I use my modified Peter Reinhardt pizza dough recipe except, I add 1/2 tsp more yeast and include olive oil which is not in my pizza dough.
Voila! Great home-made dough…finally!
My final recipe is:
4 cups flour (50% tipo 00, 50% Gold Medal all pourpose)
1.5 cups + (2 tablespoons WARM) of cool water
2 teaspoon salt
1 rounded teaspoon of fresh yeast (almost 2x as much as earlier in the week)
As mentioned above, I put 75% of the flour and all of the water, save for thee 2 tablespoon mentioned above, which are warm water, in the Cusinart with dough hook and pulse a few times, cover and let sit for 20 minutes. At the same time I mix the yeast with the warm (2 tablespoons) of water and about a tablespoon of the flour mixture. Then I add the wet fresh yeast mix & the salt in and the balance of flour. Pulse a few minutes trying not to heat it up too much. Knead on floured board for 5 minutes, roll into a ball and covered. Let sit for 1 hour covered. Then punch down, split in 2 parts and refrigerate for AT LEAST 24 hours. Last nights was with 3 days fermentation.
The finished pizza was light, airy and very tasty. The crown had the rise I wanted. The bottom had some nice browning, and light charring on the edges. My son said it was the best crust he ever tasted, and I would like to think it up there as well.
I am now experimenting with dried mozzerellas and purchased a very tasty one to continue on my expementations. Rust does not sleep.
For those that color outside the lines occasionally I thought I’d post one of my go to crowd pleaser pizza recipes that sounds weird but is actually really tasty. As always hoped for, the flavors combine to make something much better than the whole.
It’s basically chicken Satay pizza with fresh cilantro.
The best way I’ve made it is to marinate chicken breasts for 2 hours with vinegar, oil, garlic salt, pepper, chopped parsley and one finely chopped garlic clove per breast. Grill the breasts until done, use the remainder of marinade to baste and get all the garlic on the chicken. Then slice chicken into thin slices and cut into half inch pieces for topping.
To top, use the peanut sauce instead of tomato sauce on your pie, apply the chicken on top of the peanut sauce, and go very lightly with the cheese. Bake.
When the crust is done, take the pizza out and add fresh cilantro on top.
This is a tasty pizza I learned to make from an Indonesian buddy.
I like to use pulled pork (I keep frozen vacuum packages on hand) on a light spicy mexican sauce. Top with cotija or monterey jack. When out of the oven top with cilantro/watercress/jicama julienne salad lightly dressed with olive oil and lemon. This violates the simple neopolitan principles, and is basically a pizza taco and is delicious.
All this pizza love has us itching to get into the game. Unfortunately we do not have a stand mixer, but I noticed that you use a Cuisinart. What kind? I have a Cuisinart Deluxe 11 with a dough blade attachment. Do you think this will work?
Ok I’ll contribute my thoughts/findings on making dough. I rely heavily on Jeff Varasano’s wisdom - if you are new to pizza dough, studying this site is a must: Jeff Varasano's NY Pizza Recipe" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
One ace in the hole I have is an oven that can reach 650 to 675-ish, which churns out a pizza with a high hydration percentage in less than 5 minutes.
On the topic of flour, after testing some of the very expensive mail-order flours Jeff V. is convinced that King Arthor’s Bread Flour is the way to go. You and read more about his thoughts on his site.
Because my oven gets pretty hot - but not the 900 degrees that Jeff gets by running the self-cleaning cycle and breaking the lock - my recipe has a lower hydration level than the recipe on his site. These proportions are for one 13" pie, just multiply by the number of pies you plan to do - but I normally don’t do anything less than 4 at time.
125 grams water
168 grams flour (King Arthor Bread Flour)
6 grams Kosher salt
1 tsp Instant Rise Yeast per 453 grams of water used. (I use Feripan)
Method - Add everything but 25% of the total flour into a stand mixer with a dough hook (I use a Kitchen Aid Pro 600). Mix on low until it just comes together - about 90 seconds. Let sit for 20 minutes for Autolyse - the dough should look more like batter at this point. Start mixer on low again and knead for 5 minutes. After five minutes has passed, start to slowly add the last 25% of the flower just a little at a time - over the next two minutes while the mixer is still running on low. Now increase the speed of the mixer to about 1/3 and continue adding the residual flour. At this point I watch the dough - as soon as it starts to just clump on the hook, I let it the mixer run another 30 seconds or so and stop. Don’t worry if you haven’t added all of the residual flour, the dough is done. Cover and let rest for another 20 minutes.
Pour out dough (it will still be pretty wet) on a floured surface. Use a board scraper to divide-up the ball of dough into 300 gram balls. Each ball is big enough for a 13" pie. Now place each ball into it’s own plastic container (I use the cheapo 2 cup Ziplock containers) that has been VERY lightly polished with olive oil.
Put containers in the fridge and let them rise slowly over the next 36 to 48 hours - no punch downs needed. Pull containers out of the fridge about an hour before you’re ready to cook and they will finish rising while the oven is heating. At 675 degrees, my pies take about 5 minutes.
I’ve had a lot of success with this recipe - very thin crust with lots of flavor. Good luck to anyone who wants to start doing this - be prepared to do several test runs before you find a recipe/method that works for you.
multi-tasking turned to triage
Brilliant. Spoken like someone who entertains.
