Nom-Able

In almost every cookbook sitting around my apartment right now, there is at least one recipe for pizza dough – seriously, every one of them. Jamie Oliver, Tyler Florence, Isa Chandra Moskowitz — even Julia Child at one time or another weighed in on the fine art of pizza dough making. Though there are little variations to the recipes (one says throw basil into the crust to make it rustic!) the thing that makes pizza great is that it’s simple, quick, and easy. There aren’t a lot of fancy ingredients — it’s pretty much flour, water, and yeast plus whatever you put on top — and while it’s the sort of thing you need a few hours to make, the hands on time is probably about fifteen to twenty minutes total. It also involves punching and beating the crap out of the dough, which is why it seemed like the perfect project for me on my second unpaid day off due to The Great Recession of 2009! (Please, can we stop with that already media people? Great! Thanks!)

Pizza Dough

Ingredients
• 1/4 oz (1 pkg or 2 1/2 tsp.) dry, active yeast
• 1 c. warm water
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 c. flour.

Directions
1. Proof yeast: dissolve sugar in water and add yeast. Stir to moisten yeast. Let sit for ten minutes until incredibly foamy. (Your mixture should double in volume. See the first picture in the set above.) If you get a couple of bubbles but no real foam, pour it out and try again with a new package of yeast.
2. In a good, sturdy mixer with a dough hook (I love, live, and die by my KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Stand Mixer) sift together flour and salt. Add in yeast mixture and olive oil and mix until a dough forms. Now, set your mixer to low speed and walk away for ten minutes while it does its thing. Alternately, if you’re the old-fashioned type, you can dump the dough out onto a clean workspace and kneed this yourself for ten to fifteen minutes until dough is very elastic and smooth. I’d recommend having someone else on hand to jump in after the first five. Hell, I recommend just buying the damned mixer..
3. After kneeding, pull the dough off the hook and place on a clean surface for a second. Every time I’ve ever done this dough, I’ve found that the bowl is pretty much spotless because the dough works itself around the hook. Use this to our advantage. Instead of dirtying a second bowl (as you’d have to if working by hand), you can spray the mixer bowl with some spray-on olive oil (or, if your cooking spray is some chemical junk, just wipe olive oil into the bowl) and return the dough to the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or a warm cloth and walk away for an hour while you do something nice for yourself — though I wouldn’t recommend a manicure, cause you’re not done yet.
4. After an hour, come back to your dough. It should have at least doubled in size and be nice and fluffy, like a marshmallow. Now, gather up all your anger and aggression, find that repressed rage you feel at a world that’s turned against you, and just punch that sucker (the dough, I mean! Not your boss!) in the gut to deflate it. There, feels good, doesn’t it? Now, dump the dough out on the counter and knead that sucker a little more.
5. At this stage, I usually cut the dough in half, throw half of it into a freezer bag, and stick it in the freezer for another day. You can do this with both halves if you’re making dough for future use, or you can work with just one half, the way I usually do. Or, if you have a particularly big family, you can make two pizzas now. Whatever you decide, let the dough rest at least another 30 minutes or so to get back into springy shape.
6. After 30 minutes, turn your attention to the stove. Preheat it to 500 degrees or as high as you can get it to go.
7. I am not a throw the pizza in the air and twirl it around my back kinda pizza maker. I’m more of a rolling pin kinda girl. First, sprinkle a bit of cornmeal or flour on the stone to prevent sticking. Now, plop your dough on a pizza stone (or cookie sheet, if you must) and roll that sucker out. I recommend rolling it, then turning the dough so it doesn’t stick to the stone, then rolling it some more, until you get to the desired size and thickness.

8. Now is the time on Nom-Able when we dance smother our pizza in toppings. I’ve put almost anything and everything you can think of on a pizza, so I have a few words of wisdom on the subject. First, don’t put too many dense things on your pizza, or you’ll be better off folding it in half and just calling it a calzone. On my first pizza (pictured above) I decided leftover ricotta from a lasagna would be good along with mozzarella and pesto, just like the gourmet pizzaria pizzas, right? Ha. I couldn’t even lift a slice without everything sliding off of it because, in my zealous love for pizza, I’d put way too much on. If you’re going to do something heavy like ricotta or pesto, spread it thinly in layers, not gooped on in spoonfuls, unless you want to eat pizza with a fork and knife, you classy, professional-looking devil, you!
9. Once your pizza is ready for the oven, throw that sucker in there and bake it for 8-12 minutes until the crust is crisp and golden and the cheese is melted and bubbly with a few brown spots. Enjoy!