Dough

Dough: Where great pizza begins

Before I unvail all of the secrets to making killer pizza dough I would like to layout what I believe are the criteria for proper pizza. The more of these criteria that any pizzeria meets the more likely they are to make acceptable pizza. Almost all of these criteria are crust related. I'm not trying to say that what goes on top of the pizza is not important. I just think that the toppings are the easy part. The crust on the other hand takes some effort and dedication. First off, pizza needs to be baked directly on a stone hearth in a ridiculously hot oven. It is the only way to get good crust development and something that baking pros call oven spring which refers to the initial rise of the dough before it starts getting crusty. Baking pizza on a pan or pizza screen just doesn't cut the mustard and a metal hearth doesn't hold heat well enough to get the job done. You need a thick slab of stone or fire bricks. At home using a pizza stone that can be found at any cooking supply store helps but the problem with home ovens is heat. They get hot enough to make good pizza but not hot enough to make aficionado level pizza. Professional ovens can get really hot and by hot I mean in excess of 800 degrees Fahrenheit. I have my preferences as to how this heat gets achieved but whether you use gas, wood or coal as fuel all that really matters is that the oven needs to be blazing hot. I like wood and coal personally because the smoke adds flavor, as well, I think that managing the fire is all a part of the overall pizza-making craft but if you want to be lazy and use gas, go right ahead... just make sure to crank it up.

Next up is how the dough is stretched. Pizza Aficionados can spend all day talking about what makes perfect pizza dough but the truth is that you can make rockin' pizza with a wide variety of dough types. What really matters is that you don't go and waste all of the effort you put into making your dough by taking a rolling pin to it or even worse putting dough though a sheeter. If you walk into a pizzeria and see them using the latter mentioned device, turn around and leave. Go get a hamburger or something. Dough needs to be stretched by hand. I'm not going to go over the methodology here. That is a section all to its self that I will cover later. Whatever the case, hand stretching is the only way to go. It is the only way to protect the gluten and gas bubbles in the dough so that they can work their magic later during the baking phase.

Those are the two major criteria for making top-notch pizza. If a pizzeria has a hot hearth oven and they stretch their dough by hand they are well on their way to at least making an edible pie. Though there is one last perameter that need to be addressed, toppings. You can put what ever you want on the pizza just so long as it tastes good to you. If you like peanut butter and anchovies on your pizza that is fine with me. To each his own. What matters to me is how much you put on the pie for two simple reasons. One is for the purpose of  gastronomic balance. If you put to much of anything on the pizza it is a sign to me that you are trying to cover up a lacking crust. If you have put in the effort to make good crust don't overpower it with toppings. Let it shine. The second reason for going light on the topping is purely functional. Getting a pizza overloaded with toppings off of the peel and into the oven is a disaster waiting to happen. If the pizza will even move the toppings are still likely to scatter all over the place and make a mess of the pie and the oven. Of course you could use a bunch of semolina flour on the peel to help facilitate the transfer but semolina will burn and make a mess of your oven as well. Additonally I think that it disrupts the texture of the pizza crust. I think it is best to use the minimalist approach. Use as little flour as you can get away with on the peel and use a light hand with the toppings and your pizza will have balance. Additionally, it should slide into the oven without any major mishaps. Now I think it is safe to move onto the subject of this section, making the dough to stretch by hand and put into a hot hearth oven with a balanced amount of toppings. 

Types of dough

There are all kinds of pizza dough formulas. Just type "pizza dough" into your favorite search engine and you will see what I mean but in general there are two classifications, enriched and lean/rustic doughs. Before I define the two I should probably go over the essential ingredients of bread and/or pizza dough. All you need is flour, water, yeast and salt (salt is not actually necessary but I would never make dough without it). Now if all you are using are these four ingredients than you are making a lean/rustic dough. If you add things like eggs, butter, milk, sugar or honey than you have crossed the isle and made an enriched dough. Both doughs have their specific uses. If you are baking on a high-heat hearth than I would use a lean/rustic dough. Enriched doughs tend to burn too easily for such applications. If you do not have the luxury of a really hot oven and a hearth than you may want to use an enriched dough in order to accomplish a golden crust. Otherwise, I really prefer a lean rustic dough because I believe that high-heat hearth baking is the only way to go to make real Aficionado pizza.

