My mantra is that cooking should be easy to accomplish with basic skills and a desire to have foods made with fresh ingredients. Cooking should be enjoyable – you are creating something for people you love. Your reputation is on the line, especially with new recipes, so practice your dishes before you spring them on guests, or the guests will suddenly stop talking when you enter the dining room. Yeah, you can bet they are talking about your failure in the kitchen.
Baking breads, crusts and cakes is pretty much a science. You have to measure all of your ingredients accurately. Measuring is very important, but you will always have to check your dough for consistency, adding flour or water as necessary to achieve the desired consistency. Only experience can truly tell you when your dough is right, so practice, practice, practice.
The first bread I learned to master is pizza dough. This recipe turns out great time after time, and is easy to make. I hope you will try it.
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Pizza Dough
This recipe makes enough to make one thin crust pizza that will completely cover a half-sheet sheet pan (13” x 18”).
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Ingredients
- 1 cup of warm water (115-degrees)
- 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 3 cups of all purpose flour (I use unbleached, unbromated flour)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 or 2 teaspoons olive oil
Start by adding the yeast and sugar to the cup of warm water to proof the yeast. Proofing is exactly what it states – you are proving your yeast is alive and will do what you want. Within ten minutes of stirring the yeast and sugar into the water, it should start to foam up. If it does not foam up, your yeast is no longer alive, and you will not have any lift to your dough. Run to the store to buy fresh yeast or pick another recipe for dinner tonight.
Into a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, measure the flour and salt. A note on measuring the flour: depending on the humidity level and your measuring techniques depends on how much flour you actually use. “Fluff” the flour by scooping it from the canister and pouring it into the measuring cup to overfilled, then scrape the flour level with the top of the measuring cup. Turn on the mixer, or stir the dry ingredients together.
Add the proofed yeast, sugar and olive oil into the dry ingredients and mix. Make sure you start the mixer on low or you will learn the extraordinary flight properties of flour and have a big mess to clean up. Look at and touch your dough. If it is stiff, you might have to add a couple of tablespoons or more of water and continue mixing until the dough is soft and slightly sticky, and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If you add too much water and the dough is very sticky, add flour a tablespoon at a time until you satisfied with the consistency.
Now, set the dough aside to rise until approximately doubled in size. I have an oven that has a “bread-proof” setting, so I put the mixer bowl into the 100-degree oven for about an hour.
Once you take the dough out, preheat your oven to 475-degrees. Use a spatula to turn it out onto a floured countertop, dust with more flour and knead the dough until it is no longer sticky.
Add flour as needed to make the dough workable. Poke the dough with your finger and if the hole remains, it is ready to roll out. If not, cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let it rest for about 20-minutes. When it is ready, roll the dough to the desired thickness or to the size you want. Lightly oil your pan, arrange the dough, trim to within ½” of the edge of the pan, tucking the extra under and crimping if desired. “Dock” the dough by using a fork to poke holes all over it (except for the outside border that has the tucked-under edge). Docking will prevent the dough from rising unevenly, resulting you a crust that looks like a minefield.
Prebake the crust for ten to twelve minutes until a light golden brown. Allow crust to cool slightly. Add sauce, toppings and cheese, returning to the oven until the cheese is bubbly and starting to brown. Cut, serve and enjoy.
Next up, French bread!