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I have the 11 cup as well. I break my dough into two and use the supplied dough blade. Works fine. I re-combine and finish the last 10 minutes by hand. Cool water and check to make sure it does not get heated.
Peter - there is a difference between fresh and dry yeast. The dry yeast is actually a live cell surrounded by dead ones. You don’t know how it was stored, etc. The fresh cake yeast is usually the best if you’re worried about consistency. when I had a bakery, we only used fresh.
Alternatively, you can take some flour and water, mix it up, and put it on the counter. Keep a layer of water on top - the flour will settle down to the bottom. In a few days you’ll have a little bit of bubbles and that’s a new yeast. They are entirely unpredictable because you don’t know what you got going, but if you don’t like it you can dump it and start again. If you’re lucky, you get a real nice flavor that you don’t get from the commercial yeast, which is made for consistency, not flavor Sound like wine? Of course, if you bake a lot, you probably get what you used last time. I’ve “caught” a few that aren’t really perfect but some that are really slow but on the other hand, add a realy nice flavor.
As far as the flour - people don’t understand what’s happening too well. There are four things you need to worry about - flour, leavening agent, liquid, and heat. What does that mean?
Your yeast may act more or less quickly, depending on what you’re using. I like long slow rises for at least 24 hours - it really makes a big difference in the texture of the bread. So if I have one of those new yeasts for bread machines, I use about a quarter of what I would use if it were another yeast. And if it’s something I captured, I just play with it a while before figuring out how it will work.
Liquid provides the steam for the rise and also the basis for developing the gluten in the flour. If you add a little oil, you get a “richer” texture so eggs, butter, olive oil, etc., will slightly modify your crust. And also will using more or less salt. I have no idea what proportions to recommend as I’ve never really measured for home cooking. As a commercial baker we used weight but there was a lot of play.
Heat - Your home oven doesn’t get as hot as a wood fired oven. When you put the dough into the wood fired oven, it gets super-hot super-fast, rises, and cooks. Lower gluten flour doesn’t rise as quickly and you don’t necessarily get the same chewiness or texture so you have to figure out what you’re going to do to obtain it.
In a home oven, if you use lower gluten flour that takes a little longer to heat and rise, and we’re only talking a few minutes here - your dough doesn’t stretch as fast as quickly and with the slower action, you get a better rise and your texture is better. So you can’t simply take the same ingredients that someone else uses under different circumstances, treat them differently, and get the same result. It’s why I never use the Italian flour. And if you go to the pizza places around town, they use whatever works for them. The Italian 00 refers to the grind, not gluten content, and you can get Italian 00 flour with 5-7% or 10-12% gluten.
As far as hydration - you really have to tell by feel. We used to make a few hundred croissants every morning and you always felt the flour with your fingers before deciding on exactly how much of each you would use.
Don’t know about the mechanical mixers. I like kneading dough and for whatever amount I’m going to use at home, I just do it by hand. What Mike seems to have done in using a blend of all-purpose flour with the other, is find out what combination of flours and gluten will work for his unique situation. That’s exactly the right approach.
Happy baking.
Incidentally Mike - congrats.
I knew that sooner or later you’d stop with the purchased dough!
Mike, I attended the Clos Pepe allocation bbq yesterday, where Jeff from New West Catering was pumping out delicious pies all day long.
His crust is chewy, yet soft as a pillow at the same time. It might be one of the five best crusts I’ve ever experienced.
He uses 100% tipo fino 00 with a two day rest. All hand stretched. I’m pretty sure he said the wood fired oven was at 800 F.
I felt the dough, and it was pliable and as soft as a baby’s ass.
I believe there were some other WBers there - I’d be curious to see how they liked the pies.
I thought they were incredible.
John, where do I get the 00 flour in SB County? There was a little store in SB on the beach side of 101 that used to carry it, but doesn’t anymore. Does Jordano’s sell it?
I missed the Clos, got caught up working on a fall/winter garden.
I know a guy…
Seriously, would you like to split a bag? It’s a 50lber - it’ll run us about $20 each.
Thanks Mike! Looks like we need to spring for the WS pizza stone and dive in. Although we might have to wait until things cool down around here. I can’t imagine heating the oven up to 500 while running the AC!
Sounds good. I’m in. 
Hot around here as well. Lucky for me I have a summer kitchen with a new gas oven in my basement walk-in. Easily gets to 550. My living level (1st) stays cool.
Greg, I am thrilled with my dough. You need to get here and taste for yourself. 
IN!!
Plus I love the idea of the chimnea or whatever that thing is. Perfect! I was thinking of using a piece of cast iron or heavy steel that I would put directly on the charcoal in my Weber. Your way has the advantage of being easy to get in and out though.
Thanks for the information!
Tried the vera pizza napoletana dough recipe for the first time tonight, using half Caputo OO and King Arthur all purpose flour. Best crust I have ever made, and one of the best that I have tasted. It took 8:30 minutes in a convection oven. I probably could have let it go longer and gotten the crown a bit browner, but the bottom was perfect, and the cheese had caramelized nicely. I think that the dough was a touch too wet, so I’ll try using more flour next time, or maybe I started with too much flour before autolysing. Whichever, I need to correct that. Time to get a starter going. I had one for years, but let it go a few years ago. Also, after looking at Jeff Verasano’s web page, I’ll probably try using KA bread flour when I run out of the Caputo, which is a bit of a pain to find around here.
Glad it worked as well for you as me.