At first glance it may appear that lean/rustic doughs are very limited due to the minimalist list of ingredients and enriched dough would seem to have endless possibilities because of all of the enriching agents that you can add but that is far from the truth. Lean/rustic doughs are all about unlocking the hidden potential of the flour through fermentation and enzymatic activity. Add onto that the endless list of different types of flours and suddenly lean/rustic dough has infinite possibilities. 

Dough Making: Step by Step

All breads have a twelve step process from beginning to end and while pizza dough is essentially a flat-bread it can be simplified to a seven step process. The basic steps are as follows: preparing your ingredients, mixing and kneading, bench resting, balling/rounding, proofing, stretching and finally topping and baking. Here is a more in-depth look at each step.

Preparing your ingredients:

Also called mis en place by professional chefs and bakers which is a french culinary term meaning to put in place. All that this refers to is getting all of your ingredients measured out and having all of the tools to get the job done on-hand before you get started. This may seem obvious but every step in dough making builds on the previous step. So no step in more or less important than another and it is always a good habit to take the time to make sure that you are properly prepared before embarking on any endeavor in life including pizza dough making.

Mixing and Kneading:

You could break this down into two individual steps but why complicate things. Mixing is simply bringing the ingredients together so that they begin to resemble dough. Kneading is the process of working the dough to hydrate the flour, develop gluten and evenly distribute all of the ingredients throughout the dough mass. Both of these processes can be done by hand or machine. On a small scale I think the best results are achieved by hand. On a large scale the best results are still achieved by mixing and kneading by hand but working a 50 pound ball of dough is a real work-out. When making a small batch of dough kneading by hand is far more educational than using a machine and it helps to ensure that the dough does not get overworked. You can use a mixer and get great results but for your first few batches of any dough I suggest hand mixing and kneading. There are some techniques that can be applied here but I will cover them later when I walk you through the process of making my dough.

Bench Resting:

This is an easy step because all you have to do is cover the dough so that it will not dry out and go do some thing else for a while. The purpose is to let the yeast start working and to let the gluten relax so that it does not fight you when you ball the dough. This step may not be necessary with all dough formulas. If you are using high gluten flour or bread flour I suggest it because they tend to put up more of a fight in the balling stage. Additionally, if you are going to retard the proofing of the dough balls over night by refrigerating it (I will talk more about the magic or retarding later) I suggest not skipping this step as it will allow some time for the yeast to wake up so it will get some work done during the delayed overnight fermentation process.

Balling/Rounding:

This is the step where you devide the big blob of dough into equally sized little blobs of dough and then round them into neat and smooth little balls. The deviding part is easy. Use a dough knife or a regular knife to cut the dough and a scale to achieve equal portions. The rounding part is easy as well but it takes a little practice. I do not think that it can be properly described with words so I will try to include a picture tutorial at some point. Video may be even better. If I don't get around to it anytime soon just YouTube "dough rounding" and you will see what it is all about. 

Proofing:

After the little dough balls are formed they need to be tightly covered so that they do not dry out or form a crust. Then leave them at room temperature so that the yeast can begin to do its handy work and produce the gasses that will expand the dough and eventually cause it to rise in the oven. Alternatively the dough can be placed in the refrigerator over night so that enzymes can begin to break down the flour and unlock its full potential. Then the dough can be removed from refrigeration the following day so that proofing can begin. Whether you proof immediatly or wait until the following day, the general rule of thumb is that you need to let the dough double in size. I know that it can be hard to sit around and watch dough rise but this step is absolutely crucial. If you do not let it grow enough the final product will be dense and possibly gummy. Addtionally it won't develop its full flavor and aroma potential. Through experience I have found that one of the most important ingredients in great bread making and pizza crust making is without a doubt patience. There are alot of things that can be rushed in life but dough proofing is done when it is done and no sooner.

