baking Making Pizza!!!

Steve973

Steve973

As someone who comes from southeast Pennsylvania, pizza is pretty important to me. I might offend some people, but since I moved to Maryland, I have found myself in a pizza wasteland. I have found a couple of places that make acceptable pies, but most places are in a sad state of affairs as far as their pizza is concerned.

Lately, I've been making my own pizzas at home. It's not terribly difficult to make some pretty great pizza. Do any of you make your own pizzas from scratch as well? I have to say that it is really rewarding when you pull an awesome homemade pizza from your oven!

The biggest difference between a homemade pie and a proper pizzeria pie is the "doneness" of the crust. I use a pizza stone, but the toppings definitely finish before the crust has a decent amount of browning. It's not doughy but it could use some more of that authentic uneven brownness.

Let me know if you have any insight, experience, or advice on this particular aspect. And I am also more than happy to share my sauce or dough recipe, or anything else I've learned, with anyone who is interested.
 
Search The Pizza Throwdown and Famous Passow Pizza, as well as TB's Notorious Pizza. Pizza is a miracle food. Jayt makes a killer pizza, as well as Quad. Please post pics!
 
I have two ideas for you Steve as far as the crust goes. First, make sure your stone is preheated for about 30 minutes before you put the pizza on it. Second, if that doesn't do it you may have to consider rolling your dough a little thinner, or maybe even prebaking it for a bit before adding the toppings. If you do prebake it, make sure you put oil on it and put some fork holes throughout so it doesn't rise.
 
JayT said:
I have two ideas for you Steve as far as the crust goes. First, make sure your stone is preheated for about 30 minutes before you put the pizza on it. Second, if that doesn't do it you may have to consider rolling your dough a little thinner, or maybe even prebaking it for a bit before adding the toppings. If you do prebake it, make sure you put oil on it and put some fork holes throughout so it doesn't rise.
Click to expand...

The Pizza Overlord has spoken!
 
JayT said:
I have two ideas for you Steve as far as the crust goes. First, make sure your stone is preheated for about 30 minutes before you put the pizza on it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I was wondering if the stone heated up as fast as the oven, but I figured that it probably didn't. My oven gets up to 550F on regular mode and 525F on convection mode. I'll definitely try to heat up the stone a bit more.

Well, just for the heck of it, I thought I'd share my recipe for everyone

Sauce:

29 oz can of plain tomato sauce
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar

Mix all ingredients together. Preferably make this a day or two ahead and refrigerate.

Dough:

8 oz (weight) high gluten (bread) flour
5 oz (volume) water
1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar

Rehydrate the yeast in the specified amount of warm water with the sugar for 5 or 10 minutes. Then combine and knead, or use either a bread machine or a stand mixer for about 10 minutes. Remove, create a round dough ball, and lightly cover with oil and allow to rise for about an hour.

Procedure:

Stretch, toss, or roll out the dough into a 13" pizza. Top with a light coating of the sauce and freshly shredded low moisture, part skim mozzarella cheese. Add whatever else you like, such as pepperoni, Italian sausage, etc, and bake on your highest setting until the cheese is melted and the crust is done. It takes about six minutes in a 550 degree oven on a pizza stone.
 
Sounds pretty good steve.

I love making home made pizza from scratch and my base sauce is almost identical to yours. (I add a little sweet marjoram as well).

As for the dough, I mix all my dry ingredients then add the warm water. I love making fresh bread and I love to get a good crust on the bread and to help with this I use brown sugar instead of normal sugar. I use the same principals for pizza dough and I usually get a nice crust......It doesn't automatically give you the best crust in the world, but it does help to crust the base up pretty good.
 
The dough recipe I posted is light and soft and the dough is rather moist. I will be trying a heftier dough in the next couple of days and see what that does for my pizza making. I currently hand toss my pizza dough, and it's definitely Philly (or New York) thin and has a puffy crust edge.

