explainations we will all experience pizza success without the years and years of trial and error.
Pizza at my house is a two day process.
DAY 1
In a medium sized bowl wisk together:
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
add:
1 1/2 cups water, might need more to to make sure that all the flour is incorporated all the way.
then mix together, I use the old fashioned method of wooden spoon and a little elbow greese but you can do it in a mixer too. make sure that all the flour and liquid is well combined. The dough will be really wet, if the flour isn't combining all the way you may want to add water a tbs at a time (don't worry about adding too much water, in this recipe you want a very hydrated dough, thicker than pancake batter but not by much, you don't want it dripping off your spoon but pasty)
then cover your bowl with plastic wrap or tinfoil and leave on counter for at least 12 hours (I have left mine sitting out for more than 2 or 3 days before and I'm still alive, its somewhat like a sourdough process or ciabatta)
Day one is complete! Go put your feet up you've worked hard today!
DAY 2
When you uncover your bowl, your dough should have risen and will have a ton of tiny bubbles all over it.
Liberally flour your worksurface and pour your dough out onto it. Then with flour dusted hands fold edges in toward the center of the dough. keep going around, folding the edge into the center until it somewhat stays in a formed ball (blob). Then take it and flip, so that the smooth surface is facing up. Let it sit for 20 min.
adjust oven rack to 2nd to bottom position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Take your pizza pan (I recommend a DARK non-stick pizza pan) and pour a 1-2 Tbs olive oil right in the center.
With oiled hands place dough ontop of oil, right in center of pan, then still with oiled hands press dough out.
Once you have it pressed out fold over the outer edge all the way around to form the crust (at this point you could place string cheese cut in half lengthwise around the edge and fold crust over that to create stuffed crust) then add your toppings. When adding the cheese I make sure to sprinkle it around the crust too, it gives it that restaurant look and then lastly I sprinkle more cheese on the toppings before putting it in the oven.
Then bake for 20 minutes
Your mouth is drooling isn't it! Let it cool for 10 minutes before slicing it so the toppings don't slide off. That's it! not that hard maybe a little time consuming but well worth it.
Oh and one last thing. If you happen to have leftovers please I beg of you DO NOT microwave unless you want to commit pizza murder. Just do yourself a favor and warm it up in the oven for 10 min at 350.