Stretching:

There are plenty of ways to stretch dough and they all work. My only words of advice here are that you should learn to do it by hand and not be tempted to reach fro the rolling pin. There are a few additional key objective worth striving for as well. As you stretch the dough it is important not to pinch the edge otherwise you will not get a beautiful, high-rise crust that the italians call the cornichone but I prefer to call it the handle for obvious reasons. It is also important to try to stretch the dough evenly throughout the center so that you don't get any thick spots or thin spots. The thin spots can be especially troublesome not only because they will allow the finished product to get soggy and saggy but also because they tend to get stuck to the peel when you are trying to slide the pizza onto the heart. This can be really frustrating. Remember, every step in dough making builds on the next. If you take the time to properly stretch the dough it will maximize your chances of success in the next steps. There is a lot of videos of this process on YouTube and I will try to include a video tutorial on this subject as well. Methods can vary based on the gluten in your dough and the size of the pizza that you are trying to accomplish. My suggestion is to watch it be done to get a starting point then make a big ol' batch of dough and practice, practice, practice.

Topping and Baking:

So once you learn to stretch a dough ball out nicely it is time to top and bake it. I am going to go over hearth baking technique here because it is the most difficult. If you donnot have a stone and a peel. Go ahead and place the stretched dough on an oiled or parchment lined cookie sheet, top it and throw it in a hot oven. It may be a little more complicated than that but not much. Temperature and cooking time can vary from oven to oven so it may take a little experimentation but by the third try you will be a pro at this method. Now if you are going to try the hearth baking technique you have to fallow some more specific guidelines. I like to use a wooden peel to to put the pizza in to the oven and a metal one to remove it. I have some rhetoric that I would like to share about pizza peel varieties but I will talk about that in another section. Before you go and throw the stretched dough onto a wooden peel make sure to rub some flour into the grain of the wood on the peel. Dust off the excess flour and you are ready to put the dough on the peel. If you are making an especially large pizza you may choose to leave a little extra flour on the peel just to ease the process of transferring the pizza to the oven but remember that the goal is to use as little as possible because the flour can burn in an extraordinarily hot oven, as well, if you use too much flour you could end up getting an unpleasant mouthful of flour when you bite into the finished product. 

Once the dough is on the peel it is time to top it. As I have mentioned before it is important to use a light hand with ingredients so that you can fully experience the crust when you eat the pizza and also to keep from making a mess when you attempt to slide the pizza into the oven. One additional pointer is that you should avoid putting any ingredients on the outer inch of the dough as this will keep it from rising properly and you will not achieve a satisfactory handle to hold onto and eat.

After all of the toppings of your choice are on the pizza it is time for the moment of truth, delivering the pizza safely into the oven and onto the hearth. This process can vary depending on the oven. Home ovens require a differant technique than wood-fired ovens. What ever the case, even seasoned pizza veterans have the occasional flop when trying to slide a pie into the oven so try not to get too frustrated if you have problems the first few tries. I like to shake the peel a little to see if the pizza is cemented onto it before I commit to depositing the pizza into the oven. If the pizza won't budge start over. Recycle the toppings but stretch a new dough and add a little more flour to the peel for the next round. When you are first mastering the technique you may find it helpful to reduce the water in your dough formula or use a dryer dough that will not stick to the peel as easily. If everything works out the the pie will slide effortlessly into the oven and at this point, unless you are baking in a wood-fired oven, you will need to close the oven door quickly so as not to loose to much oven heat. Now the hard part is over and all you need to do is watch and wait. Again, cooking time can vary from oven to oven. It goes without mentioning that your oven should be cranked up as high as it can go and the rack position is a matter of trial and error but the middle is a good place to start. Once the cheese has melted and the crust has risen and become golden brown you may have to give the pizza a spin and then return it to the oven to evenly finish baking. If it looks evenly golden all of the way around the crust you can remove the pie from the oven. Here is the hard part. Whatever yo do do not slice and eat the pizza immediately. The crust still needs a second to finish baking much like a beef roast needs some carryover time after it is removed from the oven. And if you slice the pizza right away the cheese will probably ooze all over the place. Lastly the pizza is ridiculously hot and if you try to eat it it will feel like napalm in your mouth. I have made this mistake before and once you have burned your mouth the rest of the pizza eating experience is totally spoiled. So just wait a few minutes until the cheese begins to set then slice and enjoy!

