Greg.Randall

September 23rd 2019

I really like cooking pizza at home. If you get everything figured out it’s pretty hard to beat. My recipe is pulled from the Ratio Cookbook.

I start off by putting my Kitchen Aid Mixer bowl on a scale and zeroing the scale. I add the flour, salt, yeast, and olive oil. I put the mixing bowl back on the Kitchen Aid and mix at a low speed for a minute to combine the ingredients while I weigh the water.

Depending on how humid it is the dough might need a bit more or less water. I typically add about 80% of the water and let the Kitchen Aid mix for a couple of minutes. If there are dry bits of flour at the bottom of the mixing bowl, I add a bit of the remaining water. I will repeat this process until all of the flour comes together into a single ball.

I let the dough knead in the Kitchen Aid for about 10 minutes, then I pull the dough ball out and put it on the scale. I normally get a ball of dough about 920 grams. While the dough is out of the mixing bowl, put a glug of olive oil in the mixing bowl and smear the inside of the bowl with oil.

I then put the dough back in the bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for an hour. I then split the dough into three 306gr balls, each ball goes into an oiled container (tupperware, ziplock bag, bowl with plastic wrap, etc.) and put into the fridge for a 24 hour cold rise.

The cold rise contributes a lot to the flavor of the dough, and also letting the dough rest for 24 hours makes forming the pizza really really easy.

An hour or two before I plan to make pizza I preheat my oven to it’s hottest temp 550F (300C). It takes a long time for a pizza stone to heat up to it’s full temperature.

I sprinkle a pizza peel generously with semolina, and very gently remove the pizza dough from it’s container, and let it stretch a little with gravity. Once it’s maybe 6″ (15cm) across it goes on the peel. I then stretch the pizza to about 10″ (25cm) by gently lifting the edges and pulling outwards.

Once the pizza is the correct size, I will shake the peel a couple of times to make sure the pizza slides around easily. If it doesn’t slide easily I’ll add a bit more semolina to the peel.

My go to topping for pizza is homemade tomato sauce (which at some point I’ll write a post about), but any kind of tomato sauce that’s reasonably thick will work. Then I add chunks of the cheapest store brand mozzarella (it melts beautifully). Then I sprinkle a good amount of finely grated Pecorino Romano for favor. Finally some kind of cured meat gets added on top — I like prosciutto a lot, but any kind of salami is good. If you have fresh basil add some.

The pizza is then slid onto the pizza stone, and cooked for about 7 minutes. Peek through the door every couple minutes to see if the crust is browning. I like to pull the pizza out when some of the crust has a golden brown.

If you plan to make more than one pizza try and let your oven reheat for 10 minutes.