Pizza

Pizza at home is a family favorite. We prefer a more authentic Italian version of pizza with a thin, crispy crust. The best part of this recipe is that we can make the pizza dough anytime and freeze it in smaller portions. When we are traveling, I knead the dough by hand, but my trusty KitchenAid stand mixer makes it so much easier.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups warm water (I heat it up in the microwave until it is about 110 degrees – if you don’t have a thermometer, test with your finger and if it’s just a bit warmer than you’d like your bath water to be, that’s perfect!)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• One packet of active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
• 3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup bread flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Fresh mozzarella
• Additional toppings (e.g., sliced onion, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, basil leaves)

First, prepare the dough:

1. After heating the water, add the sugar and yeast, give it a little stir to combine and cover it with plastic wrap for about five minutes. You’ll know it’s ready when it appears foamy. If you’re mixture doesn’t get foamy, your yeast is likely the culprit.
2. In a large bowl or your stand mixer, combine the flours and salt.
3. Add the olive oil to the foamy yeast mixture and then add to your bowl or stand mixer.
4. Mix for 8-10 minutes (honestly, when I’m doing this by hand I mix the dough for less than half this time and just until the dough is smooth).
5. Lightly oil a large bowl and place the dough in the bowl and cover tightly (I use a cover made for the bowl or plastic wrap).
6. Let the dough rest for at least two hours or until it’s doubled in size.
7. After the dough has risen, punch it down. At this point, I only keep enough for the number of pizzas I plan to prepare that day and I freeze the rest in smaller portions. How much dough you use depends on the size of pizza you plan to make and how thinly you prefer to roll out your crust. From our experience, we typically can make about six 10″ pizzas from the full recipe, so I keep 1/3 to make immediately and split the remaining 2/3 and freeze each of them in a plastic freezer bag for future use.
8. Cover the dough you plan to use immediately and let it rest for at least 20 minutes (or up to two hours).

For the pizza sauce, we use canned, peeled San Marzano tomatoes. I typically pour an entire 28 ounce can into my Vitamix to blend it well and then retain a small amount for immediate use. I then divide the remaining tomato sauce into 2-3 freezer bags and freeze the unused sauce portions for future use.

When you’re ready to prepare the pizzas, preheat your oven to 500 degrees (frankly, if your oven has a higher setting, go higher). In Italy the pizzas are cooked at 800 degrees. If you have a pizza stone, using it will improve the crust’s crispiness, but it’s not a requirement so don’t feel the need to buy one unless you’re like us and you make pizza nearly once a week.

1. Roll out each dough portion on a lightly floured surface. I like using a silicone baking mat when rolling dough. Roll and stretch the dough to your desired thickness and then place on a pizza peel to add the sauce and your desired toppings. If you don’t have a peel, no worries. When traveling, I just place the dough on lightly floured heavy duty Reynolds Wrap. I have an unusual love affair with heavy duty Reynolds Wrap, especially when we are not at home and the Airbnb we are staying in doesn’t have enough – or any – baking dishes. It’s amazing what you can do with it in a pinch.
2. Add a small amount of sauce. A little goes a long way. You don’t want to over saturate the dough.
3. Break up fresh mozzarella and add. Again, less is more. Don’t go crazy and overload the dough. In time, you’ll know your preferred amount.
4. Add any additional ingredients you’d like. I know I’m sounding like a broken record here, but don’t overload.

When you’re pizza is ready, slide it into the oven (either onto the pizza stone or on your trusty Reynolds Wrap “pan”). I usually bake 2-3 pizzas at a time, depending on how many people I’m feeding. Stay close by to monitor when the pizza is done. We like our pizzas well done. Also, you’ll notice that our pizzas are not at all perfectly shaped. You can work toward perfecting rolling out your dough into a pretty circle or you can be lazy like me and not really care about the shape overly much.

The great news is that, if you complete all of these steps, you’ll not only enjoy pizza tonight, but you’ll have frozen dough and sauce ready for more nights. Just take the frozen dough and sauce out of the freezer and let though in their freezer bags until you’re ready to start prepping your pizzas.

Best,

Lisa