You don't really know pizza until you read this

Erin and I really love pizza and we thought we made our own version pretty well.  I like to think that I am a pretty good cook but Erin is the real deal.  Together we've gone through many deviations and variations changing everything from sauce to style to crust to toppings to cheese blend.  Just when we were getting comfortable with our secret 00 flour crust recipe a little trip to California for the Rose Bowl changed everything.

Planning for the trip started no less than 5 minutes after the Badgers knocked off MSU on the night of 12/3.  Fortunately for us, we've got great friends that live in Orange County (yes that's you two Mike and AJ) who are willing to put up with us and as crazy as this may sound, I'm pretty sure they are our west coast twins.  AJ and Mike are foodies like us and they were scouting potential restaurants for our visit and suggested Mozza in Newport Beach a gourmet pizza joint owned by Nancy Silverton (founder of La Brea Bakery), Matt Molina and iron chef Mario Batali.  With AJ being as neurotic as she is, they gave Mozza a test run prior to our visit.  The concensis was great pizza but way overpriced.  We never made it to Mozza but AJ and Mike got us The Mozza Cookbook which includes a dough recipe similar to what they use at Mozza but converted to work in household ovens that can't reach 800-900 degrees for proper pizza baking.

As we love pizza we decided to give Nancy's recipe a dance tonight.  Below is the recipe for all of you to use and try followed by the results and our thoughts about it.  As pizza dough recipes go, this one is pretty involved so read it through completely and get you ingredients organized and measured before getting started.

RECIPE Ingredients

• 22 ounces of warm tap water (warm not hot, hot will ruin the yeast)
• 1 tsp of active dry yeast (we used organic yeast, not really sure what that means?)
• 26 ounces of unbleached bread flour (this is not 26 ounces in the measuring cup e.g.. volume, but 26 ounces by dry weight, since we don't have a cooking scale yet, we converted the 26 ounces of dry weight to a volume measured in cups or 5.9 cups.  I eyeballed the 0.9 part and it turned out just fine.
• 1 TBL dark rye flour or medium rye flour (we used organic dark rye flour)
• 1.5 tsp of wheat germ
• 1.5 tsp of barley malt or mild flavored honey (we used honey)
• 1 tsp of kosher salt
• Olive oil for greasing the bowl

RECIPE Steps

• Make the sponge by combining 15 ounces of water and the yeast in the bowl of a standing mixer and let it sit for a few minutes to dissolve the yeast.  
• Add 13 ounces (2.95 cups) of the bread flour, the rye flour and the wheat germ.  Stir with a wooden spooned to combine the ingredients with the water and yeast already in the bowl.
• Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap to insure a very tight seal.
• Set the dough aside at room temperature (68-70 degrees) for 90 minutes.  You can cut this to 45 minutes if you are in a hurry and it's still ok.
• Uncover the bowl and add the remaining 7 ounces of water, the remaining 13 ounces (2.95 cups) of bread flour and the barley malt (we used honey).
• Fit the mixer with a dough hook, place the bowl on the mixer stand and mix the dough on low speed for 2 minutes.
• Add the salt and mix on medium speed for 6 to 8 minutes, until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Note the dough will not pull so much that it completely cleans the bowl.  If the dough is too sticky slowly toss in a handful of flower to help it along.
• While the dough is mixing lightly grease a large bowl with olive oil.  The bowl should be big enough to accommodate  the existing dough ball and have room for it to double in size as it rises.
• Wrap the bowl as before and allow it to rest for 45 minutes at room temperature.
• Acting as if the dough round has four sides, fold the edges of the dough toward the center.  Turn the dough over and return it, folded side down, to the bowl.  Cover the bowl again with plastic wrap and set it aside for 45 minutes.

