I never made completely homemade pizza before shooting this episode. I also had never had such delicious, perfect pizza anywhere in tha werld before shooting this episode. Thanks to Brandon of Via 313 pizza, I now can make my own wicked-good pizza at home ANY TIME I WANT TO (provided I have a premonition to make the dough the day before I want pizza).
It’s really much easier than I ever thought. Here are a few guidelines from Brandon, plus some things I figured out in the subsequent days after shooting this episode, days wherein I made and ate pizza for dinner every night.
Homemade Pizza!
Pizza Rules!
- Use bread flour and instant (a.k.a. bread machine) yeast when making your pizza crust dough.
- Portion the dough out before letting it rest overnight in the fridge. If you try to refrigerate the whole batch in one bowl, thinking you will portion it after resting, you’ll end up with an overflowing bowl of pizza dough and then when you portion it, you’ll bust up all the air bubbles the yeast has made.
- Preheat your oven to as high as it will go. Mine goes to 550, yours might only go to 500. That will still work.
- Flour the pizza peel (or cardboard square, or rim-less baking sheet) liberally before you dress your piza crust on it. It’s really sad when you make a beautiful piza but didn’t use enough flour and it won’t slide off the peel and into the oven. Coarse cornmeal would probably work, too, in place of flour.
- Use full-fat mozzarella or provolone for the best flavor and grate it yourself if you can. Pre-grated cheese has “non-clumping agents” added to it and I suspect they interfere with the meltiness of the cheese.
- Use a pizza stone or a large cast iron skillet for cooking. Preheat it in the oven. While I suggested in the video that you use the skillet upside-down, when I actually did it myself, I used it right-side-up because the bottom of my skillet is absolutely dirty. I slid it into the skillet, making sure the pizza was slightly smaller than the bottom of the skillet, and it folded over a bit around one edge but it was still delightful.
- Let it cool at least 5 minutes before cutting, and a few more minutes before eating to avoid the dreaded Pizza Burn.
I think that’s all the tips I have. On to the recipes!
This pizza crust is amazing!
- 5¼ cups bread flour (King Arthur brand suggested)
- 2 teaspoons instant (bread machine) yeast
- 2 cups lukewarm water (90-100 degrees F)
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- Extra flour and olive oil for kneading and storing
- For the Homemade Pizza Sauce (my recipe):
- 2 pounds Roma tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon salt
- In the bowl of stand mixer with a bread hook or just a large bowl, combine the yeast and flour.
- Dissolve the salt and sugar in the water, then add the oil.
- Add the water mixture to the machine and turn it to low speed for kneading. (In the absence of a mixer, combine with a large spoon until a workable dough forms.)
- Knead on low speed for about 5 minutes, or by hand, adding a tablespoon of flour or so if necessary to make a soft, smooth, non-sticky dough.
- Divide the dough ball into 4 or 5 equal portions and shape into round balls as shown in the video.
- Coat each ball lightly in oil and store in individual containers in the fridge overnight.
- Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before you plan to shape the pizzas.
- When shaping, sprinkle a countertop with flour and put a dough ball down. Form a crust around the edge, then gently press out the center. Use your knuckles and a gently stretching movement to form the pizza crust.
- Lay on a well-floured pizza peel or cardboard square and dress the pizza.
- Transfer it into a preheated oven (500-600 degrees F) onto a preheated stone or cast iron skillet and bake 5-10 minutes until brown and bubbly.
- Remove and cool on a cutting board for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.
- For the sauce:
- Blanch and peel the tomatoes: Bring a pot of water to boil. Cut a small “X” in the bottom (blossom end) of each tomato and drop in the boiling water. Count to 60 and remove with a slotted spoon into a bowl of ice water for 30 seconds. Remove and peel off the skin with your fingers.
- Dice the peeled tomatoes.
- Saute the garlic in the oil over medium heat for about 30 seconds.
- Add the tomatoes, oregano, and salt.
- Reduce heat and simmer 15-20 minutes.
- Puree or leave the sauce slightly chunky.
Grease Cups!
For a super-duper-awesome gluten free pizza option, check out SOCCA!
The LEARN TO COOK Book is Here!
By popular demand, Learn to Cook is now available in print! Over 300 pages of knowledge between two soft covers.
Learn To Cook is designed to get you cooking for yourself like a civilized human being! Drawing from a lifetime of cooking and over two years experience making instructional cooking videos, author Hilah Johnson has produced a beginners’ cookbook for today’s young adults. The casual, straightforward style will appeal to anyone with a sense of humor and the focus on fresh, simple recipes will appeal to anyone who loves to eat. The book includes chapters on menu planning, knife skills, grocery shopping and more, plus a comprehensive spice chart and over 150 recipes from breakfast to dinner to snacks in between.
I create short-form, educational, and occasionally hilarious cooking videos geared towards beginner and intermediate cooks, as well as people who are just looking for simple, low-cost recipes. Everything is made from scratch, people!
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! That pizza looks incredibly good. I am definitely going to try out the dough.
