Topic: Pizza dough

[Sverige]

I persevered with "no knead" pizza dough for a while, but eventually came to realise that pizza really does need the gluten development that only comes with kneading at the beginning and half way through the rise. I've therefore come to rely on this one, which is based on the chefsteps recipe.  It all takes a fairly long time but the steps are simple, the results are good, and the dough balls can be frozen and defrosted without problem.

Ingredients

All purpose or bread flour 1080g
salt 1 level tbsp
water 705g
fresh yeast 4.5g or substitute 1/2 qty dried yeast.

Add flour and salt to a stand mixer and mix to combine. Meanwhile dissolve the yeast in the water.

Add yeast/water mixture to flour and knead with dough hook for 7 mins on low speed.  Oil the inside of a large bowl (7 litre capacity at least) and turn out the mix into the bowl.  Cover with cling film and leave to rise at room temp for 8 hours min (24C), or up to 14 hours in a colder room (20C)

Turn out the risen dough onto a large floured board and portion into 300g dough balls (6 from this batch size). Knead and stretch the dough balls for 1 min each and form into balls again. Oil the outside of the balls lightly and place into plastic food bags then rest them overnight in the fridge.

At this stage (after fridge) you may freeze the dough balls with no loss of quality. To defrost take out of freezer 4 hours before required then remove from plastic bag 1 hour before required.

Remove bag of dough from fridge 90 mins before required and remove plastic bag to allow dough to come to room temp.  Heat oven to fan 250C for at least 30 mins. Stretch by hand onto a Teflon mesh tray or perforated non stick tray. Stretch out to 13" size and top with pizza sauce and your toppings of choice.

Use a slide under the Teflon mat to get the pizza and Teflon mat into oven directly on the oven shelf. Turn up oven from 250C to 275c as you put the pizza in and cook 8 or 9 mins.

[mickdabass]

Thank you for sharing this recipe Svierge.

I will give it a go this weekend and report back

Kind Regards

Mick

[welder8uk]

If you haven't already discovered this, pizza dough will keep quite a long time in the fridge. Use a plastic round container approx. 2 times the size of the dough ball, put a bit of olive oil in the container, put the dough ball in, roll it around in the container to cover the surface, and it'll keep easily for a week.

And although it sounds daft about the round container, you'll struggle to make a round pizza out of a dough ball that comes out of the container square shape - obvious now lol.

The dough works best when its about 2-3 days old,

The above recipe is broadly inline with the one I use, there's loads out there. Only I use 50/50 'OO' flour and strong flour. It does make a difference to the texture, don't use purely OO, the average house oven just wont get hot enough to make the best use of OO flour.

Any left over dough after a week or so, you can make into pizza swirls, garlic dough balls, bread sticks, bread buns, bread loaf. They all work great.

Steve

[scalexkid]

Got some (measurements as above recipe) on the go as I tripe this.

Looking forwards to trying a portion out tomorrow teatime, just hope I can get the fan oven up to the max of 250 degrees.

Those Uni pizza/tandoor/naan ovens look mighty tempting at around ?200, or the jamie/jimmie home-made jobs as a slightly cheaper option.

[Sverige]

If you haven't already discovered this, pizza dough will keep quite a long time in the fridge.
<snip>

thanks for the tips on dough storage Steve. On occasions I've left mine for three or so days in the fridge and the flavour definately does improve. I just like the convenience of having dough balls ready to pull out of the freezer whichever day I decide to have pizza in the evening.  Often when I have a few leftovers in the fridge the perfect solution is to chop them up and pizza them, so it's a spur of the moment decision (as long as I decide four or five hrs before I want to eat!).  I make my pizza sauce in bulk too and portion out in baby food moulds so I can pull a few 25g frozen sticks of that out of the freezer when required too.

[scalexkid]

So here is one I prepared earlier (sorry). Using Organic Stone ground wheat bread (strong) flour, boules of mozzarella, thin sliced ham torn into pieces. Passata sauce from a carton  : I hope the picture comes out.

9 minutes at 250 degrees, on a pre-heated pizza stone, with a little cornmeal to ease sliding off a cake slide/thingie (Mary Berry uses one.....)

then out and into a heavy bottomed heated frying pan (dry) to 'char' (crisp-up) the base.

The best base I have ever made and cooked at home, so thanks Sverige for the encouragement.

And soon, the weekend, and back to the freezer to find the last base gravy for a creamy coconutted kinda-korma with a portion of pre-cooked Tilda 'boil in the microwave' coconut&chillie rice with some mini poppadoms.

[Sverige]

Glad to hear you had a good result. Get yourself one of these perforated Teflon lined mats and you should be able to dispense with the frying pan stage. It lets the heat get under the pizza better than a pizza stone in my experience

https://www.amazon.co.uk/zizzi-Quickachips-Oven-Chips-Tray/dp/B00A49OTRW

The dough, if properly prepared, should be able to be stretched out on the Teflon mat without sticking to it.

[welder8uk]

FOr a pizza stone (having bust a few), I use a granite chopping board from B&M's, cost about ?4.99, and about half an inch thick. Just remember to take the rubber pads off the bottom. Works a treat and after 2 years, I still haven't managed to break one. Takes a good 45 minutes to heat through, but cooks the base brilliantly and keeps the heat in the oven up. Cooks pizza's really fast, a basic one is done in a about 5 mins.

For the sauce I use this one, dead easy to do, also use it for making spag bol and anything else that's tomato based and italian, it just works lol.

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3735.msg32136.html#msg32136   - Novemeber No 2

or this one

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,17013.msg165501.html#msg165501

[Edwin Catflap]

Welder8 the first recipe asks for 2 cans of tomato pur

[welder8uk]

I use pasata.

What I did was to make a mix up of the spices, keep it in a jar, this is what I mix up for my ix powder for tomato sauce,

Tomato/ Pizza Sauce
200gm sugar            4tsp  tarragon
110gm salt               4tsp  margoram
64gm garlic pow     4tsp  rosemary
64gm onion pow     4tsp  thyme
8tsp oregano           2tsp fennel
8tsp basil                  2tsp paprika
                                   2 tsp pepper

from the measurements used, I worked out that it need approx. 1 hpd tbspn of mix per tin of toms/ pasata. Add more or less to suit yr own taste.

Then put that mix in a bowl, add some water or olive oil to fluidise it and nuke for a min or so, add it to the tomatoes/ pasata.