Italian-style Pizza

I had been looking forward to this day for nearly five years and I didn't even know it. Well I suppose I kinda knew, at least I knew I have been craving real Italian pizza since I got back from Italy. It is something I ate many times while I was there and ever since I haven't tasted anything with the same flavor or texture. The flavor here was pretty spot on. The herbs out of the garden gave it an amazing freshness and I finally found a crust which tasted right! However, it wasn't a total success because I still have not got the texture of the crust correct. The greatest part of good Italian pizza is how thin and crisp the crust is. Not just thin like New York style pizza, but almost wafer thin underneath. In Italy this comes from a super thin pizza being cooked in a scorching hot wood burning oven, unfortunately I don't have one yet.

After some researching about how the best way to cook this would be I came up with the pizza stone. The idea of the stone is to get it preheated and then put the pizza on it. The stone holds the heat well and begins cooking the crust as soon as the pizza is put on it, hopefully getting it nice and crispy. Obviously a wood burning oven is already lined with brick, so this is supposed to mimic that. So I set the oven for 475 degrees and heated the stone up, then baked away. The crust never got as crispy underneath as I wanted. I don't know if I should cook at a higher heat or toss the dough even thinner, maybe both. The crust could have been a product of the weather. I don't recommend making any sort of dough when it's over 90 degrees in the kitchen and you're practically swimming because it is so humid, the dough rises to quickly and stays to sticky. Also, having an almost 500 degree oven running while you are standing next to it isn't as enjoyable as it sounds. 

Pizza dough

adapted from Jamie Oliver

800 grams high gluten bread flour or tip '00' Italian flour

200 grams Semolina flour

2 - 7 gram dry yeast packets

650 mL of luke warm water (try for between 105-110 degrees)

1 Tbsp kosher salt

1 Tbsp sugar (or honey)

4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Mix the water, oil, sugar and yeast together in a container and let sit a few minutes while you start the dried stuff.

Sift the two types of flour and salt together onto a flat, clean surface. Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in the liquids.

Take a fork and begin mixing in some of the flour. As the dough begins to come together, start adding more and more flour until you can begin mixing it with your hands (make sure they are clean, dry and floured). Knead until you have a nice, elastic dough. Place the dough in a floured bowl and cover with a damp towel, place somewhere warm to rise.

After the dough has doubled in size (it takes about an hour). Remove it from the bowl and knead it to remove the air bubbles. Cut off a chunk of the dough for the first pizza (this dough will make about 6 medium sized pizzas). Roll out the chunk of dough on a floured surface until it is about an eighth of an inch thick. It is good to get this done about 15 to 20 minutes before you make the pizza. It lets the dough rest a little, I think it makes the dough lighter.

The Sauce

5-6 Tbsp olive oil

5 cloves of garlic, sliced thin

A good handful of fresh basil leaves, torn

A smaller handful of fresh oregano, torn

1200 grams skinned and canned plum tomatoes (1 1/2 big jars)

Salt and Pepper

A few shakes of red chili flakes

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and throw in the garlic, when it starts to color toss in the herbs and tomatoes. Break up the tomatoes with a spoon as best you can. Season the sauce with the salt, pepper and chili flakes and bring to a simmer. Let it go for a little while to get all the flavors into the sauce.

I differed a bit from the recipe with this sauce. The recipe said to strain the sauce through a coarse sieve to get rid of the garlic and basil chunks. When I did this I ended up with a bowl of tomato water, both in consistency and taste. So I put all the stuff back in and just used it that way. It was really good and I don't mind a bit of chunks and color in my sauce. The one nice thing was that the sieve basically ground up the tomatoes and garlic to make the sauce relatively smooth.

Now take one of your doughs youve got rolled out and get your sauce and any other ingredients you want on your pizza ready. Take the pizza stone out of the hot oven (remember it has been preheating) and put your pizza dough on it. Get your sauce and cheese and toppings on as fast as you can and get it back in the oven. The pizza will not take very long to cook, just watch the crust. When it is golden brown and crispy, pull it out. I pulled the pizza in the above picture out a little early, it could have used another 2 minutes I think.

Notes:

1. I know I know, this is all in metric units. If you've ever been to Europe, especially France, you've probably had bread or pizza dough or croissants. Ever wonder why they are just so much better than what you get here? Largely that is because of the metric system. The proportions just aren't the same in our imperial system. Try converting the dough recipe to imperial. 800 grams of bread flour translates to 1.7637 pounds. Well thats fine but someone might say, "the proportions can be kept the same, 4:1 bread flour to semolina." Sure that's true but what about the salt? What about the water and sugar? You just can't get the same proportions, so I recommend going out and buying a cheapo digital scale. I got mine for 20 bucks.

2. I made two kinds of pizza. One I put on sauce, fresh sliced mozzarella and fresh basil leaves (the traditional pizza margherita). The pizza a made into a garlic pizza. I quickly dimpled the dough all over with my fingers and then spread some extra virgin olive oil over the dough. The dimples make little wells for the oil to sit in. Then I finally minced 3 or 4 cloves of garlic and sprinkled it on with some more chopped, fresh basil leaves. Delicious.