hey everyone welcome back today I am going to delve into the murky world of
making pizza dough this is something that I've consciously avoided for the 10
years that we've had this channel although we have had a couple of guest
chefs on who have made pizza dough I've stayed away from it but I think you know
I've got 30 years experience of making pizza dough a couple times a month I
might have something to pass along so I'm gonna show you my recipe my method
that that I've sort of found works for me at this point so four ingredients
only four ingredients and the first ingredient is flour now that is double
zero Italian pizza flour and when you say double zero flour it doesn't always
mean that it's pizza flour double zero only refers to how finely the flour is
ground which double zero means very finely so you could have double zero
cake flour which has a very low protein content and is absolutely the worst for
making pizza so make sure that you get a high protein double zero flour now if
you can't get double zero flour which I always can't get it here where I live in
Toronto or when I can't get it it's unbelievably expensive and I'm just not
like you know whatever I'm not gonna pay that much money for the flour if what is
stopping you is you can't get double zero or you can't afford double zero or
you just don't want to give in and use double zero use bread flour as long as
it's a high-protein bread flour it's going to give you a pizza dough that is
pretty good in the end and if you don't have bread flour and you've got
all-purpose flour and the only thing that's stopping you is a bunch of
jackasses on the internet telling you that you have to use double zero pizza
flour whatever use the flour that you have just don't use cake and pastry
flour too low a protein content so you know in the realm of things all-purpose
flour is pretty good bread flours better double zero pizza flour absolutely the
best and we'll probably do a video now that
we've gone down this rabbit hole we'll do a video where we do different flowers
and taste test them and just see what the differences actually are so that was
500 grams of flour and that amount gives Julie and I three reasonably good sized
pizzas that fit in our oven so 500 grams of flour now the next thing is salt and
this is just coarse salt coarse salt of course non-iodized and I just mix that
in and the amount of salt is 3% of the weight of the flour so three percent of
500 grams is 15 grams 15 grams of coarse salt works out to about 2 teaspoons of
course it's best to weigh if you want consistent results and I just mix that
in 3% I landed on because it sort of gives me a nice balance of flavor
without being too salty anything under 2% of salt and the dough
is really bland it doesn't taste like anything it's you know what am i eating
cardboard over 5% and I start to feel that it's too salty I have seen pizza
dough recipes and I've eaten them where it's as high as 8% and for me that's way
too salty so you know 3% is a good starting point for you if you're just
starting up making it and then sort of you can play around from there and see
what works for you so I mix that in next up this is just I don't know with
traditional baking yeast everyone says in their videos especially the Italian
guys that you have to use fresh yeast I run a Test Kitchen I'm in here baking
all the time I use a lot of yeast but I cannot go through fresh yeast cakes fast
off they don't have a shelf life they don't live very long this stuff you can
keep in your cupboard for probably two years so I always use the dry yeast yeah
if you want to use fresh yeast go right ahead
it'll give you a different flavor profile so this is just traditional
dried yeast I'm not exactly put a thing below me here as I'm talking and now you
can put it in the water if you're not sure if your yeast is any good I know
this is I know that this yeast is good because I use it quite a bit if you
don't use it very often mix it into the water and wait for it to bloom ten or
fifteen minutes you'll start to see it foaming and bubbling and then put it in
I know that this is good I throw it right in with the flour and then I just
mix it in and everyone's gonna be screaming no it's mixed in with the salt
the salt is gonna kill it the salt salt salt yes salt does slow down the East
salt can kill the yeast in this amount the salt will not hurt the east and it's
gonna go for very long rise so the fact that the salt might retard the East
isn't a problem salt is always in bread yeast is always
in bread for thousands of years the two have been working together as long as
you don't put too much salt you're not gonna hurt it so I put it in like that
now oh and that was that was 1% so the amount of yeast what by weight was 1% of
the weight of the flour which again works out to about a teaspoon and a
quarter ish so turn this on low and I've got the water
here and it I know that everyone says that you're supposed to use water of a
certain temperature and it's supposed to be warm but not too warm because it'll
kill the yeast and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah room-temperature water
room temperature water means that it's not gonna be so warm that it's gonna
hurt the yeast and it's not gonna be so cold that it's gonna stop these from
activating room temperature works really well and so at this point just running
slowly a little bit faster the waters in there and it's gonna start to pull the
flour in and form a ragged ball so we've got a ragged ball in there and I set a
timer for 30 minutes shut off the mixer and just let it sit for thirty minutes I
don't cover it I don't touch it I don't go near it I don't even think about it
for about a half an hour what I forgot to tell you was how much water I put him
there so this recipe is 60% water so you take the weight of the flour 60% of that
weight 500 grams so 60% of 500 grams is 300 grams I use 300 grams of water
luckily in the metric system 300 grams of water is 300 milliliters and that
gives me a dough that is sort of in between too sticky or too dry gives me
nice puffs when I put it in the oven I have done dough's up to about 65% and I
find them far too sticky to work with later on reshaping so 60% works for me I
don't use any oil I don't like what all does to the crust that's just me you
could put in a couple tablespoons of oil if you want or use oil at various points
in the process and I don't use any sugar I don't use any sugar you don't need
sugar for the yeast to bloom you don't need sugar for the yeast to
activate you can make the yeast work faster by adding sugar but because we're
gonna let this go for a very long ferment in the refrigerator
