Five things to do with leftover pizza dough. I always make extra dough, because it's basically
the same amount of work to make four portions as it is to make one.
The things I'm going to show you could work with any dough recipe. My standard one is
in the description, and the only unusual thing about it is I like to kneed it up, portion
it into individual oiled containers and put it straight into the fridge. I let it cold-ferment
for many days — maybe a week, and here's how it comes out.
I usually go around the edge, gently pulling it away from the glass. I want to lift it
out while deflating it as little as possible.
And perhaps the most obvious thing to do with leftover pizza dough is to make garlic knots.
You take your dough, try to get it into a reasonably even rectangle and then slice that
into strips. There's a million ways to tie these, but you can simply take a strip, cross
the ends over, send one up the middle and you've got a garlic knot.
I once saw this young lady making these at a restaurant and she did this rad move where
she'd pick up the strip, wrap it around two fingers twice, and then send the excess through.
She did like one every second that way. Not sure I did that right.
If you're feeling really unconfident, you can totally just do this down on the board.
Cross the two ends over, send one end through — and what to do with the other end? You
could just leave it dangling out — it would cook darker and crispier than the rest, which
could be a nice texture contrast. Or if you're not into that, you could simply tuck it under.
Oh, we should probably place these directly onto our baking sheet as we shape them. That's
just some parchment paper I have on there — not necessary.
Now — these are looking pretty big. They're gonna double in size. Make yours as big as
you want. But I think I want little knots. I'm gonna start cutting these strips in half
before I tie them.
If the dough is sticking to you really bad, you could lubricate your hands with water,
flour or oil, depending on what kind of finish you want on your little breadlettes. I want
a crispy brown crust, so I'm gonna work these with oil on my hands. That's what oil will
do to the surface in the oven.
I'm gonna need two trays, so I might as well put the big ones together and the little ones
together — that way the big ones can bake a little longer. I'll proof those for about
a half hour — that is, give the yeast time to raise them one last time in their final
form. That'll help them bake up a little airier, and I don't think they need to be covered.
That coating of oil should form a water-safe barrier to keep them from drying out over
that time.
Garlic knots are coated in a heavily seasoned oil or butter. Some people brush that on before
they go in the oven, but I think that just gets you a seasoned dinner roll. I'ma bake
these dry at 400 F, 200 C, for probably 20 minutes.
That's plenty of time to peel and chop up like half a head of garlic and a big fist-full
of fresh parsley. A stick of butter goes into that little saucepan. I prefer to make this
with olive oil but my wife prefers butter so we're doing butter.
I'll melt that on like medium-high heat, scrape in the garlic and then just turn the heat
off. It does not have to cook much, and you certainly don't want to burn it. In goes a
bunch of whatever other seasonings you want. I'll do pepper, a pinch of chili flakes, some
dried oregano. Not yet with the fresh parsley.
I'll give that a taste. You might think it needs salt, especially if you used unsalted
butter, but I say hold off on the salt for now.
Ok, some people bake these until they're just set but still pale. That will get you nice
soft garlic knots. I prefer to bake them until they're getting quite brown, like that. They
might seem too hard at this stage, and they are. But they're not gonna stay that way.
In these go to a bowl, ideally while still warm, and I'll pour in much of my seasoned
butter. I'll hold back a little just in case they don't need it. Then just stir and stir
for a minute. Give them time to absorb that stuff. I'll grate in some cheese — I do
this now so it doesn't get too hot and go grainy. Likewise I'll put in the parsley after
things have cooled down a little bit, to keep it green, and there you go. Between the cheese
and the salted butter I used those are almost salty enough, but I'll hit them with some
more. The butter will make the salt stick.
Garlic knots are classically an appetizer, and if you start with breadlettes that are
baked a little too hard, they won't go mushy as they sit around soaking in the butter or
the oil as people peck on them before dinner.
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OK, second thing to do with leftover pizza dough. It's way simpler — something my dad
used to do when I was growing up. Just lay out the dough out as before and cut it into
little rectangles.
Specific dimensions are up to you, just remember they'll probably double in size. When you
cut them, pull them away from each other so they don't merge back into each other, like
that. And you don't have to do rectangles. Let's try rolling some into balls.
Again I'll let those proof for 20-30 minutes. Nice and puffy now.
OK, wide pan, and in goes at most a half-inch of olive oil. A centimeter. And heat it to
medium, at most. These need really gentle frying. Not that gentle. I want to see some
fizzing when it goes in. Plop them all down. Flip when the first side is golden. And really,
the trick here is just to not burn them. See that one? That's too dark. That'll taste burnt.
Really gentle heat. If you can turn them on their sides and fry the sides, go for it,
but I kinda like the pale sides. Heterogeneity. When they're golden and they don't seem to
be puffing up anymore, I'd basically cook them another minute to make sure the inside
is done and pull them out to paper towels.