My Dough: The billion dollar formula

So now we have covered some of the basics for the process of making pizza dough and now I am going to go over all of the specifics for making my own, personal dough formula. The purpose of this entire dough section is not to give you recipes to go and replicate but rather to instill you with the knowledge to go and make your very own, unique pizza dough. No matter what dough you make the process is going to be very similar if not the same as what I laid out above. My dough follows the same process but has many nuances along the way. As I have mentioned I prefer a lean/rustic dough for making pizza because it performs well with high-heat, hearth baking. One of the great things about this dough is that it can be manipulated in an uncountable number of ways to make it your own but in order to manipulate it you need an understanding of the ingredients and techniques used so lets dive right in and talk about it.

The Ingredients: Keeping it simple

Lean/Rustic doughs are characterized by their minimalist ingredient list: water, flour, yeast, salt and little else. The magic of these doughs is found in the ratios of one ingredient to another, the type of flour utilized and the fermentation techniques used. I think it might be important before we get to far into this to talk briefly about some more dough basics, more specifically speaking, the baker's percentage. The baker's percentage is a simple concept that confuses most people because it defies standard mathematic principles. If I tell you that the dough is 50% water you would probably think that fifty percent of the contents of the dough is water but that is not how bakers do things. In the baker's percentage everything is compared to the weight of the flour (Notice that I said weight not volume. Many home baking formulas will use volume but for the sake of consistency it is best to weigh your ingredients). So 50% water would not mean that water is half of the dough but rather that it is added at half the weight of the flour. So if there is 100 g of flour there will be 50 g of water. I hope this is not too confusing. We will talk more about it after I give the formula for my pizza dough. Now lets talk about the individual parts of the dough.

Water:

Water plays many rolls in dough but we are not going to cover them all here. What you need to know is that you should avoid using water directly from the tap because it contains chorine and chlorine will kill the yeast in dough which will keep it from rising. You can use either bottled water or just leave some tap water in a container at room temperature for 24 hours and the chlorine will dissipate into the air.

The temperature of water will effect the rate at which the yeast propagate the dough. Boiling water will kill the yeast so do not use it. Cold water will really slow the yeast down and in some cases it will put them to sleep which is useful if you are trying to do a long term fermentation process. Warm water will hurry the yeast along which is great if you are in a hurry but like I have said, patience is a virtue in baking.

The pH and mineral content of the water that you are using can also have a an effect on the dough. This can get complicated so all I am going to say is that if you have well water or you know that you have hard water just use bottled water for your dough.

The percentage of water is the issue that really interests me and it is fun to play with. While dough with a low percentage of water is easy to work with I do not beleive that it makes the best pizza. The water percentage in my dough is right around 65% but depending on how much of a hassle I want to deal with I will push it up to 70%. Wet dough takes some practice to learn how to work with because it sticks to everything including your hands, the work surface and most frustrating of all the pizza peel. Though, Learning to work with wet dough is worth the effort. Wet dough produces high rise crust with gaping holes in the crumb while dryer dough will make a denser, tighter crumb that I do not particularly enjoy. So if you reproduce my pizza dough feel free to change the water percentage to fit your needs. Start off at 58% water to make life easy on yourself and than increase the water a few percentage points in each consecutive trial until it starts to get to wet. 

