Pizza takes practice! Don’t be discouraged by first attempt results. Here’s a look back at my progress over 5 years of pizza making in a conventional oven. I do most of the bake these days on a steel in the dedicated broiler drawer of my old oven. Early attempts used 00 Flour which sucks for conventional ovens since it doesn’t brown at lower heat. KABF for the win. Recipe below.
Recipe measurements for 3 dough balls about 290g.
King Arthur Bread Flour - 100% - 530g
Water (90-95 degrees F) - 61% - 323g
Sea Salt - 2% - 16g
Instant Dry Yeast - .25% - 1.3g / or two-thirds of a half tsp
Steps:
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Dissolve salt in lukewarm water by swishing around in large bowl or food container
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Add yeast, and swish around to dissolve
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After a minute or two add flour and mix by hand until just incorporated
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Cover and let rest for 20 minutes
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Remove dough and knead for 30-60 seconds on lightly floured surface
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Bulk ferment for 2 hours, covered, at room temp
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Divide dough and shape into balls.
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Put dough balls on floured plate. Sprinkle with flour, and cover plate with plastic wrap. Or use sealed food containers that provide space to ferment.
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Ferment dough in fridge for 24-48 hours.
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Remove dough balls 90-120 minutes before baking, during that time preheat your pizza stone at the hottest temp. Roll dough on lightly floured surface to about 13-14 inch diameter
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This is really handy. It’s encouraging to see the progress, I need to try your recipe and see if it comes out better. Thanks for sharing.
Practice makes perfect! I think I was lucky to start making pizza well before the ooni craze. I will say part of my inspiration was seeing some not very flattering pics of upvoted pizza on reddit and thinking to myself “I could do better”. I imagine it’s a bit more intimidating these days when it seems that everyone posting pics is using an ooni’s these days.
Huh maybe I should take the temperature of my water. I’m not a great baker. I use this recipe for my dough (we usually make calzones with it but it makes pretty decent pizzas too):
11 ounces (about 2 cups) bread flour, plus more for dusting surfaces
2 t sugar
.15 ounces salt (about 1 1/2 teaspoons)
1 t instant yeast
1 1/2 T olive oil
6 1/2 oz (1 cup minus 3 T) lukewarm waterPut all dry ingredients in food processor (with blade). Pulse 3-4 times until incorporated.
Add oil and water ingredients. Run food processor until mixture forms ball that rides around the bowl above the blade, about 15 seconds. Continue processing 15 seconds longer.
Transfer dough ball to lightly floured surface and knead once or twice by hand until smooth ball is formed.
Makes 2 doughs, separate, cover with a little olive oil, and refrigerate in quart-sized deli container for 1-5 days. Or, cover and let sit in warm place for 3 hours.
When cooking:
Preheat oven to 500 degrees (starting 1 hour before you want to cook them).
Stretch dough into 10-12 inch round. Make calzone. Cook for 15-18 minutes, then let rest for 5 minutes.
Pro tip: to make things easy, make the calzone on parchment paper (with one half of the calzone on the paper and the other on a floured surface (to allow for easy folding).
