"zxcvbob" > wrote in message
...
> Weather is turning cool (probably a hard freeze tomorrow night) and I'm
> starting to use the oven again. During the summer, I bake in an electric
> roaster to keep from heating up the house. That doesn't work so well for
> pizza.
>
> Here's my make ahead pizza dough recipe:
>
> 2 cups bread flour, divided
> 1 cup warm tap-water
> 1 tsp salt
> 1/2 tsp instant dried yeast
> oil
>
> Put 1 cup of the flour and all the rest of the ingredients in a 4 to 6 cup
> bowl with a lid. I don't measure the oil, but it's probably about an
> ounce. Stir until it looks like pancake batter. Add the remaining cup of
> flour, and stir until combined. Let it rest for a half hour so the yeast
> can start working, then snap on the lid and put it in the refrigerator for
> a few days -- up to a week (maybe longer.)
>
> When ready to make a pizza, with floured hands press the dough in the
> pizza pan *before* you begin preparing the sauce, cheese, and toppings, so
> it can relax and rise just a little.
>
> Notes:
> When you're ready to clean the kitchen, instead of washing the dough bowl,
> start another batch for next week.
>
> My bag of flour is pretty compacted; you might need to use an additional
> tablespoon or three, but the dough should be wet and sticky. It might not
> look that way yet when you first mix it up because the 2nd cup of flour
> won't be totally worked in yet.
>
> Don't reduce the salt. You can leave the salt out of the sauce if you
> want to reduce the sodium, but if you leave the salt out of the crust it
> will be tasteless and adding salt at the table won't help.
>
> Best regards,
> Bob
>
>
That's not pizza. A wet foccaccia maybe. Your dough is far to wet. The dough
water ratio of 2/1 by volume creates a dough too wet and you can't do much
of anything with except what you are doing, letting it rise and baking it in
the pan.

My current recipe:
4 cups flour
1.5 tsp kosher salt
1 TB sugar, optional
2 tsp yeast
2 TB oil, optional
1.49 cups of water, warm

Combine water, oil, salt sugar in bottom of mixer pan or bread machine. Add
flour. Put yeast on top. Mix away, about 10 minutes. Rise for 2 hours. Punch
down. Don't reknead. Ball goes onto floured breadboard. Cut into two pieces.
flatten with clean flat hands, palm side down to about 10 inches. Rest until
you're ready to make the pizza. Pizza round goes onto floured wooden pizza
paddle[buy from restaurant supply house]. Gently flatten out to 16 inches.
Apply topping. Onto preheated pizza stone[stone in oven preheated to maximum
temp for at least 45 minutes] Spray oven twice 30 seconds apart with water
sprayer after pizza goes in[adds crispness, like a commercial bread oven
does]Bake 6-7 minutes. Slice with pizza cutter on paddle. Onto pizza pan.
Open beer. Eat!

Use remaining round for tomorrow's pizza.

Most pizza dough is slightly drier than the above. I usually have used 3
cups of flour to 1.25 cups water. A drier dough can be tossed in macho
fashion like they do at the parlor.
Pizza disciples don't add sugar or oil. I like both these days.
Rise only once. Pizza should have "puffy" character around the edges and be
firm throughout. Multiple risings take away that "Ciabatta" character.
Using a smaller amount of yeast, and/or using a preferment, or "biga", and
fermenting overnight in the frig is fine. I do that now and then to add
taste to the dough. The taste, however, comes mainly from the ingredients.
Tonight's pizza was made with homemade fresh Roma tomato sauce, with fresh
basil.

Yea for pizza.

Kent