Well the new year is here and it's been 7 years that I've been working on trying to finish this thread. I thought maybe a year, I'd do a few posts and freshen up thing with a couple of photos and here we are, 3 million views later (I just saw that this thread is right behind the 12-gauge Garage - the famous post that lured most of us here) and I am no closer to finishing this damn thread than when we bought it 7 years ago.
Er, house.
You guys have been a wonderful help, source of encouragement and frankly a very indiscriminate audience. You should have higher standards frankly.
Nonetheless while I should be doing a few dozen other things I wanted to update this thread with an important and completely in keeping off topic topic. Something that I get asked about a lot and something that I love dearly, almost as much as motorcycles and certainly more than this house.
Pizza!
You can unsubscribe now - I totally get it.
It vaguely relates to this thread since it is something that I've learned about and been doing here in this house for the past 5 years at least. It's one of our family traditions - Friday is Pizza/Movie night and it's the best night of the week.
This pizza is generally referred to as "Grandma Pie" for reasons that escape me. It's not quite Chicago style, it's not deep dish but rather it's own thing. It is marked buy a crisp crust and a soft interior and a pretty intense flavor. It's also very easy as introductions to the dark arts of bread goes and will rival any pizza you've ever had delivered.
You can use a bowl, a bin or a clear Cambro 6qt container like I'm doing. I use all Cambro stuff because it's big and simple and reliable and I can get it at the restaurant supply place. I like having lots of the same container and I like having lots of staples like flour and sugar.
Put in 375g of very hot tap water. 90-95F
You will also use a scale - set to grams - like a real cook will. Flour and most things vary in density so recipes that use weight are accurate and volume isn't. I know you guys use metric so stay with me here - a digital scale is like digital calipers... digital.
Next you put in 1/2 tsp of yeast. Any kind, doesn't matter. And don't mention that I just switched to volume here because it's only like 2 grams so imagine we just switched to thousandths.
12 grams of salt. Please tell me you're using Kosher salt and not Mortons. If you aren't buy Kosher next time and put it in Parmesan cheese shaker. It's more coarse, has no iodine and is used by all chefs. Like the scale.
Here's a place where we need to be specific; flour is important since it's basically all we're using. For this pizza we're going to use bread flour. Bread flour has more protein and can develop more gluten and that gives the pizza more air bubbles and a fluffier crust. We want that. We want the structure it gives. I use Bob's because it's local and good. Any bread flour is fine and if you don't have it All Purpose will work too but not be quite as good.
500 grams of bread flour go in the bowl. You'll use the TARE function to just reset the scale after you add each ingredient which makes this very easy.
You could use a mixer with a dough hook but honestly your hand is way better, faster and easier to clean. Pinch and swirl the dough for maybe a minute until it's combined in a shaggy mess. Leave it for 20 minutes with a cover - either the lid to the cambro (another reason to like them) or cling wrap or a damp dish towel. You just don't want the dough to dry out at all.
After 20 minutes scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a counter with a sprinkling of flour (any kind - it's just running interference for us here). Stretch the dough in any direction and fold it into thirds. Now we'll kneed it for about a minute or so. The way I do it is to use one hand to push in the middle and then fold the dough in half, turn a quarter turn and fold in half pushing down with your heal. There's lots of ways to do it and what you're doing here is developing the gluten by stretching the dough.
You'll notice that the dough will very quickly go from shaggy to very smooth as you fold and kneed it.
This step took me a bit to figure out but basically when you fold the dough there will be a seam where the two sides meet. Place that side down. Now pull the dough towards you so that the friction of the counter sort of pulls the front edge of the dough under. It's like we're tucking in a shirt. Rotate the ball and do that again and again and again until you've gone around it and pulled the dough all under and you have a tight, smooth ball of dough with a seam underneath.
Add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the container you were using. This will keep the dough from sticking and begin the gluttonous use of olive oil that marks this pizza. Also, you'll note that I use liquor pour spouts on my olive oil bottle - we use EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) a LOT and this makes using it easier and neater. Try it.
Maybe I use more than 1 tbsp? You can see the dough is taught and smooth and round - that's what you're going for.
Put the cover on your container and you're done for the next 4-6 hours. All in you can do this process in about 10 minutes or less in the morning when you get up, after coffee or whenever but time is what we need now for the yeast to do it's thing. If your house is warm it will rise more, cool less. You're looking for around 70F ideally but close is fine.
So now we'll take a quick intermission and make some sauce because you can make a way better sauce than you can buy.
Here's all you need. If you have garden tomatoes go for it but canned tomatoes are alway ripe and work better in many ways. I like Muir Glen Fire Roasted and recently I've found they have these San Marzono Style and those are the famous Italian tomatoes most often used for pizza. This recipe is for a big batch of sauce so if you don't want to make so much just cut it down but it freezes well. Next is tomato paste, oregano, chile flakes, garlic and some fresh basil.
Part of what makes this recipe and sauce so good is it's heavy reliance on EVOO. Oils are fats and fats transfer flavor better than anything. For this large batch we use a 1/2 cup of oil and place it in a small sauce pan on the stove over low heat.
Place the garlic in the oil and lightly fry the peeled garlic cloves turning them once to get them golden. We're doing two things - infusing the oil with garlic flavor and softening both the bite and texture of the garlic.
Open your tomatoes (two 28oz. cans) and tomato paste (half the small can 4oz.) as the garlic is cooking.
Put the garlic in a blender along with the canned tomatoes and half the small can of tomato paste (4oz.) Save that oil we just used.
