How do I make the perfect dough? Are you one of those who stand in their kitchens and ask the same question? Do all your efforts to make pizzas go in to vain just because you can’t get the dough right? Do you want to know the secret to pizza perfection? Well then, here you go!
Recipe To Make The Dough
Here are a few essentials you need before you start off with your dough making exercise:
- Around 1 lbs of bread flour
- Around 2 tablespoons of honey or sugar
- 1-1.5 tablespoons of salt
- 1-1.25 tablespoons of yeast
- 1-1.5 tablespoons of olive oil along with semolina flour for a perfect ending
Once you have all of the above mentioned ingredients, you mix the salt, honey, flour, yeast and the olive oil together in a bowl- you may as well use an electric mixer to help you in the mixing part. After this, add some cold water slowly to the mixture. The water should be of a temperature between 60-650F. Mix the mixture for around a minute or two and then leave the dough to rest.
After this, start kneading the dough slowly for about 2-3 minutes. While kneading, if you feel more flour or water needs to be added, do so in order to create a ball kind of a texture of the dough. Make sure the dough then becomes smooth but not sticky; you should be able to peel off the dough easily only to leave the minor remains behind. At the same time, the dough should not be sticking to the pan.
Next up, you would need to cool down the dough you have. Take a bowl bigger than the dough- around twice the size and start oiling it with the olive oil. Put in the dough into this bowl and oil it completely before sealing the bowl and refrigerating it for at least 8 hours and up till 3 days. During this time, you should observe the dough to grow in size and thus be chilled. Once the dough stops growing, it is a signal that the dough has been completely refrigerated and is now ready to use. You can then use this dough for making pizzas, Stromboli or calzones.
Thinking Ahead Of Time- Some Tips
The pizza dough needs a good amount of time to be chilled in order to guarantee a good pizza. Therefore, a word of caution: keep the dough in the fridge, as instructed above, at least a day before you intend to make the pizza. If you would want to knead the dough in bulk, you can freeze the dough by dividing it into smaller pieces. Once in the freezer, the dough will ferment itself and will thus increase in size. When you wish to use the frozen dough, you can keep it at room temperature for about 2 to 3 hours and then follow the same instructions as those for the overnight refrigerated dough, as mentioned above.
Getting Different Types Of Dough
If you’re thinking of having a healthier pizza now instead of the regular ‘fatty’ ones, you can include whole wheat in your dough. All you’ll have to do is to replace around 25%-50% of the flour with an equal amount of whole wheat flour. The same specifics apply to the whole wheat dough- you should mix it in such a manner that it is not sticky yet is smooth.
Another variation that you can bring about in your pizza dough is in the form of cornmeal pizza dough. This is when you replace around 25%-50% of the flour with cornmeal. You should start off with the kneading and mixing of the dough in the same manner but add more water since the cornmeal is likely to be harder and more difficult to mix. The end purpose is the same- to make the dough smooth and non-sticky.
You might need to pour in some extra flour depending on the type of cornmeal you use- if you’re using polenta, it would absorb the water more slowly and would remain hard for a longer period of time. So, you need to adjust your water and flour requirements according to the type of cornmeal as well.
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