A Very Good At-Home Pizza Dough

For someone who makes it almost weekly, I get very grouchy about homemade pizza. Without a wood-burning pizza oven, it just is never the same as the good stuff you get at restaurants. Sure it’s easy and you can top it with whatever you like, but I’m almost always disappointed at the lack of charred edges and those dough bubbles created by the blast of hot air. Nevertheless, I press on and continue to make pizza at home, because in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t bad.

I’ve struggled for the last few years to find a dough recipe that is better than and just-as-easy-as the refrigerated dough in the Publix bakery shelves. Every recipe that I’ve tried worth anything requires an overnight proof and I just am not put-together enough to think about what I want for dinner an entire day ahead. A lot of doughs come out too bread-y for my taste and my jaw gets sore chewing each slice. Some create a dough that more closely resembles a cracker. It’s been a rough time, y’all.

Yet, I’ve persevered and I’ve finally created a pizza dough that checks off all of my boxes. 1) It can be made same-day, though if you are exceptionally good at planning ahead, you can definitely cold-proof this overnight for a little more flavor development. 2) It yields a crust that’s not too thick and not too thin, that falls somewhere in that perfect pizza region. 3) Did I mention it can be made same-day?

I’m not going to call this “the very best pizza in the world” or anything like that, because that would be a lie. The very best pizza is often proofed for at least 24 hours and baked in a 700° F pizza oven, but I don’t have those kind of resources so this is simply “a very good at-home pizza dough”. It’s for Friday nights when you want pizza but don’t want to go out and weeknights where you have lots of leftover veggies that just need to be thrown into a heap and covered in cheese and called dinner. A very good, very easy pizza dough fit for your home kitchen.

A few practical notes: Depending on the type of baking pan you use, bake the pizza between 450° F and 500° F, or as hot as your oven and pan can handle. I’ve also found that par-baking the crust is essential or you’ll end up with slightly burnt toppings and a soggy middle. Stretch your dough onto your baking sheet, brush it with a little olive oil, and pop it in the oven for 5-7 minutes, until its just beginning to golden. Then top it with your sauces/cheese/veggies/etc and let it continue baking until everything is melted and the bottom is golden brown and crisp. Every oven runs a little differently, so I would give it 10 minutes with toppings and then check it every 5 minutes or so after that.

A Very Good At-Home Pizza Dough

makes 1 lb of dough (or 14” pizza)

Ingredients

270 g all purpose or 00 flour*

1 tsp active dry yeast

pinch of sugar

188 g warm water

1 tbsp olive oil

2 1/2 tsp kosher salt

Procedure

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, combine warm water, pinch of sugar, and active dry yeast. Stir gently and let rest until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2. When the yeast has proofed, add the olive oil, followed by the flour. Mix on low speed for 2-3 minutes, until all of the flour has mixed in and a sticky dough is beginning to form. Cover the bowl and let rest for 15-20 minutes at room temperature.

3. After the dough has rested, turn the mixer on low and gradually add the salt. Increase mixer speed to medium-high and knead for 3-5 minutes, until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl and an elastic dough begins to form.

4. Turn the dough onto a well-floured work surface, dust the top with a little more flour and use your hands to gently shape the dough into a ball. Place the dough ball into a well-oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let proof at room temperature for 1 1/2-2 hours, until swollen and puffy, almost doubled in size.

5. After the dough has completed it’s first proof, turn it out onto a lightly-floured work surface. Use your hands to punch the dough down a bit and then shape it into a smooth, round ball. Place the ball seam side down on your surface, dust the top with a bit of flour, cover, and let rest for another 2-3 hours, until pillowy. To test if the dough is ready, gently press your finger into the dough. If the imprint fills back in halfway slowly, it is sufficiently proofed. If it fills back in completely very quickly, continue to proof the dough. Alternatively, you can transfer the dough back to the refrigerator before the second proof and let it cold proof overnight. Let the dough come to room temperature before shaping and baking.

6. When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 450°. Gently stretch the dough into a circle on a pizza pan, brush with a bit of oil and par-bake for 6-8 minutes, until beginning to turn golden brown. Remove from oven, top with your desired toppings and then continue to bake for 10-15 minutes until the bottom of the crust is crispy and brown and all of the toppings are sufficiently baked.