Salt: Not just for Flavor

It goes without saying that salt can have a dramatic effect on the flavor of the finished pizza crust but that is not its only function. Salt also effects the extensibility of the dough. Which means how easily the dough will stretch. This is really important in pizza making. Increasing the salt will enhance flavor and make the dough flow under your hands into a disk shape but be careful not to add to much. Salt is an anti-microbial agent. If you add too much it will kill the yeast and beneficial bacteria that may be present. Another warning about salt is that if you use a coarse salt you should desolve it into the water in the formula otherwise it will cut gluten strands as the dough is kneaded which is counter productive and as well the salt may not desolve into the dough which would keep it from serving its purpose functionally in the dough.

Yeast: It's alive!!

Yeast is what makes dough into a culinary science experiment. As a baker you need to make yeast into your friend. You need to learn how to nurture it so that it will make your dough rise. Yeast is the part of the dough that begs you to learn some patience. How it works is that when you add yeast to your dough it wakes up from a long nap and begins to eat, breath and do all of the other things that living things do. It eats the sugar that has been added to the dough or that has been produced by the enzymatic breakdown of the starches in the flour. The yeast breaks down these sugars and produces carbon dioxide which in turn makes gas bubbles in the dough and makes it rise. 

There are a lot of yeast types out there but you can break it down into two distinct schools: Commercial and wild. Commercial yeast is the type you buy from the store. It has been bread, selected and cultured by baking scientists to do one thing and one thing only and that is to leaven bread. So when it comes to commercial yeast just make sure to use the type and amount specified in a formula. Fallow the directions and everything should work out swimmingly. If it does not than check the experation date on the package. Yeast can expire, or die, and then it will not make any dough rise.

The other type of yeast is wild yeast. Wild yeast comes from the environment and from the flour itself. This is the type of yeast used to make the various styles of sour dough bread that most people are familiar with and it is the the yeast that I use to leaven my pizza dough. Though it has an esoteric nature wild yeast starters are easy to make and easy to use. They also have an artsy-crafty nature to them that I think makes them more fun than commercial yeast. You have to remember that people have been making bread for thousands of years but commercial yeast has only been around for a few hundred years so when you use  a wild yeast starter culture than you are celebrating old traditions which is in my opinion more interesting than just opening a packet of yeast and adding it to the mix. Additionally wild yeast cultures open up a whole new world of flavor possibilities because they invite beneficial bacteria into the picture. The bacteria are what make the dough sour. Depending on the proofing temperature you can manipulate this sourness to suit your taste. I use the starter primarily as a leavening agent but also to get a hint of tanginess. I think the souring qualities of wild yeast starters are great when utilized in bread but can be overpowering when taken too far in pizza dough. Also, it is worth mentioning that as the dough gets more and more sour, the pH drops and breaks down the gluten which can be bad news especially in pizza dough. With a little experimentation and by paying close attention to the time and temperature of the proofing stage you can learn to manipulate the sourness to get the perfect balance of flavor while not sacrificing the importance of gluten that is vital to the dough structure. So now all we have to do is make a starter but you will have to be patient because we still need to cover the most important ingredient of all, flour, before I start in on the dough making process where we will do a step by step tutorial on making a wild yeast starter culture.

Flour: The meat and potatoes

There is a lot to be said about flour. So much in fact that I am not going to go to far into depth on the subject. I will cover some basics about the attributes of flour then you can go do some research and become a flour expert on your own. 

