恺宁 and i got ourselves a pizza stone in march and needed a good dough recipe to go with it. it didn’t take us long to find one among the many recipes out there: ours came from an old book i got when i was baking at a small boutique bakery 20 years ago called The Italian Baker (the book, not the bakery). i’m sure it is possible to get it still; it is a fantastic book for baking artisanal breads, and all bread baking in general. contrary to some techniques—and i can verify its results—do not add any sugars to the yeast starter (sugar, honey, etc.), as it makes the final dough brown too quickly in the oven from the higher sugar content.
Here it is: Pizza dough a la Romana style.
(makes enough dough for six 12″ pizzas; use half/ freeze half)
Ingredient list:
A:
1 pkg of dry yeast
1/4c of warm water
B:
5.5c of unbleached white flour (get good flour for this)
1t salt (we use fine grain sea salt)
C:
1.75c + 1T of room temperature water (a very exact number that i *always* just eyeball)
2 T of olive oil (we use EV good stuff; i normally just add 2T because i skip the lard called for in the original)
Directions:
1. mix together ingredients in A; let stand 5ish minutes (or the time it takes to measure out everything else in B and C and complete step 2 below).
2. mix B using a hand whisk in a large bowl; I use a standard kitchen aid bowl. make a large-ish well in the center of the mixture—this will hold the wet ingredients in the next step.
3. mix C using a hand whisk (i add everything to a large pyrex pouring container)
then…
4. add C and A to the large well you made in step 2 above
for my part,
5. i then mount the whole thing onto the KitchenAid, add the dough hook, and let the sucker spin around at a medium-low speed. toward the middle (~2.5 min) i pause the mix, lift the hook, and do a good scrape of the hook and bowl bottom and sides with a spatula, then turn it back on nd let it keep twist mixing. done in ~5 minutes total.
once it’s done it will be a big, beautiful, semi-firm ball of dough. it may be slightly toward the gooey side. if so, you have two options: 1) coat your hands in EVOO before you handle it (preferred); or 2) very carefully add flour until it reaches a consistency you prefer (less authentic, and be sure to add in small tabelspoon-ish amounts).
6. in a (very) big bowl, add some EVOO and coat the bottom and sides. add the finished dough. cover with plastic wrap and then an opaque kitchen towel for good measure (the dough may rise, and if it’s just plastic wrap the dough has been known to blow out the top; a rag offers enough weight to gently deflate the rising dough). put the whole thing in a shaded, cool spot—this seems contrary to some fast-rise conventions but is quite necessary. you’ll want a place that’s ~65°F; we’re using a dark spot in our basement now that the summer months are here; during winter we just leave it beneath the window sill in a drafty part of the house. if it’s any warmer the dough will rise too fast.
all of this should have taken you about 10 minutes, even if reading these instructions over and over (the way i did do it the first time i made it)
7. Come back in 5-8 hours.
Notes:
you want a slow rise, so as to let the yeast make nice savoury glutens. it really makes a difference, and it is perfect for making before you go to work and then coming home in the evening.
you can punch down the dough after the first rise and let it have a second lazier rise. the original recipe goes straight from the first rise to forming the pizza and then cooking it, with a lazy second rise occurring after you shape the dough round into a pizza. we do both, since this makes more than three of us can eat in one sitting, we cut the batch in two and freeze half for later. to freeze, cover it tightly in plastic wrap and then put into a ziplock or other freezer-safe bag—avoid freezer burn at all costs, and the double bagging plays a role in the later thaw.
for thawing, add the dough to a bowl of water while still in its frozen double-bagged state. keep that extra water out! when it is more thawed (about an hour; but not necessarily completely thawed) remove it from the plastic and put it into a bowl per #6 above. let it sit until it is where you want it to be; ours usually takes about 4 hours, so a good mid-day weekend meal, although perfectly acceptable for another 8-hour work-day wait as well (hence the sometimes useful kitchen rag atop the plastic wrap).
add this recipe to the countless pizza dough recipes that are simple and therefore good because they highlight all of the goodness of simplicity. as a final note to all of this, because it is so simple, be sure you use only the best available ingredients, especially with regard to flour and EVOO (extra virgin olive oil, right?). we use a locally milled unbleached all-purpose white flour. it makes a world of difference. really.
