Ciao and welcome to Steve's Kitchen. We are
still here in Italy and we've been
having some fantastic pizzas down here
in Sicily. Actually the local pizza place
where I'm favoring at the moment make
some metre long pizza, I'll put a
video up so you can see what I'm talking
about and I've been getting these lots
of tips from the artisan Pizza
makers that I can share with you now
here on the channel. Now the basis of all
good pizzas is good flour, go with a
strong bread flour. Several of the pizza
makers here in Sicily are mixing it up
with other flours quite often they'll put
twenty percent of semolina or maybe
mixed grain flours as well but today
we're going with just strong bread flour.
The quantity of flour of course is
important we're using 150 grams that's
just a little over five ounces per pizza.
Here I've got 300 grams we're making two
pizzas, that's about ten and a half ounces
feel free to mix it in the bowl
I'm going to do it on the countertop.
Going to pop my flour down there create
myself a little well in the center, a
teaspoon and a half of dried instant
yeast and just half a teaspoon of salt
but I'm putting it away from the yeast.
I've got some warm water 160 mls that's
two-thirds of a cup I'm just going to pour it
into the center my little volcano here
and I'm using a fork to draw this in
together
and you start to draw this into a dough.
Now of course you can do this in the
stand mixer but it's nice to get your
hands in there and get a feel for the
texture of the dough and when it just
starts to come together a little bit
loosely like that I'm going to put a
couple of tablespoons of olive oil into
my dough and then just continue to mix
this together. Now we want to start
developing this dough so what I want to
do is just use the heel of my hand,
stretch it out, fold it back, turn it and
eventually this is going to incorporate
all the flour that's on the countertop
here. At the moment it's very coarse and
quite gritty but what I want you to do
is be patient just carry on kneading this
through for about 10 minutes. Now you saw
how grainy it was when we started after
10 minutes of kneading it's lovely and
smooth and elastic and we've got a nice
spring back in the dough. What I'm going
to do now is just divide this up into
two pieces, in a bowl I'm just going to
add a little bit of olive oil, take my
dough balls and just coat them over and
then take a damp tea towel, pop it over
the top, find somewhere in the house
that's not too cold and leave these and
let the gluten develop, let them double
in size and become lovely and plump. Now
here's a bit I want to show you, this is
what I've learned being here in Sicily
from these artisan pizza makers, going to
shape it and what you want is a fairly
coarse flour. I'm using a semolina so
it's got some grit to it, you could use a
coarse cornmeal, you could actually use
the same flour you use for the pizza
but it could be a little bit dry and if
you store it in an airtight box you can
reuse it every time you make pizza. You
want a fairly big mound of this flour on
the table, make it up into a little pile,
just going to uncover my pizza dough,
you can see it's puffed up beautifully
there and again get under that and lift
it, we're not going to knock the air out
yet, put the dough onto your flour. I'm
going to push the air out but in a
little sort of ,think of a sombrero, so
we've got a little mound in the middle
and shape this dough out. So I've got this
little mound in the center and this
little sombrero hat now I'm going to
turn this over and that's because I
don't want the creases. I've still got
all this flour in the center,
pop it down there and then what we're
going to do is cup our hand on the
center and take the side of your hand
and stretch the dough out. You can then
use this, and just gently, to turn it and
keep stretching so we keep turning,
turning it around and stretching as we
go and you get a sort of motion going.
You stretch the pizza dough and we keep
this slightly thicker outside edge now
some people might like to use their
fingers but make sure that you do only
push the outside edge and not the center
otherwise it'll thin out and you'll get
a big hole here. When we've got to
approximately a pizza size we can lift
this up now and then you can sort of
flip the dough, you've seen them do it in
the stores where they sort of hold it up
and spin it in that up in the air.
Michele will love me from making a mess of
the kitchen but come now we're just
going to flick it backwards and forward
a couple of times. take your pizza and
then just lay it like a cloth on a
baking tray and you can finally sort of
shape it out and that's it you're ready
to put your toppings on now and make
your pizza. This is a really fun and cool
way and an obvious way when you see them
doing it here in the Pizzerias in Sicily.
I hope you'll give it a try next time
you make pizza and here's an idea
probably get into trouble by the pizza
makers here but you could make a bunch
of these up and actually freeze them in
the freezer and then if you take them
out, put your topping on, straight into
the oven. Ready made pizza. So from me
Steve's kitchen in Sicily, take care, share
the love, give this a thumbs up and I
will see you very shortly because we're
be turning this, or something similar to
this, into the fantastic Aussie Pizza, See you then.