*Notes: 00 flour is a finely-ground Italian flour that comes from durum wheat. It’s protein content is similar to all purpose flour, so they are interchangeable here, but if you’re able to seek out a bag of the 00, you’ll find your crumb just a little lighter and will give you a chewier crust with less of a chance of tearing while you’re stretching. I can always find 00 flour at Whole Foods and Fresh Market, or you can easily order it online.

alon shaya’s pitas

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Alon Shaya's Pitas

I already have a pita recipe here on the blog. Way back in the day, when I first started blogging, pitas were one of the first breads we started making in culinary school and I was hooked. While that recipe still makes a darn good pita, I’ve spent the last few years trying out a lot of different recipes, tweaking water amounts, and playing around with baking temperatures and this is my go-to. This recipe is lightly adapted from Alon Shaya, whose food I’ve talked about extensively here on the blog because he’s one of my favorites and if you ever find yourself in Denver or New Orleans (where he has restaurants), it is well worth your time to make a stop in one. I first had Alon’s pitas at Safta in Denver, on a frigid night in late November a few years back. The wind was no joke and we holed up at the bar with a bottle of wine to wait in the warmth until it was time to head to the airport for our flight back home. We made good friends with the bar tender and ate labneh cheesecake, but as we sat, plate after plate of warm, charred pita came floating past us, out of the kitchen, to lucky tables all around. After a little while, we finally gave in and I’m telling you, I don’t know if it was the cold or the wine or a little of both, but those were the best pitas I’ve ever had in my whole entire life.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a big wood-burning pizza oven in my tiny duplex kitchen so getting pitas exactly like Safta is a bit more tricky. In his book, Alon recommends turning your oven to broil and heating a baking stone inside for cooking the pitas on. This makes for beautiful pitas, with smoked centers, but I only used this technique a couple of times before my stone shattered in the oven, mid-pita bake. So now, I use a metal baking sheet and crank my oven to 500° F and it does the trick just fine. I also adapted his recipe to make them a one-day affair with no overnight proof in the fridge, but if you have the time, you can always let your dough chill overnight after the first proof, just bring it back to room temperature before moving on to the next steps.

P.S. Tahini sat so patiently next to me the entire time I was photographing these and just look at how cute his little face is!

Alon Shaya’s Pitas

yield: 8 pitas

this recipe is very lightly adapted from Shaya by Alon Shaya

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 tsp active dry yeast

4 1/2 cups (540 g) bread flour, plus more for dusting

1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for the bowl

2 tbsp kosher salt (Diamond Crystal brand is my favorite)

Procedure 

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine water and yeast. Stir gently and let sit for 5 minutes, until cloudy. 

2. Add 4 cups of the flour to the bowl with the yeast and water, along with the olive oil. Mix on low speed for one minute, until flour has begun to incorporate, and then increase the speed to medium. Mix for another minute or two until a dough begins to form. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, remove the dough hook attachment, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let rest for 20 minutes. 

3. After the dough has rested, turn the mixer back on to low speed and gradually add the remaining 1/2 cup of flour along with the salt. Mix on medium speed for about 5 minutes, until the dough begins to pull away from the side of the bowl. Transfer dough to a floured work surface and shape into a ball. 

4. Lightly oil a clean bowl and place dough ball inside. Cover with plastic wrap and let proof at room temperature for about 2 hours, until the dough is swollen and has almost doubled in size. 

5. Once the dough has completed it’s first proof, turn it out onto a floured work surface and divide it into eight equal pieces. Use your hands to roll each piece into a ball and place them on your floured work surface, leaving space between each. Dust the tops with flour, and cover them loosely with plastic wrap. Let proof again for another 2-3 hours, until they are puffy and pillowy. 

6. Preheat the oven to 500° F and place a cookie sheet upside down (so you have a flat surface) in the oven while it preheats.

7. Meanwhile, use a rolling pin to roll each ball into a flat circle, about 6” across. When the oven is hot, carefully place 3-4 pitas (however many fit on your baking sheet) on the surface of the baking sheet and close the door. Watching them the whole time, bake for 2-3 minutes until pitas are puffy and starting to brown. Quickly and carefully, use tongs to remove pitas from the oven. Repeat with the remaining pitas and then enjoy them warm with lots of smooth and swoopy hummus!

