Hey guys, welcome back to Basics with Babish where this week
we're taking a look at pizza. Not only is it the very lifeblood
of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
it is the very lifeblood of New Yorkers and Tinder
profiles everywhere. And I want to show you how you can make a better
pizza pie out of this home oven than
anything that can be delivered through that door.
Let's get down to basics.
Alright, so first off we have to make pizza dough.
Now, you can use the store-bought, refrigerated stuff
but the easiest way to make it at home is Jim Layhey's overnight no-knead method.
We're going to start by measuring out five hundred grams of bread flour,
sixteen grams of kosher salt,
and one gram or a quarter-teaspoon of active dry yeast.
We're then going to whisk those together, make sure that they are thoroughly combined
before adding three hundred and fifty millilitres
(or three hundred and fifty grams if you've still got your bowl on the scale)
of water. Use a wooden spoon to roughly combine
into a shaggy dough, this should only take a few minutes
and don't worry about how messy it gets
Once it just barely comes together and no big clumps of dry flour
remain, simply cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature
for eighteen to twenty-four hours. That's it.
In the meantime, we're going to make a simple pizza sauce.
Start by bringing some extra virgin olive oil to a shimmer over a medium heat,
adding some roughly chopped garlic and sautéing
for one minute or until fragrant. Add some red pepper flakes
let that mingle with the garlic for another ten or fifteen seconds
before adding a twenty-eight ounce can of whole San Marzano tomatoes.
Give this a good stir and start breaking up the tomatoes a little bit
but you don't have to worry about it too much because we're going to purée the sauce.
And, for that sort of New York pizza parlour flavour we're going to add a little bit of dried onion powder
and a little bit of dried oregano. Stir a little bit to combine and
let this guy simmer gently over a medium-low heat for about thirty to forty-five minutes.
Just to let these flavours get to know each other. Then we're going to simply dump our sauce into a blender
and purée for just ten or fifteen seconds, we just want to break up the major tomato solids
and make something nice and smooth that we can spread
on our pizza. Speaking of which, it's dough time!
We're going to start by generously flouring our work surface and
then retrieving our pizza dough which you can see has both grown in size and become uniform in texture.
The slow overnight ferment is also going to make for better flavour and browning down the line.
We're going to divide our dough into four pieces - that's four pizzas,
cover the other ones with plastic wrap while we work with our first ball of dough.
We're going to evenly coat it in flour and
start gently patting it down into the general shape of
a pizza. Don't worry too much about getting it perfectly round and don't roll it
out with a rolling pin. We're just sort of gently coaxing,
suggesting what shape this dough should result in.
Now we're going to pick it up and using our knuckles, passing it knuckle over knuckle,
stretch it out into a larger and larger pizza pie. Accidentally drop it down on the counter top,
stretch it back out, make some final corrections to sort of get it
generally into the shape that you want, we're going to have one more chance to make revisions
before we throw this guy into the oven. First we need
to dust our pizza peel with cornmeal or semolina flour
this is going to act like little ball-bearings to help the
pizza slide off easily into our waiting five hundred degree
oven that we've been pre-heating for at least an hour. And now,
you guessed it - it's sauce time. We're going to ladle a few
ladle-fulls of sauce onto our pizza one at a time, spreading them out, getting it all the way to the edge.
The placement of the sauce and the cheese are really what are going to determine the shape and size of our crust.
And now we're topping with some shredded, low-moisture mozzarella -
Not pre-shredded - that stuff is coated with potato starch
and will result in the nasty, un-melted pieces of cheese
that you might be used to if you've ever made pizza at home before.
We're also going to top with a couple of leaves of basil. And now pick up the pizza
and give it a shake, and see if it's sliding around freely on your pizza peel.
If it's sticking anywhere just lift up the corner and dust it with a bit more cornflour.
Now slide it onto your pizza stone in your pre-heated oven
and bake for seven to nine minutes until it looks like
a pizza. I know it doesn't seem feasible but try to let this
cool for a few minutes before cutting into pieces
and serving. Your mouth will thank you for it.
Your mouth will also thank you for putting this pizza inside of it
because it's really, really very good. I can't tell you what kind of
difference a slow-fermented dough like this makes and
as long as we have four pieces why don't we try some variations?
I have some spicy sopressata that I'm going to put on top of a little bit of cheese and red sauce,
a little bit of freshly torn basil, and this time I've pushed the sauce
truly all the way to the edge. This is going to give me
a darker crust with more caramelized
tomato sauce. And now I'm going to top the whole thing with some
fresh creamy burrata cheese. Burrata is like a little
sack of mozzarella that is filled with sweet cream
and it is off-the-charts delicious. Now, you can obviously
top your pizza however you want, you can put pineapple on there for all I care.
But what about different form factors? How about a calzone?
This time I'm just going to spread sauce on one side of the dough,
top with the requisite mozzarella cheese, or you know, the cheese of your choice,
and I'm also going to throw some chopped-up ham in there
I think that'll be fun. And how about some nice sauteed spinach?
To be honest, I'm just throwing stuff in there that I have in the fridge.
This is a great way to use up leftover ingredients from other recipes.
Simply fold the dough over on itself, crimp with a fork
and if you want you can trim away the excess dough for a cleaner presentation.
Same deal as the pizza, make sure that it is sliding around freely on your peel.
For a browner, slightly glossier crust I'm going to
drizzle this and brush it down with a little extra virgin olive oil
and throw it into the oven for ten to fifteen minutes or until deeply browned.
Normally you want to let this guy cool off for a little bit
but I'm trying to get that porny, steamy cross-section
which we can take a look at now. Serve with some extra sauce
on the side for dipping or just dig in as-is.
I hope you guys try this yourselves, it's easier than it looks and
we can cook it together, next week during the livestream on Twitch.