You can blend this how you like - chunky or very smooth but we prefer it very smooth. It makes it much easier to spread on the pizza.
I secretly increase my kids spice tolerance by subtlety adding heat to things but once chipotle pepper can add a little more heat and a nice soft smoke hint. Optional.
Transfer the oil we cooked the garlic in to a much larger sauce pan than can hold all the tomato puree and heat the oil until it shimmers - low to medium heat - and add a tsp of oregano...
...and a tsp of chile flakes. This will add some heat and depth. I'm not a fan of the sweet sauces but you could skip this if you hate heat. It's not much heat - my kids don't notice it.
At this point I will put in a few fresh stems of basil to infuse the oil with some of the flavor. We sauté this for just a minute or less - you don't want to burn the spices.
Add the tomato puree and quickly stir it as it will bubble and spit as it hits the hot oil. Stir the sauce and let it come to a boil and then lower the temp and simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes.
Fish out the basil which has given it's all is no longer needed.
I use about 1 tsp of salt but you can adjust to taste up or down. Always salt towards the end because as a sauce cooks down it will get more salty.
Also pepper - to taste. Just those two things are the most important spices you can use in pretty much anything.
And that is your pizza sauce. I typically make this sauce about once every two or three weeks and it serves as pasta sauce and pizza sauce and, as mentioned, freezes very well. We have these small containers that will allow us to freeze and use it in smaller quantities.
Now back to the pizza crust.
After four or five hours it will have about doubled in size and become very soft so it's now ready to be taken out. Before we do that it's time for more olive oil. I warned you we're going to use a lot.
Add another 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil to a half sheet baking tray (aproximately 12x17"). This is where the pizza departs things you may have known and where the intensity comes from - we're almost deep frying this dough.
Ease the dough out onto the pan without flipping it. Pizza dough always remains upright. Then gently stretch it out in the center of the tray. It won't fit yet as it needs to relax and expand but we're going to pull it out as much as we can.
And then drizzle more olive oil on the top of the dough. Yup.
Then cover the dough with some plastic wrap to keep it from drying out. That's the biggest thing you want to avoid as any spot that dries out won't expand when it bakes because it's lost it's elasticity.
Cover the tray now with a damp kitchen towel to just help make sure it stays moist. It can stay like this for hours if needed or you can give it just another 30-60 minutes to relax and rise. Longer is better with two hours about ideal.
About an hour before you plan to eat the pizza preheat the oven to 500F and give the dough it's final stretch out to the corners of the pan. I do this by pushing the dough through the plastic wrap from the center to the edges...
And by tugging the corners out. The dough will keep trying to retract a bit so you'll need to over stretch a bit.
Now it's time to sauce the pizza. A few good tablespoons of sauce can be spread around with a large spoon.
And you can now add another drizzle of olive oil if my sister is joining you because Lara loves the stuff more than you can know. But it's also adding a deepness to the pizza and surprisingly it won't feel or taste greasy. Trust me here.
Then bake the crust with the light coating of sauce in the 500F oven (middle rack) for about 8-12 minutes depending on your oven. You're going for almost cooked here with a very slight golden tone to the edges. When it comes out I like to put a wire rack under the pizza to make sure it cools without getting soggy - not from the oil but just the trapped moisture of the dough. Soggy pizza is a no no.
So at this point the pizza crust can hang out as long as you need. You could even freeze this to be reheated or remade at any time but ideally we want to just let it cool a little while so that some of the moisture in the crust evaporates. This pre bake is what is so different than most pizzas and makes it work so well. We've cooked down that sauce so it is more intense than a regular sauce and we've used all that olive oil to seal the crust forming a barrier to our toppings so that the pizza won't become soggy when you top it.
Now we make the actual final pizza. We sauce it again - now with as much as you want. That crust will hold up to a pretty heavy saucing.
Slide it off the cooling rack and back into the tray. There should still be some olive oil in there but if not give just a bit more to make sure it won't stick.
Toppings are obviously up to you. This pizza can handle a heavy load. The one exception here is cheese and I would encourage you to use fresh mozzarella - the kind you find in the refrigerator section of the grocery. It not only tastes better but it has a higher moisture content and so holds up to the heat better than the processed or shredded mozzarella that is used on lesser pizzas. Our go to is sausage, peppers, onion, olives and artichoke hearts. Or keep it simple - it works either way.
Loaded up and ready to bake. Same temp and same time as before 8-12 minutes.
Slide it out of the pan and onto a cutting board for serving and cut into squares. Our family loves the edges more than the center sections but even the center ones stay crisp on the bottom. The twice cooked and double sauced pizza is a real flavor bomb and very unctuous.
You can see there's still a lot of air bubble in the crust but it's not exactly fluffy - more focaccia like. We add fresh basil after it cooks (before it tends to wilt and lose it's impact) and maybe a little fresh Parmesan grated over top. Despite this long post this is a very easy pizza to make - a super way to start making pizza at home and if you already do a fun way to break up the pizza styles with something a bit different. We typically alternate between this and "round" pizza's ever week and while I love challenge of making traditional thin crust pizzas and have gotten pretty good at it this pizza never fails to win people over.
So there you go. The shark has jumped over the table on pizza Friday (on a Wednesday). I post this because so many people see my occasional Instagram posts of pizza Fridays and ask about it. I've shared this with friends who all have enjoyed the pizza and so I wanted to share it with you. I love making this and love that it's become a tradition in our house. It's easy and it's good and I hope you are inspired to give it a try.
Next up will be garage stuff - this is going to be a very busy month.
Gregor