Mixing the dough

Making the pizzas

• Dust you work surface with flour and turn the dough out onto the floured surface.
• Divide the dough into 6 equal segments.  (we did only 3 segments and it made nice sized pizzas for sharing between 12-14 inches) Doing 6 segments will make individual size pizzas which is fine too and allows you to employ greater topping variety.
• Take a dough ball and place it on the floured surface
• With a floured rolling pin roll the dough out into a manageable circle/oval.  Be careful not to get the dough any thinner than 1/4 inch thick with a little extra thickness ok at the outer edge of the pizza.
• Once you've done this add your toppings to make the pizza yours.
• Once topped use a pastry brush to lightly brush the un-topped outer edges of the pizza with olive oil. For extra flavor we added California Garlic Powder to the olive oil before brushing it on.  Once the olive oil garlic mixture was brushed on to the outer edge of the crust we lightly sprinkled kosher salt on top of the brushed edges.  This allowed the outer edges of crust to really brown up and also give it some great finishing flavor.

Notice the brushed edges

Baking the pizzas

We preheated our oven to 550 degrees and also used the convection feature on our oven.  We always use a pizza stone when making pizzas in our oven as it makes a much better crust.  We kept only one rack in the oven and put at at the lowest level in the oven with the stone on top of it.  This may sound excessive but we got the oven to 550 and kept it at temp for 1 hour before we started baking the pies.  This allows the stone to get fully up to temp which is a make or break as far as crusts go in my mind.

Because we don't have a nice metal pizza peel yet, we started each pizza on a razor thin cookie sheet for the first 5 minutes of baking.  After five minutes we used a very long metal spatula to help the partially cooked pizza off of the cookie sheet and directly onto the stone.  From that point it was 5-9 additional minutes of baking directly on the stone to get it just right.

Beyond your comfort level

This was the hard part and took us until the 3rd pie to get it just right.  It is very easy to take the pizza out 2-3 minutes too early and not quite finish the crust on the bottom where you can't see it while cooking.  When it looks done, give it 2-3 more minutes to get it there, trust me on this one.  The picture below will show you what the outer edge of the crust looks like when the bottom is just right.

Crispy Edges

Once you pull the pizza from the oven allow it to rest on a raised open air rack (see pictures below for a good example) for 5 to 6 minutes.  This allows the cheese to recongeal but does so without the crust sweating and getting soggy on the bottom like it would on a cutting board or other solid heat retaining surface.

After 5-6 minutes, cut into 8 slices and prepare to have a pizzagasm!!!

The Pizzas

#1 (for the kids)

Pepperoni and Extra Hot Italian Sausage with our classic 4 cheese blend (grated mozzarella and scamorza along with the hard cheeses also grated Parmesan Reggiano and Pecorino Romano.  You may not be able to find all of these at your local grocer.  We are lucky living in suburban Chicago to have an amazing Italian grocery store very near by.  http://www.rubinositalianimports.com/

#2 The Classic Margherita Pizza

Classic sauce with buffalo mozzarella cheese.  Get the balls and slice them like you can see in the un-baked picture above.  Once the pizza is resting on the rack sprinkle the basil leaves on the pie.

#3 The Schoen Signature Pie (Sausage, Banana Pepper and Onion)

Classic sauce with Rubino's extra hot sausage (pre cooked, see below) banana peppers and onions.  Erin has a hang up on sausage for pizza and doesn't like it in big chunks as such we take the bulk sausage and cook it in a cast iron skillet before it goes on the pizza.  Half way into the sausage cooking, Erin will pour it from the skillet into the food processor and grind it up into raisin sized chunks and then finish cooking it with the end result below.

For all three pizzas above I refer to the classic sauce.  We like to use our own from scratch pizza sauce.

We start with a large can of San Marzano Tomatoes (from San Marzano Italy), yes they cost more, $5.99 for the 26 oz can, but it is worth it.  Put the tomatoes through the food processor and add in fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, oregano to taste.  We also mix in a 14 oz can of tomato paste to help thicken the sauce.  This sauce is not cooked.  All the ingredients are mixed together and allowed to rest in a bowl for a couple hours before using to help marry the flavors together.  Making it the day before is fine as well.  Finished sauce is pictured below.

Final thoughts on the dough recipe.  Top Notch.  This is by far the best pizza dough we have ever made.  Light and airy with great flavor and texture.  The edges puff up nicely to provide that crispy exterior with the light and fluffy interior.

If you've made it this far you have now completed Pizza 202 as taught by Erin and Scott.  Send us a check for $22 and we'll return a certificate of completion to you.

Good luck, happy cooking and mange, mange, mange.