The flour that is most applicable in pizza making is wheat flour and wheat has two basic subcategories: Red and white and winter or spring. Depending on the combination of those two sub-divisions you will get flours that have varying protein, starch and mineral contents. It is good to look at your bag of flour at home and see what kind of wheat it is made from. Then see if you can find out more about it like the protein content. Once you know a little about the flour you are using take some mental notes about how it performs. Experiment with some differant flours and see what happens. There are a lot of resources for learning about flour but nothing beats a little hands-on experimentation.

It is worth mentioning that flour also undergoes various degrees of processing  before it gets to you. Whole wheat flour undergoes the least processing. It differs from non-whole wheat flour in that the bran is included in the flour. Because of that it is the healthiest for you. It also spoils easily so it is often a good idea to refrigerate whole wheat flour especially if your kitchen tends to be on the warm side. Whole wheat flour does not absorb water as well as white flour so if you substitute it into a formula that uses white flour the dough will feel stickier. Additionally it tends to have lower protein levels which results in breads and pizza crusts that have a denser crumb. I have tried many whole wheat pizza crusts and found that they can be a little overpoweringly wheaty, though I have had great success using 10-15% whole flour or rye flour in my pizza dough. I have also found that whole wheat flour makes better food for wild-yeast starter cultures. In the same way that it is healthier for us it is also provides better nutrition for your starter and in my opinion produces better flavor and aroma in the culture than white flour.

White flour is the next degree of processing. In white flour the bran has been removed in order to lengthen the shelf-life. What remains is mostly starch. It is often enriched with vitamins and minerals to make up for nutrient degradation that occurs during milling and shipping. It has very favorable performance characteristics as far as pizza and bread making are concerned. Additionally, it is higher in protein and therefore makes an airier, open crumb that has a lighter, creamier flavor. I used to be a proponent of white-flour-only pizza dough because of the clean flavor and texture but recently I have enjoyed making hybrid dough that mixes white and whole wheat. By using proper technique and not over doing it you can get the best of both worlds. You can get the performance of white flour while getting some of the health benefits of whole wheat, as well as, additional flavor without getting to overpoweringly wheaty.

The last level of processing that I am going to talk about here is bleached flour. All I can say about bleached flour is DON'T USE IT! It's garbage and should be treated as such. If you have some in your pantry throw it out. That is all you need to know about bleached flour.

One of the major characteristics that wheat flour has that is important for the pizza maker to understand is protein content. The higher the protein the more of a fight the dough may give when being stretched. It will also have a stronger more durable nature that may be desireable when making large pies and also if you chose to stretch the dough by tossing it into the air. As a general rule I would consider flour with a protein level above 12% high protein. I would not use a flour with a protein level below 9% unless you are planning on making a cake.

Enrichment: Fattening it up

As I have mentioned I don't favor enrichening agents because they tend to burn in high heat, hearth baking but also I do not think they are necessary if you properly ferment your dough. But you may want to add some to compensate for a cooler baking environment or because you just prefer the added richness and flavor. Enriching can be as easy as adding a small amount of olive oil or melted butter to your formula. Start with a little and then add a little more in succeeding batches until you get what you want. You can also add milk to your dough but be careful because it burns easily. Just replace a little of the water with milk quid pro quo and see what happens. The crust will brown more easily and the crumb will be more tender. If you replace more than 10% of the water with milk your dough may start to undergo drastic changes so tread lightly in this area.

Making a Starter:

