Today on The Stay At Home Chef
I'm showing you how to make Italian Style Pizza Dough.
We're going full chef today
and I'm giving you all of the secret tips and tricks for making Italian style pizza dough at home.
The best Italian style pizza dough is made with Caupto's 00 flour.
This is a specially milled flour that's milled to be super fine.
It is so finely milled that it feels almost like cornstarch or baby powder.
This flour has a 12.5% protein content and a low absorption of water.
It makes for the chewiest, perfect pizza dough.
If you can't find 00 flour in your grocery store,
you can order it online from Amazon or you can also use all-purpose flour.
It just won't have quite the same texture as that perfect, chewy, Italian crust.
We're gonna make our dough in a stand mixer.
If you don't have one you can always make it the old fashioned way
in a bowl with a spoon and then knead by hand.
You'll need 2 teaspoons of instant or active dry yeast,
1 tablespoon sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt,
1 3/4 cup of lukewarm water,
you want it just warm to the touch so you don't kill off your yeast,
and 1/3 cup olive oil.
We're gonna add about 5 cups of flour to start,
because we can always add more if we need it.
We're gonna get this mixing.
You may need up to 6 cups of flour depending on how you measure your flour
and how accurately you measure your liquid ingredients,
which can always be just a little bit off, it also depends on what type of flour you're using.
The dough should be able to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
With pizza dough you want to develop the gluten in the flour,
so let it knead for about 3-4 minutes.
The dough needs to pass the windowpane test.
So you want to be able to stretch it out and have it be thin without tearing.
So this one needs more kneading.
We'll keep on kneading this.
That is more like it.
With this, you'll be able to get the perfect thin crust.
Then we'll divide up our dough.
This recipe makes four 14-16 inch pizzas, or six 10-12 inch pizzas.
Just grab each piece and kind of roll it into a ball again,
dust these with a little bit of flour,
and we'll transfer these to a sheet pan or just undisturbed on the counter top,
where they're going to rest.
Now if you'll notice I said rest not rise.
This process isn't so much about the dough rising,
as it is the dough resting.
For really good chewy pizza dough
you want to let the dough rest for at least 5 hours or up to 24 hours.
Cover this with plastic wrap.
Resting allows the gluten to develop which is how you get that chewy crust.
If you haven't gotten the hint yet, this recipe is all about the gluten,
which means, no, you cannot easily make this recipe gluten-free.
You definitely need a recipe that was developed just for that purpose.
I've got some dough I made yesterday,
so I'm gonna transfer that to a lightly floured counter top,
then you can either roll this out or stretch it.
If you want to be really fancy,
what you'll do is stretch it out using your fists and then give it a toss.
Then you can use a pizza pan, but what I like to do is use a pizza peel,
so I'm gonna sprinkle on some just plain cornmeal, so my dough doesn't stick to the peel,
and we'll just place our crust on top of the cornmeal.
Then of course you can top it with whatever is your favorite.
Today I'm doing my homemade 2 minute pizza sauce real quick,
and we'll go true Italian style and layer on some fresh mozzarella,
and we'll add on some fresh basil, but of course you can top it with whatever you'd like.
Now developing our gluten and letting our dough rest mattered a lot to forming that chewy crust,
but the best perfect Italian authentic style pizza is cooked in a wood fired oven.
I'm guessing you don't have one of those at home.
Don't worry, neither do I.
So what you're gonna do is preheat your oven to as hot as it will go,
which should be about 550 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can see I have a pizza stone in my oven.
You want to put that in there first and preheat the oven as hot as it will go.
This is going to bake our crust from the bottom up.
Now getting your crust from the pizza peel to the pizza stone is a little bit intimidating.
So what I like to do is give it a little shake and see if it slides around.
That means it's loose enough.
That's why you dust the peel with cornmeal and you don't have a sticky dough.
Then it should just slide right off.
Now the pizza stone is great,
but the other great trick to cooking Italian style pizza dough at home without a wood fired oven
is to turn the oven to the broil setting.
You'll have the residual heat in the oven, the heat from the pizza stone,
and heat coming from above.
This is as close as you're going to get to a wood fired oven at home.
Take a look at that beauty.
You'll know your pizza is ready when it starts to blacken on the outer crust,
and the cheese and toppings start to brown.
How long that takes does depend on how thin you rolled out your crust,
as well as the toppings you put on top.
But it should be somewhere in the 5-7 minute range.
Then you'll go ahead and pull it out.
This right here is gonna be the perfect slice.
You are ready to eat.
Be sure to check out my website where you can find more tips and tricks
and answers to frequently asked questions.
Thanks for watching.
You can find the full written recipe in the video description.
Be sure to subscribe, like, and follow, and check out the rest of my videos,
where you can find hundreds of restaurant quality recipes
you can easily make at home.
See you later.