Best Food Processor Pizza Dough and Pizza From Start To Finish - Video

 

A Good Looking Pie

Pizza seems to be intimidating to the home cook, in part, I think, due to the intimidation of the from-scratch dough making, and due to the lore surrounding this wonderful and mysterious dish.  Go to a pizzeria and you will see 10-foot long Blodgett pizza ovens or worse, the wood-fired clay oven.  Fellas impossibly throwing dough over their heads to stretch and round it, and "old family recipe" sauces conceivably never replicated in a simple home kitchen.  Bullshit.

Hotware
The most difficult process to imitate is the oven and it's super-high (from 700 to 1000 degrees) temperature,  and the traditional stone surface in the oven that cooks the pizza from the bottom up leaving a crispy and browned crust while appropriately cooking the toppings.

But we can cheat.  We have purchased a heavy-duty pizza stone for our stove that we leave in it all the time.  DON'T BUY A ROUND STONE.  Rectangular is better (more forgiving in releasing a pizza from a peel)...thicker is better.  The stone acts as a heat sink, helping to moderate the heating and cooling cycle in our oven in the (rare) non-pizza use.  And it also make a superb crust, and as you will see in future videos our rustic breads thrive with it.  The secret?  A generous preheating.  Our oven tops off in the bake cycle at 550, and we've found we can cheat this temp a little higher as our oven is convection so throwing it into this mode (ONLY FOR THE PREHEAT) pushes the temp about 50 degrees higher.  But to really get that stone glowing??  While it is on the bottom rack, and after you have preheated in the bake cycle for about 30 minutes, put the spurs to it by switching to the broil mode for 10 minutes.  Surface temperature supremacy will be revealed, even in the most simple of home ovens (gas or electric).  Don't forget to turn it back to BAKE before you add the pizza.

We will not be teaching you to launch ufo's of dough over your head.  Learn to play the guitar, both easier and more effective in grabbing the attention of the opposite sex, than leaving bits of dough on the ceiling.  Forming on a table is sufficient and the following video describes our two-step process.

Dough step one
Start with a biga.  Or sponge.  This is a loose mix of flour and a VERY MINIMAL amount of yeast to create a starter and begin fermentation of the dough.  Think of this as the mother of the dough.  Here's the process (we are making a 3 lb batch in to lifts.  This biga will be made at least 12 hours before the creation of the final dough.  It could ferment even longer for better flavor development.  Here is the recipe:

• One cup room temperature water;
• 1/8 teaspoon instant dried yeast;
• Enough flour to create a paste similar in consistency to toothpaste.

Which leads to the question, flour.  I use bread flour, in this case King Arthur brand, commonly found in most stores.

Dissolve the yeast in the water in a bowl large enough to hold twice the ingredients.  Stir in, with a fork, enough flour to make a paste-like mass.  It does not have to be perfect and proportions only need to be approximate.  Trust the yeast to do the important work.

Biga, Finished For the Evening

Cover, and leave at room temperature overnight or longer depending on your schedule.  So far the dough has taken less than five minutes work, and the most important step is complete.

Machines - step two
You are not likely to make a scratch dough if all you have are the raw ingredients and two bare hands. Life may be too short.  A little horsepower is the solution, and I have two choices:  I have my Kitchenaid stand mixer with a dough hook, and my Cuisinart with the go-to-hell blade (don't use that silly "dough" blade).  The stand mixer is excellent and makes a fine dough, but I've become a fan of the Cuisinart for both the texture of the final product and the speed with which it takes me there.  This is a sticky, high hydration dough for the best pizza, so early and complex gluten formation at the dough's genesis is helpful for the final product.

Because my Cuisinart's capacity is only 11 cups (you have heard me complain about that before) we have to make the dough on two batches to yield three pounds of dough - enough to make four pizzas of about 12 inches in diameter.

I measure out about two cups of bread flour (we use King Arthur brand) into the work bowl, along with about 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and about 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast. In these long fermentation doughs, less yeast makes for better flavor so we are going sparingly.  Note, we are making the final dough about 12 hours after the biga has been made.  In the case of the video, we made the biga the previous evening and we are making the dough the following morning.  Pizza is planned for that evening giving this dough at least 8 hours to rise and ferment.

The Cuisinart is turned on and the dry ingredients are mixed for a few seconds.  Room temperature water (I don't have a specific measurement, it is all about texture and feel after this point) is added through the hole in the lid slowly while the machine spins.  When the texture begins to look grainy, like sand, stop adding the water and reach for the olive oil bottle.  Slowly pour (again the Cuisinart is running) about 3 tablespoons through the hole.