Yeah! Let’s have a pizza party!
I’ll definitely try this. I’m not a peel & chop fresh tomato person mostly. I usually used canned, but I understand your concern about BPA in canned products. I tried Pomi (imported from Italy) tomato purée recently for a recipe and they makes a chopped product, too. They package in non-BPA aseptic boxes. A domestic alternative could be Trader Joe’s Italian Tomato Starter Sauce.
Yes, the boxed tomatoes are fine I’ve heard and I’ll use those sometimes, too. I’ve gotten to where I prefer the fresh tomato flavor, except in some things like marinara sauce.
Has anyone else had trouble with the video not playing? I push the “play” button, and a black screen sits there and ignores me.
I know this sounds like a cliché, but the best pizza I’ve ever had really was in Naples, Italy. In the twenty years since I’ve never been able to duplicate the crust; maybe Hilah’s recipe will do it. Topping was crushed tomatoes, buffalo-milk mozzarella in chunks, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil.
Ok, I got the video to play. I had to drag the cursor at the bottom of the screen a few seconds to the right. Everything was fine from there.
Hmm, I’m glad you got it to work. We didn’t hear from anyone else so hopefully it was a temporary glitch.
I want to get some buffalo mozzarella now and try that pizza! I think you will be happy with this crust. While I’ve not had real Napolese (?) pizza, this crust is on par with the stuff I had at Keste in New York, which I heard from a couple Italians was the best, most authentic in NYC.
We’ve never had Keste in NYC, just Grimaldi’s and Otto.
If you do use fresh tomatoes, the sauce is better if you gut them, i.e. remove the jelly and seeds. Once you find a dough recipe that you like (mine is almost the same as above but no oil and half the yeast), then you do not have to think ahead, you can always keep some in the fridge. It is good for at least a week.
Via 313 Rocks, if you are in Austin, get you some!
Hey Tom!
I don’t mind leaving the guts in, especially with Roma tomatoes since they are really pretty dense as tomatoes go and there’s not much jelly in them anyway.
Good to know about the dough. I imagine it could be frozen as well for longer keeping.
Coincidentally one of the things I intentially became obsessed with to avoid dealing with a really fucked up holiday season is pizza making. I’ve made homemade pizza for years. Thanks to Wolfgang Puck’s first cookbook, even my first attempt resulted in pizza superior to anything I’ve been served in a restaurant (but no, I’ve never eaten at Spago).
Hands down, the biggest exasperation has been the baking surface. I think everyone agrees that a pizza stone is a minimum requirement. But this year I finally got tired of spending $50 for a new pizza stone every couple of years. I’ve had at least 8 crack on me. Buying cheap unglazed clay tiles always seemed to be a very attractive alternative, but contrary to what millions of online twits say, Home Depot does NOT sell them (at least not any that’s visible from IH-10 between here and Los Angeles). However, earlier this year I came across a web article that claimed that creating a makeshift pizza oven by arranging clay tiles on two oven racks and closing in the sides with even more tiles resulted in internal temperatures in excess of 600 degrees. Unfortunately my search for safe tiles in Austin has been futile. So when I stumbled upon a pizza stone for $25 at Cost Plus World Market, I bought one. At some point I’m going to buy some over-priced but non-toxic tiles online.
Hey Randy! Great to see you back in the comments. We’ve missed you!
Sounds like you have been up to some interesting pizza experiments. I think we’re going to finally break down and get a pizza stone, but I really like the clay tile idea.
Hi Randy!
I’m glad you found something to distract you from the seasonal fucking. For years, my distraction was corndogs on Christmas.
These pizza guys suggested going to an art supply store for a “kiln stone”, or something like that. I will look into that and link to it if I find anything. We also saw some pizza stones at Target for like 15 bucks, so I might give that a shot being that it’s only 15 bucks and even if it breaks after one use, it’s still less than a fancy gourmet pizza at any of the hip pizza joints in town.
Hope you’re doing better now after the holidays. Good to hear from you, buddy.
xoh
I was intrigued a couple of months ago by an article that tauted Mario Batali’s method of achieving really really high heat at home: parbake the crust by itself on a griddle and then using the broiler to cook the assembled pizza. Unfortunately, the author of the article was not Batali himself and I think he really misread the Molto Man. The recipe for pizza dough recipe calls for too much salt and and following the recommended timing for the actual broiling will give you ashes in your oven. Using a realistic broiling time works, but I’m still not sure if the extra effort results in pizza that is that much better than that baked using a conventional method.
The best way I have found to cook pizza in the home oven is without a stone. Use the lowest rack with the pizza on either a screen or pan. You only need to preheat the oven until it reaches max temp (about 10 minutes @ 550 degrees in my electric oven). Cook the pizza for 3-4 minutes, then remove from pan/screen and move to top rack. If you have a top broiler, kick it to high and cook for another 1-2 minutes or so, 3 or so if no top broiler.