This is the one I'll be trying:

3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
2 tsp yeast
1 cup water (105F - 115F)

Rehydrate yeast in the water for 10 mins, mix everything together, knead by hand vigorously for 10 minutes or by machine for 7 - 8 minutes. Split in half and allow to rise. This recipe makes two 13 - 14 inch pizzas.

I will let everyone know how it compares.
 
Hey Stevo, what type of flour are you using? One thing about baking....to attain accuracy it is really necessary to weigh ingredients rather than go by volume. It also helps the dough to develope fully by chilling in the fridge for a day after punching down after the first proof. The next day an hour or two in advance, pull the dough and allow it to proof again, punch down and roll out. The recipe you just posted is a pretty good base.
 
I weigh the flour for the first recipe I posted. I have let the dough rise for about an hour and used it the same day, and I have let the dough rise for almost 24 hours in the fridge before using it. I made the second recipe tonight, and it's in the fridge right now. I just measured the flour by volume, making sure it wasn't compacted. I'll probably try making a pizza with it tomorrow. If it's any better than the dough recipe I have been using up to this point, I'll probably figure out the weight of the flour and use that from now on for consistency.
 
Oh, I missed your question about the type of flour I'm using. I use bread flour because of the extra gluten. It's great for the texture it gives pizza dough.

I was looking over some threads here, and I will definitely have to take some pictures the next time I make a pizza (and it'll probably be tomorrow). My first pictures will probably be of the making of a plain pizza, but I wanted to contribute because mine is a bit different than the photos I've seen here. I grew up with thin crust pizza, so mine reflects that style. We also had Sicilian pizza whee I grew up, but that's totally on the other end of the crust thickness spectrum. It's too bad that I didn't get into pizza making this past spring, because I would have had fun contributing to the pizza thread. It is, after all, my latest obsession!
 
Hey Steve,

That's essentially the dough recipe I use (the second one). I choose to use extra vigin olive oil, rather than vegetable/canola oil.

I must admit I machine knead my dough and use it after the first rise and further kneading due to limited fridge space. I am happy with it. However, the last batch was a bit wet and the dough deformed on my pizza trays, making removal hard.

as for toppings, I made some scotch bonnet/orange hab powder last season that is a great shake over the top. Otherwise, I always add some hot sauce to the tomato sauce base. If it was just me eating the dough mix I would prolly add some chilli to the dough. (Any thoughts here?)

RS
 
I suppose it would depend on how thin your crust is. Some pizza crust could accommodate it, but I don't think that mine could. Mine is probably 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch thick. A decent alternative would be to just top the pizza with diced chilies. I am considering doing a pineapple and chinense combination.
 
I love pizza's too. the place i work we sell alot, and i like to hand toss literally toss but my problem is the ceiling is very low soo i gots to LEAN BACK I'm gonna try and put a video up, of some hand tossing skillza. I owuld like to see evryoneelses hand tossing skillz obviously a high ceiling makes it alot lot easier, If i hit the ceiling my pizza is ruined. UNfortunatley we don't make our own dough but hell we go through soo much.
I have all the stuff to make pizza at home just never done it because i have never made my own dough from scratch that i can remember from being a youngster. this thread has inspired me soo i will give it a shot. i htink im gonna try your second dough recipe thanx steve-o for postin!
 
Alittle pizza tossing insight, I notice when flatening always have outer edges thinner than center. Having a good circle at the beginning helps alot!
http://s284.photobucket.com/albums/ll12/noshownate/?action=view&current=VID_00010.flv
was at work had pizza ordered and friend filmed unfortunately i had on shot and towards end the dough came alittle lop sided no big deal but anyways hand tossing is fun. i like to watch the comps kinda cool oh yeah low ceiling makes this very hard as you can see.
 
I"ve been using "00" flour instead of high gluten and I like the results! Actually 2/3 "00" and 1/3 semolina makes a nice crispy crust.

One trick I do since I dont have a stone is to slide the pizza off the pan about halfway through and finish it on the oven rack. Crisps up real nice!
 
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