Someone suggested to make pizza from scratch in the South Arm Community Kitchen for seniors some time ago. So, finally Stella and Charlene organized for a pizza making session for the seniors.
Due to the time constraint, Charlene prepared some pizza dough ahead of time. She prepared four pizza dough as the seniors are going to make four different kind of pizzas. Hurray!
Does’nt the risen pizza dough look lovely, soft and smooth? Nevertheless, Charlene did show the seniors how to make pizza dough from scratch with the help of Joyce, Karen and Sydney. The recipe is adapted from Gourmet. It makes enough dough for two 9 inch pizzas. However, the seniors are going to make a large rectangular pizza instead of two 9 inch round pizzas.
Ingredients
- 1 cup warm water (105-115F – it should feel like warm bathwater)
- 1 package active dry yeast (about 2 teaspoons)
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus extra for oiling dough
Instructions
 In a measuring cup, stir together water, yeast and sugar until the yeast is dissolved. Let it sit for 10 minutes. |
 Meanwhile, whisk together flour and salt in a large bowl. |
 The yeast mixture should look foamy after 10 minutes, a sign of livelihood. |
 Add the oil into the yeast mixture. |
 Add the yeast and oil mixture into the flour mixture, stirring until the dough comes together. |
 Dump out the dough mixture on a lightly floured surface. |
 Knead the dough and try to gather all the flour together. |
 It takes about 10 minutes to knead the dough until smooth and elastic. |
 Divide the dough into the number of pizzas you would like to make. Roll each piece into a smooth ball, and coat lightly with oil. Place each ball of dough in a bowl or place them all on a cookie sheet. Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.
Joyce had been making her own bread for many years and she did a wonderful job kneading the dough. |
If you want to get technical, the best flour for pizza is bread flour with its higher protein content. I have heard that the absolute highest protein content flour is bread machine flour. I haven’t made crust with that yet but I am going to try it. Homemade crust tends to be softer than restaurant crust, which the higher protein flour can fix.
I make pizza in a 12″ springform pan. This is for a deep dish pizza. With it, you can put in a lot of vegetables and things like ricotta cheese which would slide off into the oven on a flat pan.
I have also had better results if using a flat pan with sliding the pizza right off the pan onto the oven rack halfway through the baking. This way the crust is baked from the bottom up and is crunchier and more structurally sound to pick the pieces up.
Hi Ben & Suanne,
I have been reading your blog since ~January and I must say, I LOVE READING the reviews about restaurants even though I haven’t had the opportunity to try any of them out yet. Most of all I love all the recipes you guys provide.
And I had a question about this particular recipe:
It says to “… let [the dough] rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk”..
I was wondering if you had any idea of how long that might be? I was going to prepare this specific crust as it looks really easy and I am a sucker for easy recipes. But I would appreciate it if you could maybe give me an approximate number of minutes/hours to let the dough rise.
Thanks so much.
Your blog rocks =D
Hi Amanda, am glad to hear that you enjoy our blog. A dough usually takes 1.5 to 2 hours to rise, depending on the temperature.
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