This method evens out heat and places it where needed.
http://pizzaanarchy.com/121410pizza1.jpg
That didn’t work, try this:
[img]http://brokebrick.com/121410pizza1.jpg[img]
http://brokebrick.com/121410pizza1.jpg
One of those will work.
The pizza was AWESOME!!
YAY! I thought so, too!
Thanks for writing, Adam!
Hi Hilah,
What do you think about freezing leftover dough. Can it be done with this and how would you wrap it and stuff.
Hey Jason!
You know, I asked Brandon about that and he didn’t recommend it. I suspect it would work okay, though. I would wrap it tightly in plastic, then put in a freezer container. I think it would probably work best if you froze it right away, too, rather than after the 24 hour refrigerator rest. Then thaw in the refrigerator for a couple of days before using it. If you try it, let me know and I’ll do the same.
Thanks for writing!
I’ve done it. I freeze the dough before it rises. It’s not AS good but still good! I put it in a large bag because it will rise a bit before freezing.
Thank you so much! Good to know, especially since this recipe makes so much dough.
Jim Lahey, the inventor of kneadless bread, has now invented kneadless pizza dough. But what really intrigues me is his baking method: he, too, bakes the assembled pizza under a broiler, but without par-baking the crust. He also, like a number of experts, has loosened up on the gospel that you absolutely can not make decent pizza without a pizza stone. Here’s a link to the article: http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2012/02/diy-pizza-party.html
Oh, awesome! thanks for sharing that, Randy! Did I ever tell y’all I bought a pizza stone a couple weeks ago (only $8) and we used it one night at a friend’s house to make maybe 6 pizzas in a row. By the end of the night, after it had cooled in the oven after the oven was off, I went to take it out and it was broken in half.
Ah well. I didn’t really expect it to last, but maybe now I don’t have to worry about it at all!
Just a variation of pizza topping -
Chop boneless chicken breast into strips, then cube. season with your favorite BBQ rub (I love Rudy’s rub from my days in Waco on travel for work). cook up in frying pan with a bit of hot olive oil. When cooked through, add a little BBQ sauce to lightly coat the chicken and caramelize on it.
For the pizza itself, make the same dough. I like to add some onion and garlic salt as well to the dough, and decrease the regular salt. Instead of Pizza sauce, use a Sweet Vidalia Onion BBQ Sauce. add your cheese. Spread the chicken around the top. Add some caramelized red onions (red onions, olive oil, red wine, brown sugar). sprinkle a little more cheese on top. Same process to bake the pizza in the oven. I go about 8 minutes.
After you pull it out of the oven, add some chopped cilantro on top. Let sit for about 5 minutes.
Its a little more work intensive than just throwing pepperoni on top, but the result tastes great.
Hi, Matt! That recipe sounds really good. I love the idea of cilantro on top – that makes it taste so fresh. I’m imagining a cheddar cheese on the pizza, but I bet monterey jack would be great, too.
Thanks for sharing!
-hilah
Good call – I use a cheddar / jack combo.
Perfecto.
OMG. Seriously. I’ve been using the same pizza crust recipe for years and it was just missing a little something. I don’t know if it’s the kind of yeast, flour, or letting it rise overnight, but this is seriously delicious. My favorite right right now is a pizza with sauteed spinach, mushrooms, fresh tomato, mozzarella and goat cheese. Thanks for another great recipe, Hilah!
Yay! That’s awesome to hear, Nicoleincos! I agree this is the best pizza dough I’ve ever tried. And your toppings combo sounds absolutely delicious. What a great summertime pizza!
Hi Hilah.
I love pizzas as well my children. Instead to use instant yeast can i change to brewers yeast.
safarah
kuala lumpur
Hi Safarah!
I haven’t tried baking with brewer’s yeast myself, but it should work the same way according to this article I found. It will probably give the crust more flavor, even, than baking yeast. Good luck and let me know how it goes. Thanks for writing!
Hi Hilah i love your cooking its hilarious and creative um for the pizza stone do we put cornmeal on it so it doesnt stick to the dough or just leave as it is and dont put anything on the stone.
Hi Julian! The stone doesn’t require anything on it, but the pizza peel (or cardboard box) you use to transfer the pizza to the stone does need some flour or cornmeal to keep the raw dough from sticking.
How many inches will the pizzas make
It will make 5 pizzas, each about 9 inches across (diameter).
Can you roll it out with rolling pin instead of tossing it.
Hilah, that pizza looks awesome! The crust, to me, is really what makes an awesome pizza. Your crust looks exactly like the best pizza in my memory that I’ve ever had. It was from a little pizza restaurant run by a couple of brothers from Italy. I have to try this!
Yay! That makes me happy to hear, Elise! And yeah, the crust makes or breaks a pizza. This one really is superb.
Could the homemade pizza dough be scaled down to make just one pizza. Going to try this
Hi Pat!
You could try cutting the recipe in half to make 2-3 pizzas. Cutting it down further than that I think would be tricky and might affect the texture. You can always make the whole batch and then freeze the leftover dough balls for later, too.
Stretching it like we did in the video works best.