Now turn off the machine and grab the biga.  Take approximately half of it out if the bowl and add it to the work bowl of the Cuisinart.  Hit the spin cycle and watch the dough come together.  It will first start to bang around the bowl and perhaps remain chunky.  Add some water, about a tablespoon at a time, until the dough releases from the sides of the bowl and the ball rattles around.  Let it spin like that for about one minute, during which the important gluten strands are created.

Stop the Cuisinart, remove the top, and poke the dough.  Is it soft (it should be)?  Is it sticky (it should be slightly sticky).  If you answer no to these questions, add a little more water and take for another 30 second spin.  Repeat until you get a soft and slightly sticky dough.

Set this ball aside and start the whole process again to make the double batch.  Combine the two batches on a floured surface and knead for one minute to combine and make uniform the final ball of dough.  You'll find it weighs a little over 3 lbs.

Place in a large bowl, cover with foil, and let rise for as long as five hours, and as long as overnight.

The entire process of making both batches of dough and finishing in the bowl should take you less than ten minutes.

Sauce
Often overlooked but the important supporting actor in the pizza is the sauce.  What are most important in the sauce are fresh ingredients where appropriate.  Jarred sauce should be avoided.  Also, sauce should be used sparingly on the pizza, or risk a soggy and one-dimensional result.

Caveat:  we use canned tomatoes and canned crushed tomatoes.  I know they are not "fresh" by its most strict definition.  However, canned tomatoes taste good, are available all year, and are the basis of almost all sauces around the world.  Canned tomatoes are picked ripe and canned quickly, providing almost fresher and tastier results than the hot-house tomatoes available in your fresh veggie grocer.  The one exception for me is the use of my own home grown tomatoes, which I do use when in season.

Ingredients

• One can of diced tomatoes, drained.
• About 2/3 cup of crushed tomatoes.
• Fresh ciffonade of basil.  One package, call it one half a cup.
• Fresh garlic.  Pressed.  To taste but I like at least four.
• Salt to taste.
• Pepper to taste.

The nice part about this sauce is that it is raw upon preparation.  It cooks as a topping on the pizza, and by limiting the heating from cooking the sauce to death we get both flavor and texture.  Oh, the details?  Mix all that stuff above together and let sit for an hour to marinate.

Back to the dough
After the dough has risen for as many hours as you feel appropriate (it will probably have tripled in size), punch it down, give it a quick knead, and divide into four equal portions.  Then make a boule.  I need to do a video on this as it takes a bit of practice, but basically you are using two hands to pull the dough around the edges into a ball by forming a taught skin on top.  I find that with a portion of dough of this size, turning the dough on an UN-FLOURED surface that is just a little sticky, and rotating the ball in an elliptical motion around a center point makes the proper round and tight boule of dough.  Screw it.  Check out the video at the end of this to get a taste of the technique and I'll do a full vid shortly of BOULE MAKING.

Let the dough rise for an hour, covered with a damp towel.

After the rise - forming the dough
Bread flour is full of gluten, which allows for a beautiful crust and crumb, but it also impacts the workability of the dough.  Patience and multiple steps are the answer.

Take a well-floured and risen boule and with nimble fingers poke the dough from the center, out, and slowly allow it to take the shape of a six to ten inch disk.  Holding one side, with one of your hands, begin pulling the opposite side of the disk.  Turn the disk and repeat.  You will find that frustratingly, the disk will snap back to its original shape.  Don't sweat.

Cover the disk at this point with a moist kitchen towel and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Rest is the appropriate word...the gluten strands that are keeping the disk to its shape will relax, allowing for a final forming.  After 10, start slowly pulling the dough from the center, out.  This will expand the circle and depending on your preference for crust thickness, establish the final form.

Assembly
Having a pizza peel is imperative for the pizza making process.  Cheap and simple, we use this more than we care to discuss to remove a lot from the oven like bread, lasagna pans, and braising dishes.

After flouring your peel, and sprinkling with a generous amount of corn meal (think of this as little all bearings that help the wet dough slide off), and move your now-expanded and perfect disk to the peel.  Sparingly add the sauce, but leave the rim plane for a tasty crust.  Then cover with mozzarella cheese.  We use fresh mozz, or our own.  But beware...Skim or Part Skim mozz will ruin your hard work.  That cheese melts poorly, is tasteless, and is rubbery.  USE WHOLE MILK CHEESES ONLY.

Fire
Is your oven hot enough to melt lead?  Then you are ready.  Slip that pizza onto the super-hot baking stone with a quick forward and back motion, letting the laws of physics work.  That pizza should be nicely centered onto the stone.

10 minutes, check the pizza.

If not done, check it every two minutes until it is crispy to your taste.

Here is the video.


Jeff.