Homemade Pizza

Purists may tell you that you can’t get good pizza anywhere outside New York or Chicago, depending on their preference for thin and crispy or soft and deep. Well, the truth is that there are many great pizzerias in home towns all over this country. And I’m not talking about chain restaurants here, though occasionally they do hit the right formula. I’m talking mom and pop places that mix their ingredients in the kitchen and have blast furnaces for ovens. It takes that high temperature for the perfect crust that’s crispy on the bottom and chewy throughout. No home oven can get that hot.

Does that mean you shouldn’t even bother? No, of course not. Though you can’t get exactly the same taste and texture out of your own kitchen, you can get some remarkable results with a handful of common ingredients and a modicum of skill.

Let’s talk ingredients. All you need to make good pizza dough is water, yeast, honey, oil, flour and, of course, salt.

First, the water. If your municipality has a good water supply, go ahead and use it right from the tap. The minerals in your water will give your pizza its own unique flavor. (Excellent water, incidentally, is the reason New Yorkers insist they have the best-tasting pizza. They may be right.) If you don’t like your water, use filtered or bottled instead. Be sure your water is in the right temperature range. If it’s too low, the yeast won’t wake up; if too high, the yeast will die.

Honey will feed the yeast and oil will give a little gloss to the dough. The salt is for flavor, but do not add it until after much of the flour has been incorporated since it is a yeast inhibitor.

As for flour, I like to use all-purpose and bread flours, for a perfect combination of softness and chewiness. If all you have on hand is all-purpose flour, by all means use it.

My standard method for rising yeast dough is this: I heat my oven to the lowest it can go—170˚. When it’s hot, I turn it off and open the door to let out any built-up heat, then close the door to let the oven cool. I get on with the mixing, kneading, oiling and covering, by which time the oven is about 80˚, the perfect temperature for rising. This method is usually unfailing. Just be sure that when you preheat your oven to 500˚ in order to bake the pizza you remove the bowl of risen dough first. I know this from experience.

Pizza Dough

This recipe will make enough dough for two medium or four individual-sized pizzas. For shaping the dough, if you know how to throw it up in the air, and catch it on your knuckles (which is the part I always miss), by all means go ahead. Otherwise, hold the dough ball in your hands, grasp an outer edge and begin turning it in your hands like a steering wheel. Gravity will stretch the dough for you and the part your hands touch will serve as a raised edge.

1 cup very warm water (between 110˚ and 115˚)
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for oiling the bowl
2 packages active dry yeast
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups bread flour
2 teaspoons salt

Pour the water into the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the honey and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Sprinkle the yeast on top and stir until everything is nicely dissolved. Add the flour and, using a dough hook, mix on low speed until some of the flour has been incorporated; add the salt and mix on medium speed until the dough forms a ball that pulls away from the side of the bowl and wraps around the hook. Continue mixing for another 3 to 4 minutes.

If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can do this by hand; it will just take a bit longer. Stir the ingredients with a spoon until you have a raggedy mess. Abandon the spoon at this point and reach in with your hands. Mix and press the dough together and against the sides of the bowl, getting as much of the dough goodness to adhere as possible. Then proceed to the next step.

Turn the dough out onto a very lightly floured surface. Knead by pushing the dough away from you with the heel of your hand and then folding it back over on top of itself and giving it a quarter turn each time. If you have used a stand mixer, you’ll want to knead by hand for 3 to 4 minutes; if you’re doing the whole thing by hand it will take up to 10 minutes. Either way, you want to keep at it until the dough is smooth and elastic. Start your favorite play list and have at the dough. You can count this as your exercise for the day.

Pour a scant teaspoon of olive oil into a clean bowl and rub it all around the bowl with your fingers. Plop in the dough and swipe it around until it is covered all over with a thin layer of oil. Cover the bowl with a clean towel or with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place to rise. In about 30 minutes to an hour, the dough should have doubled in size and will be ready to be shaped, topped and baked, preferably in a preheated 500˚ oven.

At this point you’re on your own. But you won’t have any trouble with that, will you? There’s no magic formula for pizza toppings; simply put on what you like best, whether that be olives and pepperoni or bacon and caramelized onion. Brushing the dough with olive oil and sprinkling on nothing but fresh thyme, rosemary, and chiffonade of basil is an astounding way to eat pizza. The flavors will wake up your mouth.

You see? Great pizza with what you have right there at home. Now you can take blast furnace off your Christmas list.