This is way easier than most people think. Once you have made a starter you may wonder why you ever wasted your money on commercial yeast. To make a starter you need two things: whole wheat flour and water. I would use bottled or filtered water in this process because we are trying to make a yeast and bacteria culture. If there is any chlorine present you will not be successful. So here is what you do. Take equal parts flour and water, by weight, mix them together and let them sit at room temperature for three days. While you are waiting make sure to give the mixture a stir at least three times per day. This adds oxygen to the mix and redistributes the food for the yeast and bacteria as they grow. after three days the mixture should bubble up nicely. This means that you have succeeded. If it does not the room may be to cold or there was chlorine in the water used. Start over, use a differant water source and put the culture in a warmer spot. If you did get bubbles the starter is not ready but it is close. Throw out half of the culture and replace it with equal parts flour and water. Do this everyday for a week making sure that the mix bubbles up before you refresh it. If you have made it this far and your culture is active, congratulations! You have a wild yeast starter of your very own. Give it a name and take good care of it. It is kind of like having a pet. Here are some basics for caring for your starter. Don't throw out and replace more than half of your starter. Likewise, if you are expanding your starter to make a large batch of dough do not more than double it in one feeding. This ensures that you will maintain a strong culture that won't be overpowered by anything that is added to it. Remember to never use unfiltered water straight out of the tap. It is likely to have chlorine in it and that will kill your started and ruin all of your hard work. If you do not plan on using the starter to make dough for a while it can be refrigerated for months and still work. I have actually never killed a starter by storing it in the fridge so I have no Idea how long they can keep while under refrigeration.  If you are going to store it for along time I would suggest taking it out once per month and refreshing it with three consecutive days of feeding. Go through the same process if you plan on using the starter after a long period of hibernation. Remove it from the fridge and give it three days of consecutive feeding before use. Make sure that it bubbles up between the first and second feeding. The culture needs to grow before any part of it is discarded in the feeding process. Other wise you may weaken the starter and ruin it or at least slow it down.

The Formula:

So this is the baker's percentage formula for my basic dough:

Flour: 100%

Starter: 22%

Salt: 2.7%

Water: 58%

Notes: I use King Arthur's All-Purpose flour for the bulk of the flour in the dough. My starter is made entirely with rye flour and is composed of 1 part water to 1 part flour by weight. It is important that you use this ratio in the starter or it will throw off the percentages in the formula.  When you use a starter in a formula it can make the percentages seem a little decieving because the flour and water percentages do not account for the flour and water in the starter. If you calculate the water percentage including the water in the starter it comes to 63% which is a pretty wet dough but still quite managable.

The Method:

From looking at the formula you can see that my dough takes a purist/minimalist approach to ingredients but don' t let that fool you. The method is what unlocks the sophistication here. There are a few techniques that I would like to talk about before we move onto the step-by-step process. First, all of the whole grain flour in this formula is in the starter. This has a much differant effect than adding it at the final mixing phase. It allows the bran to soften as it absorbs water and also permits enzymes and bacteria in the starter culture to break down the starches in the flour transforming it into sugar which will feed the yeast and aid in crust development. The second technique is retarded fermentation. Retarding the fermentation of the dough means to delay the proofing process by refrigerating the dough. This allows enzymatic activity to break down starches in the resting dough and convert them to sugar. This will aid in the browning of the pizza crust and it will also unlock flavors and aromas that are hidden in the flour. One last technique that I would like to mention here is the method of autolyse. Autolyse refers to allowing the dough to rest intermitantly during the kneading process. Including this technique does have an effect on the tenderness of the crumb in the finished product but more importantly it reduces the time spent kneading by up to 50% which when you are hand kneading means a lot less work.

Okay.. it is time to make some dough. 

Step 1: Getting it together

Ingredient list:

Flour 2#

Water 18.5 oz

Starter 7 oz

Salt 24 grams

Note: This is all by weight not volume. You will need to invest in a proper kitchen scale. Also you may not keep enough starter culture for this formula so you will have to think ahead and expand the starter by doubling its size daily until you have enough to make the dough plus enough to continue to maintain a starter culture.