we don't need it and I find that adding sugar adds a flavor that I don't really
like so 30 minutes and then we'll come back and we'll give this a need okay so
the 30 minutes is up and the dough has been resting now this is not a true Otto
lies rest an Auto lies rest is where you just mix together the flour and the
water and then you let it sit for you know between 20 minutes and 2 or 3 hours
and during that time the water completely moistens the flour and it
also starts to break the starches in the flour into the simple sugars that the
yeast is going to need in the fermentation process this leads to a
dough that is much easier to knead much easier to work with down the road it has
a much better crust and flavor this simple rest at the beginning has
consequences all the way down the line now a true Otto lies eat a true Otto
lies rest you wouldn't have put the salt or the yeast in yet you would add them
now just before you start to mix the dough and knead it I put them in at the
beginning I realize that it's not a true Otto lies rest I put them in at the
beginning because I just I just find it's easier to mix them in at that point
I still find that this 30-minute rest gives me most of what I want out of that
rest later on so if you really want to do a true rest you would hold back the
salt in the east and add them in now so let's move on to the kneading depending
on your machine or whether you do it by hand on the countertop you could need
anywhere from 7 to 10 minutes
okay so we are fully needed at this point now one of the things that I've
learned over 30 years of making pizza dough at home is that there's a whole
lot of ways to get to the end result there's a whole lot of different
techniques that will give you essentially the same result and you have
to pick and choose which ones work for you and how far you're willing to go
because sometimes you can go really far on doing something and it's only going
to give you a tiny little bit of return at the end so at this point I pull it
out and I put it onto the bench and I don't put any flour on the bench and
you're gonna see that it's pretty sticky and the reason I don't put any flour on
the bench is like there's my timer so as much as I set a timer for kneading the
dough just visually I've made this often enough that I looked at it and I said
that's what it needs to be and I turned it off so as much as you think that
timing is important you're gonna learn visual and touch is much more important
so what was I saying out on the bench no flour no flour at this point at all you
don't want to work any more flour into this dough so there it is you can let
this rise for an hour - in a container at room temperature get the first rise
punch it down shape it put it back in the container and then put it in the
fridge for the slow ferment this this slow ferment that I do is 2 or 3 days
sometimes I've taken it up to four days and it four days it tastes amazing
so depending on what my day is structured like I'll either let it rise
for an hour or two punch it down and then
put it in the fridge or I'll just shape it put it in the container seal it and
stick it in the fridge and not let it do a first rise just let it bulk ferment
and between the two methods I don't notice much of a difference either in
texture or in flavor there's probably people who do notice a difference and
you know I would encourage you to do it both ways and figure out what works best
for you so at this point we've got all up a dough and you can't just stick that
lump of dough in there it needs to sort of be uniform again techniques there's a
whole bunch of different techniques I see people turning it over and
stretching and stretching it in and stretching it in and stretching it in
and stretching it in I don't do that see it's stuck to the counter and I just
grab it like this and there you go it's shaped it's shaped and ready to go in
there and what you're looking for when you're shaping it is you want a nice
smooth texture over the top that's very important you don't want it to be ragged
or jagged and when you turn it over you don't want too much of a dimple in the
bottom that one's still got a bit of a bit of a dimple so you can turn it over
there you go so pick that up put that into a container put a lid on it and I
stick that in the fridge for for this dough like I said I usually go two or
three days sometimes four days if I really wanted to I could leave this in
the fridge overnight or for 18 hours and then eat it for supper tomorrow and it
would be fantastic it would still be really good but the the idea is that the
longer you let it ferment in cold temperatures in the fridge the better
the dough is going to taste the easier it's going to shape you're gonna get a
better crust you're gonna get a better texture pretty much everything about it
is going to be better that that long ferment that you there's nothing that
you can substitute for time although we will be doing it
where there are a couple of substitutes for time and we're going to test them
back-to-back in future episodes and see what works so into the fridge and then
we'll come back and do some portioning
and this is what it looks like after three days in the fridge
you can see it has doubled in size probably more than doubled in size and
now it's time to portion it out I'm just starting up the pizza oven I've got
about an hour hour and a half until I'll be ready to bake and that will give this
time to come up to room temperature and have that one last rise so the dough is
really stiff at this point use a scraper get it out of the container and onto
your workbench no flour on your workbench and you want to just break
this into this is enough for three pizzas so you can eyeball it if you
really want to you can weigh it to get it exact but you don't need to be that
exact just take a good good chance let's say that's about right and now you just
form it into a ball the same way that we did before we put it into the container
and that's why you don't want any flour on your bench at this point
get that nice smooth shape around the side that one's good move on to the next
one now cover these over with a damp towel or a piece of plastic wrap you
don't want to wrap them tightly because they are gonna grow as they warm up
they're gonna rise a little bit again and you can put these on a sheet tray so
that you can move them around you put them on another cutting board so that
you can move them around I'm just gonna leave them here on the bench because I'm
gonna use them in about an hour and that's it for making a basic pizza dough
come on back in the next videos and we'll show you how to shape the dough
and we'll make some pizzas thanks for stopping by so you can soon