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Schiacciata with Caramelized Onions and Figs

I’ve been feeling pretty old this week. While I haven’t been creator in this food blogging world for very long, I’ve been an avid food blog reader and cookbook enthusiast since my freshmen year of college…which was over ten years ago. Back then, the only way to discover new blogs was to spend hours browsing through Food Gawker or Pinterest, and through their writing, these food bloggers quickly became virtual friends. I would regularly check their websites for new content. Not just recipes, but stories and short little essays about their lives, friends and family, and yes, cookies. I would invite these cooks into my kitchen in the form of their recipes, not because their pictures were perfectly styled or they had massive followings, but because their writing and their recipes resonated with me. I loved this little world of food blogging and dreamed about one day being a part of it. I dreamed about writing stories that people got excited to read, developing new recipes that my own little community looked forward to each week, and through this blogging portal, entering into a stranger’s kitchen and coaching them through making something new.

Fast forward a handful of years and the food blogging landscape looks a little different. Those people whose websites I ran back to time and time again are still out in the blog-o-sphere, and they are still the ones I go to for inspiration, though I’ve added a few new ones to the mix. But sometimes it feels like the future of food blogging hinges on flashy images that catch your attention in a nano-second, or easily-digestible clips that can be viewed (or skipped over) in an instant. At risk of sounding like a crotchety old lady, the thing I love most about food is that it is an experience. Kneading dough takes time and tactile effort. Waiting for bread to rise takes patience, and decorating cakes is intricate work. In order to be successful in this industry, do I have to hack all of that away in an effort to gain more likes? I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t think any of us in this little world really know the answer to this, but I find myself asking if there is still space for my slightly old school approach to food blogging in this fast-paced industry. I think it will be a little give and take and I’m working to find my niche in a way that feels authentic to me, while also using the tools that technology affords me as a way to grow my business. With all of the craziness of the past few months, I think we’ve all had our eyes opened to the importance of slowing down and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to carry that with me as life begins to speed up again.

Now, lets talk schiacciata! Schiacciata is a Tuscan-style flatbread, similar to a focaccia but with a lower hydration level which makes it a little thinner and a little crisper. As if focaccia and pizza had a baby. It’s an easier dough to throw together and only needs a couple of hours to do it’s thing, which means you can start it in the afternoon and eat it for dinner. The recipe for this dough is lightly adapted from Sweet by Helen Goh and Yotam Ottolenghi, which is my very favorite book of all time. The dough is topped with tangles of caramelized onions and fresh figs that have been tossed in za’atar and feels like that perfect time of year when summer nights are waning, but fall hasn’t quite arrived. You can by za’atar at your local Middle Eastern Market or on Amazon, but I made my own using this recipe. It’s fairly simple and uses mostly spices that you already have on hand.

Schiacciata with Caramelized Onions and Figs

Yield: 1 10x16” flatbread

Schiacciata dough recipe adapted from Helen Goh

Ingredients 

for the dough

2 2/3 cup (330 g) bread flour

3/4 tsp active dry yeast

220 g warm water

2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for the pan

1 egg yolk

1 tsp kosher salt

1 1/2 tsp granulated sugar

for the onions

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

a hefty pinch of salt

for the figs and toppings

1 lb fresh figs, quartered

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp za’atar 

honey, to drizzle

goat cheese

flaky salt for finishing

Procedure: 

1. In a large bowl, stir together water, yeast, and half of the flour, until no dry streaks of flour remain. Cover with plastic wrap and let proof at room temperature for about an hour, until dough is bubbly and swollen.

2. Transfer the dough to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment and add the rest of the flour, olive oil, egg yolk, salt, and sugar. Knead on medium speed for about 6 minutes, until the dough is smooth and cohesive, pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Scrape down the sides, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and proof for another hour, until doubled in size. 

3. While the dough is proofing, caramelize the onions. Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add butter and olive oil to the pan and when they begin to sizzle, add the onions. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are beginning to lightly brown on the edges. Turn the heat down to low, sprinkle with a hefty pinch of salt, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring frequently, until they are very soft and dark brown in color. Remove from heat and let cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. 

4. In a medium bowl, toss quartered figs with a tablespoon of olive oil, za’atar, and a pinch of salt. Set aside. 

5. When the dough has doubled in size, preheat the oven to 450° F. Drizzle a tablespoon or two of olive oil over a rimmed sheet pan and turn the dough onto the oiled pan. Use your hands to gently stretch and push the dough into a rustic rectangle, about 10x16” in size. 

6. Spread the tangles of caramelized onions over the surface of the dough, followed by the figs. Drizzle the entire thing with a little olive oil one more time, then bake for 20-22 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until the edges of the crust are golden brown and the bottom of the dough is crisp. 

7. Remove schiacciata from the oven, sprinkle with goat cheese and flaky salt and drizzle with honey. 

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