Hi Bold Bakers, with over 15 years working as a professional chef, I’ve definitely
learned a thing or two along the way.
Here are my top 5 Pro Chef Secrets on how you can make a restaurant quality pizza at
home.
This recipe is my best ever pizza dough and it can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
So the first secret is a really important one, people ask me ‘why is my dough so sticky?’
And that shouldn’t happen and I’m gonna show you how to prevent it.
Here I have all of my dry ingredients my flour, my yeast, my salt.
Here I have my wet ingredients my lukewarm water and my olive oil.
Here’s what you want to do.
I give you the measurement for water but you might not need it all or maybe you need more.
When you’re making any pastry, any bread dough, add in add in around 75% of your liquid,
stir and see how much you need.
By doing this you’ll add exactly the right amount of liquid and not too much.
So here’s the thing, your flour is gonna be different from my flower it could be old
it could be new you could live in a humid climate.
You just want to add enough liquid until your dough forms a ball and cleans the bottom of
the bowl.
You don’t want a really sticky dough, you don’t want a dry dough, you just want it
to form together.
So I can see that this is still a bit dry so maybe I do need the rest of my liquid,
so I’m gonna add all of that in there.
You can also use your hand at this stage and just bring your dough together.
My pizza took all of the liquid but do you see this here, my dough is still a bit dry.
So this is where people can go wrong, they can lash in all of that water trying to make
it all wet again.
Here’s what you’re gonna do.
A splash, just a tiny splash of water.
All we want to do is lightly hydrate that flour.
So here we go, I added all of my water plus a splash extra and here’s what I got, a
ball of dough and a clean bowl.
This is exactly what we want.
If you get this, you’ve got a fantastic pizza dough.
So tightly cover your bowl with some cling wrap and a nice clean tea towel, and what
you’re gonna do is let this ferment at room temperature for a minimum of 12 hours but
a maximum of 18.
I like to make it the night before so it’s ready the next day.
So secret number 2, crank up that oven as high as it will go.
My oven goes to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and that’s the hottest I can get it.
The hotter the oven the better the pizza you’ll get a lovely bubbly crust it’ll be lovely.
So here’s my secret weapon for making restaurant quality pizza at home.
It’s a cast iron griddle.
I put it in the bottom of my oven, let it get nice and hot and then I slide my pizza
onto it.
That means putting it on the hot tray will give it a lovely crispy crust and a bubbly
edge.
I’m gonna put a link on my website of where you can buy this.
If you don’t have one no worries, just put a regular baking tray in the oven.
So our next secret is something people do have trouble with, shaping your pizza.
Now I know it can be kinda tricky so I’m gonna show you some really easy tips.
So here I have my dough it’s nice and relaxed, and what I’m gonna do first is go around
the edges and form a crust with my fingertips trying to make a round.
I know pizza doesn’t always come out round, but just try.
And then what you can do is take it in your hands and move it through your fingers.
This is called driving the bus, see?
You can see right before your eyes your pizza dough starts to stretch, see?
So you can see right before your eyes, your pizza dough starts to stretch.
You can also go underneath with your knuckles and stretch it out a bit.
You just want to get it thin in the middle and still have your edge.
Just put it on the table and try to work it into a round.
Now this is a common problem but if your pizza dough starts to retract as you’re pulling
it, that means the gluten isn’t relaxed enough so what you want to do is lay over
a tea towel leave it for like 5-10 minutes, the gluten will be relaxed and when you come
back it’ll be so much easier to work with.
So look at this, I want to show you something, if you see a hole don’t freak out it happens
to the best of us, all you have to do is pinch it with your fingers and close it, and then
move on with your life, nobody will ever know it happened.
Ok great I’m really surprised that I have a round pizza because that rarely happens.
So pull it to around 10 inches or so, you don’t want to go much further or it’ll
be too thin.
So there you go it’s really easy to shape pizza dough so I know you got this, looking
good, now we’re gonna move on to our next secret.
So secret number four I have this lovely, totally flat baking tray, I’m gonna put
my pizza on this, before I do I’m gonna sprinkle it with some semolina.
So semolina is durham wheat, it’s kind of a course kind of flower, and if you sprinkle
this on your tray before you lay on your pizza it works as really good traction so you can
move your pizza from this tray straight into the oven now if you don’t have this flour
you can use a regular flour, but I always like to have this in the cupboard, so now
topping your pizza so trust us, less is more, you don’t want to overload it with toppings
or else you won’t be able to get it off your tray.
So this is my tomato sauce, the recipe is on my website, this is really easy you can
make it all in a blender with no cooking.
Mozzarella, you know it’s one of my pet peeves when you go to a pizza place and they
don’t have your toppings and sauce all the way to the edge, I love to put mine all the
way out to the edge.
Then simply we’re gonna top it with basil.
Ok now there’s really only one last thing to do and that’s get it into the oven.
Secret number five, slide your pizza onto your preheated tray.
Putting it onto the tray will help crisp your base but also create that oven spring, what
oven spring is is when you get that crust bubbly and popped all the way around.
That is oven spring and that’s what we want, this is gonna be a Neapolitan style pizza.
Also another tip, please don’t open the door while it’s baking.
Leave the door closed, peak through the glass, don’t open the door we want all of that
hot air to stay in there for a few minutes.
So while the pizza’s in the oven I’m gonna answer a question I get all of the time, can
I freeze the pizza dough?
I don’t recommend that you freeze raw dough it just won’t come out the same.
However what you can do is roll out your base, put it straight into the oven with no toppings,
cook it for around 3-4 minutes or so, you just want it to puff up, you don’t want
too much color at all on it, then you can take it out of the oven, top it with all of
the toppings you like, pop it into the freezer, then you’ll have a fresh pizza ready to
go at any time.
So I literally could not be happier with how this turned out, so come here to me I want
to show you exactly what we did here.
See how that crust popped and bubbled, we did that by putting it on a piping hot tray
we got that oven spring we were looking for.
We got that almost a little burnt tomato sauce, this is perfect and if I lift it up we’ve
got that bottom that’s all crispy from the tray so this is pizza perfection.
Oh the basil is crispy, this is my go to pizza crust I’ve made it hundreds of times and
I hope you guys love it too.
Head over to Bigger Bolder Baking.com for the recipe and all the tips and please submit
your photos when you make it because I’d love to see them.
I’ll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.