I know there are some serious pizza lovers here. I have been messing around with pizza dough recipes for a while now in an attempt to get the thick soft crusty oily dough that they have at some of the major pizza joints. Tonight I hit the mark. I made cheesy flatbread with a crust identical to the one I have been looking for. It came out so friggin good I ignored the rest of the dinner and just ate the bread. Recipe below, I highly recommend it.
2c warm water 2 tsp yeast 2 tsp sugar 2 tsp salt 5-6 cups flour 1/3 cup olive oil + more for brushing cornmeal for dusting
Combine all the ingredients except cornmeal in a heavy duty mixer with a dough hook and mix for 10 minutes on low. Keep adding flour until the mixture pulls mostly away from the bowl but is still pretty loose. Roll into a ball and rise in an oiled bowl for 1-1.5 hrs. Punch down dough and turn out into a large heavy pan that has been brushed with oil and sprinkled with cornmeal. Push down and make wells with the fingertips. Let this rise again for another 30 minutes. Parbake in a preheated oven at 375 for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cover with toppings. Bake again in a preheated 500 degree oven for another 10-12 minutes. The dough comes out soft, chewy and crispy with a nice browned crusty bottom. It is DA BOMB. Wash it down with some nice cold beer and you are talking serious heaven. I like to add a little dried thyme to the dough too. It doesn't give much flavor but it produces a heavenly aroma.
Who else likes to make pizza/flatbread and how do you make it?
BTW, I know this is a repeat thread but who cares? pizza is good.
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Sounds like a pretty good basic pizza dough....we used to make our own also (Alton Brown from Good Eats has a great recipe for it...sound almost identical to yours P...)
The trick with good pie dough is time.... A 24 hour rise/pound down cycle is about right for a great dough...but a local food chain (Publix) started selling fresh pizza dough that's outstanding.....so I got lazy, and don't bother anymore. I'm about to make a pie for dinner as we speak.
Personally, I think the biggest thing you can do for great flat bread/pizza is to cook on a stone. Nothing else gives you the crispy crust & chewy texture like cooking on a bread stone. You can either spend the bucks and get a stone from a gourmet or restaurant store (they all sell them), or just go to Home Depot and get a couple of unglazed Mexican flooring tiles....either way, you need to "season" them by brushing a little EVOO on them, and putting them in the hottest oven you can find....and turn off the smoke detector. After you do this once or twice to season it, the stone just gets better with each use. I bought some tiles a few years ago that completely line my oven and they work great.....great investment (and I never have to clean the oven).
To add a little extra flavor to the crust (or just to give some extra zing to flatbread) I usually use garlic olive oil mixed with cilantro oil (cilantro run through a food processor and let sit in EVOO) & brush it on the crust before baking, or putting on the Pizza ingredients....Yum.... I heat the oven up to 500+ to heat the stones while I'm putting on the ingredients. When they are hot, I slide the pie in (I assemble the pie on a Peal...a wooden pizza paddle that I cover with corn meal to act a "bearings" so it slides easily onto the stone)...and 11 minutes later...Heaven. Time to go fix dinner.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: rbihari,
"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation." ~ Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
That sounds really good piller. I made another batch today and topped it with shrimp, crab, alfredo sauce, and asiago cheese. It was awesome. I really like thin crust dough too but this is a little more decadent.
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I'm a thin crust guy myself. I made a pizza on Friday night with my pesto, thin sliced red onions, artichoke hearts, mozzarella slices, thin sliced roma tomatos and grilled chicken. It turned out amazing. For the crust, I use
3/4 + 2tbs lukewarm water 1 package (?) yeast 2 3/4 cups of flour 1 tbs salt A dash of garlic salt 1/4 cup of honey
after a couple of kneading and risings, I bake it at 400 for 13 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and cook another 10 minutes. If I don't use sauce I cook it at 10 min / 10 min. It comes out nice and crispy.
My girlfiend took some of the seafood pizza to work and let her boss try some. She said it was the best pizza she ever had and that she wanted the recipe. She wouldn't stop raving about the crust.
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The Publix dough is great. A couple of weeks ago my wife and I each took half of the dough and made our own pies. On top of a stone it worked great. However, most times I stick with my roots and build a Chicago-style pizza. Nothing like a ton of cheese, meat, and sauce to top it off.
Posts: 259 | Location: Florida | Registered: March 28, 2005