You could sprinkle some salt on them right now, while they're still sticky, but my dough
is already pretty well-seasoned. Give one of those a taste. Those were dinner roles
in my house, growing up. They taste strongly of the extra virgin olive oil, which is delicious.
A little crispy, a little chewy. Always looked forward to those when I was a kid.
And here's another thing my dad would do. In with the little spherical ones. They're
not donut holes — don't bother trying to get even color on them all the way around.
Some paper towels into a bowl this time. And you can see I let a couple of these get too
dark while I was moving the camera.
Then: cinnamon sugar. It's usually about five parts sugar to one part cinnamon. Dump on
a lot of it — it's the only source of sugar in this dessert. Shake those up a little bit
— my dad used to do this in a paper lunch bag, to wick away oil.
And if you think olive oil has no place in desserts — think again, my friend. That
is a phenomenal flavor combination. Way more sophisticated than a donut, and not too sweet.
OK, third thing to do with leftover pizza dough: make pizza bread. I have a whole video
about this in the description, but it's just a cute name my kids gave to this very simple
thing. It works best with a dough you've aged in the fridge for like a week.
You take your dough out and turn it around. The underside has a rougher, more bubbly surface.
You wipe it down with some olive oil, and put on whatever seasonings you want. I do
black pepper, garlic powder and some very big, crunchy salt.
My oven has been pre-heating on maximum for about a half hour, and I'll just plop this
down onto my pizza steel. A stone works too. I wouldn't try to shimmy this on with a peel.
The olive oil would make it stick. I just drop it on.
That takes seven minutes. If the top is not browning, you might need to turn on the broiler
mid-way — that's just the heat from above, the grill. Don't burn the garlic powder, though.
It burns easy. I often need a metal tool to scrape that up off the steel.
Look at the bottom — if you just try to bake this on a baking sheet or something you
won't get that crispy base.
And if you've seen me make this bread before, you might be thinking — hey, that looks
a little different on top. Yes it does, because I got a new oven, and it's just amazing the
extent to which every oven is different.
Look at that glassy, crispy top on that. Just a shockingly good, simple thing that never
fails to please the kids. Or adults.
Fourth thing you can do with leftover dough: Freeze it. Pizza dough freezes amazingly well.
Just freeze it after it has fully risen — when it's ready to bake. I could just transfer
that glass container straight to the freezer. The dough is full of air, so it's not like
straight water that expands when it freezes and breaks glass containers.
But, this does work better if you pull it out and wrap it in plastic wrap or put it
in a freezer bag. If the dough is spread out nice and flat, it will freeze quickly, and
it will thaw quickly.
It's flat and it's full of air bubbles, so it'll thaw on the counter in like 30-40 minutes
— 20 minutes if you put it on aluminum, which is extremely thermally conductive. Just
flip it halfway, when you can feel that that side touching the metal is soft.
20 minutes later, it's ready. Now, has freezing killed the yeast in there? Some of them, probably,
and that might be a problem if we were making a bread that needs to proof up really big
and puffy right before baking. But with a flatbread, like pizza, every single yeast
could be dead in here and it wouldn't matter, as long as we let the dough rise before we
freeze it.
And what kind of pizza are we making now? Well, this is idea #5: Use your leftover dough
to experiment with something new. In this case, Lauren's been wanting to try this Smitten
Kitchen recipe she saw for a summer squash pizza. It's linked in the description.
If you go through all the work to make dough and you let it ferment, possibly for days,
you're gonna be really bummed if you try some weird new pizza that you've never made before
and it sucks. So I say do all your experimenting with your extra dough, especially when you're
not particularly hungry —— then you can't lose.
This is just a couple grated squash into which she's put like a teaspoon of salt. Witness
the power of osmosis. She'll squeeze all the moisture she can out of that and discard,
then mix in like 4-5 ounces of gruyere, maybe 120 grams.
We both thought this recipe looked promising but we were worried the flavors would be a
little bland. It does call for gruyere, which is certainly stronger than mozzarella, so
we're thinking that might compensate for the lack of any strong sauce. We had an instinct
to use garlic, but we figured we'd follow the recipe, which also calls for scattering
some breadcrumbs on the top before baking. We're using panko. Those should brown and
make a nice textural contrast.
My pizza steel has been preheating on max temperature for like an hour, and I turned
on the broiler halfway through to brown the top. Looks pretty nice, that.
By the way, can you tell this dough was frozen? Neither can I. It still puffed up great around
the rim. Nice and crispy. Nice brown bottom. That Smitten Kitchen recipe really is delicious,
though we do both think it needs garlic, and we're not mad, because we're just experimenting
with our extra doughs. We already had normal pizza last night.
We can't lose. And you can't lose if you pre-order Lauren's latest novel, "It's Kind of a Cheesy
Love Story." Link in the description. #KindOfAnAdBecauseWe'reMarried, but Lauren's not the sponsor of this video.
Haus is, and their farm-to-glass apéritifs are just as good with dinner as they are before
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with my dough recipe. Go make some dough. Way more than you need.