Good pizza at home remains somewhat elusive
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- May 8, 2021
- 932
Our area, and I mean all of the Coshocton, Holmes, Stark, Tuscarawas and Wayne county area, is literally covered in pizza possibilities. There are family pizzerias, which have been around since our grandparents and great-grandparents were children. There are chains of every imaginable iteration, and there are restaurants that put pizza on the menu because they feel they have to. We eat a lot of pizza in these parts. Good pizza at home, however, remains somewhat elusive, at least for me.
In a standard home oven, it’s not easy to achieve a nice, crispy, browned crust. It’s no easy thing to get toppings that cook at a rate that allows for fully crisped crust. And it is not at all easy to get a slice that holds itself proud in the air and doesn’t droop over your fingers and require a knife and fork. I know you might not mind, but such pizza really isn’t correct, and if you’re going to make pizza at home, you may as well try and get it right.
I’m seeing quite a few advertisements online for backyard pizza ovens. If you have the space and spare cash, you can construct quite a wood-fired setup in your backyard and turn out amazing pizzas all year.
There also are metal standalone propane-fired ovens that can get you into the home pizza business right out of the box. I’ve also seen adaptations for charcoal kettle grills, which promise to up your pizza game.
To get a cooked top, fully cooked dough from edge to middle and crisped crust, you need some stones and a lot of heat. The pizza ovens promise to deliver this.
But if you want to get something like that in your kitchen, you’ll have to get creative. Ideally, you should line the bottom rack of your oven with baking stones, which you can pick up online for a decent price. You need an oven you can pop up to 500 F and hold there. And you need a good dough recipe, which I have for you today.
The only difficulty with the recipe is a little preplanning is required. For pizza on the weekend, you should start this dough on Tuesday, allowing for something called a cold ferment in the refrigerator for several days. It is generally referred to as a 72-hour dough, and I’ve avoided making it until recently because of that long lead time. Planning a meal five days out is not among the things we do well at our house. But I’m a convert, in part because the crust has far more flavor and texture than a dough allowed to rise for just a few hours, and you also get a nice dough that doesn’t fight you when you roll it out and bakes up crisp and light.
I’ve also been using a very simple sauce: a can of the excellent, imported Cento Certified Roma tomatoes with garlic, olive oil, basil and oregano, and uncooked. Just whiz it all up in the blender and let it sit for a while in a bowl.
The dough recipe makes two 16-inch pizzas. We’re using little yeast because you don’t want this dough to get active too quickly.
3 3/4 cups bread flour
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 cups water or a little more as needed
Whisk together the flour, yeast and salt in a bowl. Switching to a wooden spoon, stir in the water, a little at a time. When the flour is all moistened, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and knead the sticky lightly, just to get rid of clumps. Place the dough in a clean, oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a draft-free spot for 24 hours, until doubled and bubbly.
Flour your counter again and divide the dough into two equal pieces, forming each into a round by folding the outer edges into the middle and turning it over, then round it out to finish. Place each in a separate plastic bag, seal them up and let rest in the refrigerator for at least three days, and up to six. Bring to room temperature for one hour before using.