Super Bowl Sunday was pretty relaxing at our house this year. We didn't completely skip traditional Super Bowl fare though, as we had pizza. But instead of ordering out, we decided to make it at home. Santa brought me a copy of Jamie's Italy for Christmas this year, and we made the easy and tasty pizza dough recipe from it. We've tried lots of pizza dough recipes at home, but this is my new favourite, and my husband really has mastered the technique! It is simple and reliable to make, and it yields a delicious chewy, yet crispy pizza crust. The semolina flour (which I found at the Bulk Barn) gives the dough an authentic taste and texture.
Jamie's Basic Pizza Dough
1 3/4 lbs strong white bread flour
1 1/2 cups fine ground semolina flour
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
1/4 oz. envelope active dried yeast
1 tablespoon golden caster (golden brown) sugar
just over 2 cups lukewarm water
Method
Pile the flours and salt on to a clean work surface and make a 7-inch well in the centre. Add your yeast and sugar to the lukewarm water, mix up with a fork and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, and a circular movement, slowly bring in the flour in gradually from the inner edge of the well and mix into the water. It will look like a stodgy porridge - continue to mix, bringing in all the flour. When the dough comes together and becomes too hard to mix with your fork, flour your hands and begin to pat into a ball. Knead the dough by rolling it backward and forward, using your left hand to to stretch the dough toward you and your right hand to push thee dough away from you at the same time. Repeat this for 10 minutes, until you have a smooth, springy, soft dough.
Flour the top of your dough, cover it with plastic wrap, and let it rest for at least 15 minutes at room temperature. This will make it easier to roll it thinly. Now divide the dough into as many balls as you want to make pizzas, i.e. lots of small ones or a few large ones, but I suggest that 6-8 is a good quantity for this amount of dough.
Timing-wise, it’s nice to roll the pizzas out 15 to 30 minutes before you start to cook them. If you want to work more in advance, it’s better to keep the dough wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge rather than having rolled-out pizzas hanging around for a few hours. Take a piece of the dough, dust your work surface with a little flour or semolina, and roll it out into a rough circle about 1/4 inch thick. Tear off an appropriately sized piece of aluminum foil , rub it with olive oil, dust it well with flour or semolina, and place the pizza base on top. Continue doing the same with the other pieces, and then, if you dust them with a little flour, you can pile them up into a stack, cover them with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge.
When you're ready to cook them, preheat your oven to 500 F. At this stage you can apply your toppings. Remember: less is more. If you can, cook the pizzas on a piece of granite or marble in your conventional oven - if not, do them one by one on the bars of the oven shelf toward the bottom of the oven. (We used to cook our pizzas on a pizza stone until we accidentally broke ours - now we cook them on a perforated pizza sheet and the crust still comes out nice and crispy.) Cook for 7 - 12 minutes, depending on the amount of toppings, until the pizzas are golden and crispy.
This dough also freezes well, so you can pop the unused portions, wrapped in plastic wrap, into the freezer, and thaw whenever a pizza craving hits.
0 comments:
Post a Comment