Pizza

“Party on Poplar” Friday night pizza with friends

Pizza

I have such a love-hate relationship when it comes to pizza. Pizza is just so amazing. Who doesn’t love a wonderfully yeasted pizza crust covered with an acidic, tomato sauce topped with melted, toasted cheese and an assortment of toppings? But pizza gives me the worst stomach problems—yay, lactose intolerance!

During one of our “Party on Poplar” Friday night dinners, one of my friends introduced me to homemade pizza dough—it was a complete game-changer. Just the amazing yeasty smell, when he opened the container, is already bread heaven. What made me even more surprised was that he basically kneaded the dough, then tossed it in the refrigerator to prove, and that was it. Talk about low-effort pizza dough. I was in.

The pizza dough is Adam Ragusea’s viral recipe. He explains with a day-by-day demo as to how the dough becomes more delicious as it is aged in the fridge.

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Ingredients

Yeast blooming

• 1 tsp active dry yeast

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1/4 cup warm water

Pizza dough

• 2 cups water

• 1 tbsp sugar

• 1 tbsp salt

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 5 cups bread flour

Seasoning/topping

• pepper

• basil

• coarse salt

• additional olive oil

Tomato sauce

• 28 oz can of san marzano tomatoes

• 2 tbsp olive oil

• 1 tsp dried oregano

Items

• Tupperware for storing the dough

• pizza steel

• edgeless cookie sheet for pizza assembly

Instructions

Making the dough

Pulled from Adam Ragusea’s video

1. In a small bowl with the warm water, add the sugar and active dry yeast.

2. Give it a quick stir to incorporate and let it sit.

3. Check back in 5 minutes for frothiness to ensure that the yeast is not dead. If there are no visible air bubbles, you will need new yeast.

4. Add the remainder of the ingredients and mix and knead until the dough passes the windowpane test.
   I highly recommend using a stand mixer and a bread hook for this, although it’s definitely not impossible to do this using your hands a large bowl. I just personally found this to be tiring.

5. Once the dough is ready for proving, split the dough into four equal parts.

6. Place each section of dough in its own well-oiled bowl. Use the dough to coat the Tupperware.

7. Place containers into the back of the refrigerator and allow the dough to age for at least 24 hours or up to a week.

Making tomato sauce

1. Add all ingredients into a food processor or blender.

2. Blitz.

3. Simmer on the stovetop to remove excess water if sauce seems too liquidy.

4. Store in a container until ready for use.

Preparing the pizza steel

1. Place pizza steel on a rack in the middle of the oven.

2. Heat oven at the oven’s highest setting (550 F) for 1 hour.

Assembling pizza

1. Dust the cookie sheet with all-purpose flour.

2. Hand-stretch the pizza dough by rotating and holding the edges of the dough and allowing gravity to do the work.

3. Place dough on the floured cookie sheet.

4. Shake/rotate the cookie sheet to ensure that the dough is not stuck onto the cookie sheet. Add more flour if needed.

5. Crack on some pepper and sprinkle some salt on the dough.

6. Spoon tomato sauce on and spread with the back of the spoon.

7. Shake/rotate the pizza on the cookie sheet. Continue to do so after adding each topping, just to make sure that the dough does not stick to the sheet. I forgot to do this the first time around and ended up struggling to get the pizza off the sheet and ended up with a triangular pizza.

8. Top generously with toppings of choice. Drizzle some olive oil or garlic olive oil on top if you’re feeling fancy.
   I personally really enjoyed the tomato sauce with mild Italian chicken sausage, sliced jalapeños, dolloped marscapone, a sprinkle of shaved parmesan, and a drizzle of honey.
   I also really enjoyed topping the pizza with a white sauce, sautéed thyme mushrooms, marscapone, and shaved parmesan.

9. Slide the pizza onto the pizza steel when ready.
   Not sure how to rationalize this, but what I found worked was committing and doing the initial pizza slide at around 15-20 degrees above the pizza steel—too high and the pizza toppings would come flying off and the dough would do a bit of a faceplant onto the pizza steel. Unsure/hesitant sliding would also lead to faceplanted pizza.

10. Bake for 7-8 minutes on the pizza steel at 550 F.

11. Turn the oven to broil and let the top bits char/toast for about a minute before using tongs to remove the pizza onto a serving tray.

12. Top with shredded basil when ready to serve and eat.

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Thoughts

1. Oddly the Trader Joe’s marscapone seems to split for whatever reason as opposed to this brand of marscapone? Perhaps it’s due to the higher fat and protein content that the Vermont Creamery brand didn’t split—not sure and to be evaluated at a different point.