Perfect Pizza Dough

Another 4th of July and all that it represents…fresh cut lawns, horseshoes, charcoal, bare feet, mosquitoes, slip and slides, fireworks, condensation and flags wilting in the mid summer heat. With Molly out of town I elected to stay home and make pizza. You can keep all the barbeque sauce in Kansas City and give me warm yeasty dough any day of the week; especially on Independence Day…as American as it gets! fogetiboutit!

Pizza Dough
This recipe yields a number of pizzas. Cut it in half for a family-size portion.

1 ½ cups warm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
¼ teaspoon granulated sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
¼ teaspoon salt
4 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
semolina flour

Turn on oven to 500°; invert sheet pans and place in oven.

Whisk together water, yeast, sugar and 1 cup flour in a large mixing bowl. Cover with a cloth and set in a warm place to allow yeast to activate, 10-15 minutes. Yeast is active when the dough is bubbly. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and salt. Knead in (with your hands) remaining flour, 1 cup at a time. Cover bowl and allow dough to rise in a warm spot for 1 hour. Punch down dough and transfer to a lightly floured surface. Divide dough into 10- 3 oz balls (approx the size of a tangerine) allow to rest for 10-15 minutes.

Using your hands stretch dough. Sprinkle semolina flour on pizza peel (this prevents dough from sticking). Place dough on peel and decorate with your choice of sauce, toppings and cheese. Place in oven on the inverted sheet pan. Bake until golden brown, approx 10 minutes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Main Dishes , barbeque sauce, cup flour, dry yeast, pizza dough, pizza peel, stretch dough, unbleached flour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.