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.Basics: Hand-Method Pizza Dough

Source of Recipe

From "The Harvest Baker" by Ken Haedrich


Recipe Introduction

"Before there were food processors, KitchenAid mixers, bread machines, and bread machine apps, there were the good old days of making yeast bread by hand. That's how I learned to make bread, and at the risk of sounding like an old crank who walked 10 miles to school in a snowstorm when I was a boy, you should, too. This is a good recipe to start with if you've never made yeast bread before. The dough is responsive — you can feel it spring to life in your hands — and you only have a relatively small quantity of dough to work with. As you add flour, you get to experience how a living dough evolves from raw ingredients into a cohesive mass. This sort of hands-on learning transmits valuable messages to the brain that a machine can't."

List of Ingredients

â—¦ 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons lukewarm water (105 to 115° F)
â—¦ 1 teaspoon sugar
â—¦ 1 packet (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
â—¦ 3 to 3 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
â—¦ 1 ½ teaspoons salt
â—¦ 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus a little for the bowl


Recipe

Pour the water into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar. Sprinkle the yeast over the water. Let it sit for a minute, then give it a little ruffle with a fork to stir it up. Set it aside for 5 minutes. As it sits, you'll see the mixture begin to bubble up and come alive.

Add 1 ¾ cups of the flour to the water. Using a wooden spoon, stir vigorously for 100 strokes; the dough will be quite thick at this point but not firm enough to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Set the dough aside for 5 minutes.

Add the salt and 2 tablespoons olive oil to the dough. Stir well. Start adding the remaining flour to the dough, no more than ¼ cup at a time — less as the dough gets firmer. Before long, the dough will begin to pull away from the sides. When it does, work the dough vigorously against the sides of the bowl with your wooden spoon for a minute or two.

Dust your work surface with some of the remaining flour and turn out the dough. Dust the dough and your hands with flour and start kneading, gingerly at first because it will be sticky. The usual way of kneading is to push the dough down and away from you, bring the dough back toward you, fold it over, give it a quarter turn, and repeat. (The easiest way to learn this skill is by watching someone else do it. If you don't have an experienced kneader in your life, find one on YouTube.) Continue dusting your dough with flour as required.

After 8 or 9 minutes of kneading, your dough should be smooth, supple, and elastic. If tears develop in the dough, you're pushing too hard. Smear a teaspoon or two of olive oil in a large ceramic or glass bowl, add the dough, and turn it to coat the surface with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Place the bowl in a warm, draft-free spot until the dough is doubled in bulk, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Once it has doubled, punch down the dough and proceed with your recipe.

Makes enough dough for 2 medium pizzas
or 2 or more calzones



• For whole-wheat pizza dough:
Before you start, combine 1 ¾ cups whole-wheat flour and 1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour in a bowl and whisk well to mix. Use this custom flour mixture to prepare your dough.