Pizza reprise

I promised a sort-of recipe for pizza, and have taken a few days to get to it: but finally... remember: I don't measure accurately for this recipe: add flour until the feel of the dough is right: a loose, but not too sticky dough. To get two cups of warm water mix 10 oz cold tap water with 6 oz of boiling water.

Pizza dough
1 fist-sized piece of old dough from yesterday's bread recipe (or longer: it keeps in the fridge for a week)
Bread flour (I use King Arthur's)
2 cups of warm water
Tablespoon or so of instant or active dry yeast
Tablespoon or so of kosher salt
Quarter cup or so of olive oil


Cut the dough into small pieces (about 10-20 pieces) and place in the warm water to soften. Sprinkle on the yeast, and stir in a cup or so of flour. Cover and leave for an hour or so. Then, in the bowl of a heavy duty stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, on low-ish speed, add flour and salt to form a shaggy dough. Add the olive oil, and knead, adding flour as necessary, still on a low speed. (My mixer warns against using higher than 2 for bread dough). Knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes or more. Place the dough in a large mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave to rise for a couple of hours.
Knead it lightly, cut into four (or more) pieces, placing each into a large ziploc bag, and place the bags in the fridge. The bag should be large enough to allow the dough to expand a lot.

Every few hours at first, or after a day or so, take the bags out and knock down the dough. The dough can be used after a few hours, but will last a week: it's probably at its best after a couple of days.

Well before baking the pizza, take the dough out of the fridge, stretch it into a medium flat circle on a large cutting board, cover, and leave it to relax.

Preheat the oven as high as it will go, with pizza stone on a rack in the middle. You want the oven to be at full temperature for a good 15 minutes at least so that the stone is fully up to temperature.

After half an hour or so, stretch it further, and if necessary, leave it to relax again.
Once it is stretched as large as needed (the thinner, the less puffy it will get: you should be able to get a half-sheet sized pie from this, so you could cut the dough smaller and get smaller pizzas from it) place it on a sheet of parchment paper, spread it thinly with home made pesto (thawed from last summer in our case), scatter with slices of fresh mozzarella, slices of tomatoes (I place mine on paper towels to absorb the juice for a few minutes) and freshly grated parmesan (I grate mine with a vegetable peeler to get large whole slices of parmesan), olives, and other desired toppings. Keep the toppings minimal, rather than trying to overload the dough.

Using a peel, or a rimless sheet pan, slide the pizza and paper together on to the stone in the oven. Bake for 10-20 minutes, depending on oven temperature, how charred you like your crust, etc. Remove from the oven with the peel, place on a cooling rack, and allow it to de-napalm-ize for about 10 minutes.

Slice and serve.

By the way, Joke, in a comment on an earlier post, suggested using the self-clean feature of an oven to heat the stones to a sufficient temperature. I've thought of trying that, but my oven has a locking door, and you can't turn on the self-clean without locking the door, and the lock is then locked in place until the oven has cooled down after the cleaning cycle is over! Foiled again. But professional pizza makers use ovens which reach temperatures much higher than your oven or mine will allow....

Yours, crustily,
N.