Pizza Dough

From: [email protected] (Fritz Knabe)

Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1993 07:12:53 GMT

Here's my well-used pizza dough recipe (I've made four pizzas this week

already).

flour (approx. 3 cups)

/2 tsp. salt

packet fast-rising yeast

C. water at 120-130F (use a thermometer; your hot water tap should

probably be able to give you water this hot)

tsp. olive oil

Blend the yeast with two cups of flour and the salt. Add the water and

the oil and mix to form a dough. Add more flour as necessary until you

can knead the dough. Knead for about 6 minutes (I use my KitchenAid).

Put the dough in a bowl and allow to rise for about 45 minutes. In the

meantime, preheat the oven to 400F and prepare your toppings.

Split the dough into two pieces and roll into two medium size pizzas. In

the U.S., you can use bread flour to make the pizzas. If so, the dough

should be strong enough to handle spinning in the air. For that to work,

though, *do not knead the dough (or punch down) after it has risen!* If

you want to spin, it'll probably go easier if you just resort to using

all the dough for one large pizza.

If you're rolling the dough, ideally you can roll it out on parchment

paper, which can go directly into the oven with the pizza. Why not do it

on a cookie sheet? Well, the secret of a good pizza crust (particularly

a thin one) is that the pizza should bake directly on a hot surface. I

have lined my oven with quarry tiles, and I bake my pizzas directly on

that. A pizza stone can be had at a cooking store, or you might try

baking directly on the floor of your oven. If you try to bake on a

cookie sheet that you slide into the oven with the pizza on it, I think

you'll find yourself frustrated in the quest of good crusty pizza.

So, after rolling out and preparing your pizza on top of parchment

paper, slide the paper (with the pizza on it) onto a large cutting board

held level with the counter. Then open the oven and gently shake the

cutting board so that the pizza and the paper slide right off. Don't be

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/pie/pizza/pizza-dough-2.html (1 of 2) [12/17/1999 11:29:48 AM]

Pies & Pizzas Recipes