Mixing and Kneading: 

In a large mixing bowl combine the starter and all of the water in the formula. Make sure to use bottled water or filtered water. If you use water from the tap the chlorine could kill all of the wee beasties in the starter and render your dough lifeless. Add half of the flour in the formula to the mixture and incorporate. Now add the salt and the rest of the flour. Mix until it starts to form a cohesive mass of dough and then turn it out of the bowl onto a floured work surface. Begin kneading the dough until it starts to look smooth, about 3 minutes. Cover the dough tightly so that it does not form a crust on the exterior and then allow it to rest for 15 minutes. Knead the dough again for 3-5 minutes. If the dough feels a little to sticky to handle add some extra flour. This is an important part of the learning process for a beginner and it is why I feel it is good to mix by hand when you are just learning. When mixing by hand you really get a feel for the dough. You learn how wet the dough should feel and how the texture changes as you finish the kneading process. Learning these characteristics of the dough will help you make adjustments when the dough feels wet or dry due to changes in the ambient humidity. It will also help you adjust the dough when you are experimenting with differant flours. Differant varieties of flour absorb water differantly and you may have to manipulate the texture by adding a little extra flour or water. After you finish the second kneading session cover the dough again and allow it to rest for another 15 minutes. By this point the dough should be getting smooth and you will only have to knead it one more time to finish the job. Once you make this dough a few times you will get to know exactly what it should feel like when it is done. It should not take more than five minutes to finish the kneading process at this point. Rest the dough for five minutes and then do the window pain test to determine if it needs for work. If you can stretch a small piece thin enough to to see light shining through it than it is done. If it tears as you stretch it will need a few more minutes of kneading. 

Bench resting:

After the dough is thoroughly kneaded it will need to rest for a while at room temperature before you round it and store it away for the night. There are two main reasons for this. One is to  let the gluten relax before you ball it so that it does not put up a fight. The second reason is that we want to give the yeast and bacteria a chance to wake up and start working before we refrigerate the dough over night. Once the dough appears to be growing you can move onto the balling phase. If the room you are working in is cold this could take a while. One way to accelerate the bench rest is to use warm water. But be careful, hot water could kill the yeast and if the water is too warm it could put the yeast into hyper-drive which could cause the dough to over-proof. Remember... patience is a virtue.

Balling Dough:

Using a scale cut the dough into equal portions. As a rule I usually weigh the individual portions at one ounce for every inch that I want the finished pizza to be in diameter. Then you need to to ball the dough and this is a technique that is nearly impossible to describe with words. You must observe the technique and then practice it until you can replicate it. I will try to include a video tutorial later but you can always YouTube it. Depending on the size of the dough ball and the size of your hands, you may need to use one or two hands to accomplish the task. If you can do it with one hand then you can learn to do it with your free hand and get the job done faster.  As you ball the dough place it into a lightly oiled container making sure that the balls have room to grow without running into eachother. Rub the balls with a little oil to help keep them moist and cover the the container tightly and allow it to sit a room temperature until they just appear to begin to grow and then put them into refrigeration. If you ever decide to for-go making the starter culture for this formula and opt for using commercial yeast the dough should begin to rise quickly and it will continue to rise even in refrigeration so you will want to reduce the bench rest period to one hour and then place them directly into refrigeration after balling. 

The cold overnight resting phase: Retarding

During this phase the dough will meld. Enzymatic activity will further convert starch to sugar in the dough which will make food for the yeast and bacteria as well as help you achieve a carmelly, golden crust. Additonally the yeast will start to make small bubles of gas that will try to escape the dough. These gas bubbles make little blisters in the outer crust of the finished product which are asthetically pleasing and also they add to the crackling texture of the crust when eaten. There is probably a myriad of other magical transformations taking place during this stage but what I know for sure is that without letting the dough sit in the fridge over night it makes a completely differant product.

The Final Rise:

Take the dough out of the fridge 6-8 hours before you intend on using it depending on room temperature. If the room is really cold you may need to find a warm place for the dough in order to get it to wake up. Remember it is important to be patient. The dough needs to double in size other wise it will result in a dense and gummy crumb and a pale crust. Once it has doubled in size your dough is complete and you are ready to make pizza. Congratulations you are well on your way to becoming a Pizza-Aficionado.