Pizza

This makes roughly two medium-sized pizzas, or one big pan pizza.

Ingredients

Crust

Ingredient	Metric	Imperial
High-gluten flour	500 g	4 cups
Water, cool	325 g	1⅓ cups + 1 Tbsp
Fine salt	12 g	2 tsp
Sugar	5 g	1¼ tsp
Olive oil	10 g	2¼ tsp
Active dry yeast	1.5 g	½ tsp

Sauce

Ingredient	Metric	Imperial
Plain tomato sauce/passata	225 g	8 oz / ~1 cup
Tomato paste	45 g	1.6 oz / 3 tbsp
Olive oil	15 mL	1 tbsp
Dried oregano	2 g	1 tsp
Dried basil	1 g	1 tsp
Garlic powder	1.5 g	½ tsp
Onion powder	1 g	½ tsp
Fine salt	2–3 g	⅓–½ tsp
Sugar or honey	2–4 g	½–1 tsp
Black pepper	~0.5 g	¼ tsp
Red pepper flakes	~0.3 g	⅛ tsp
Fennel seed, crushed	0.5 g	¼ tsp
MSG (optional but recommended)	0.5–1 g	⅛–¼ tsp
Worcestershire sauce (optional)	2.5–5 mL	½–1 tsp

Preparation (crust)

Initial mixing

Mix the water and yeast and give it about 5 minutes. Although you don't need to "proof" modern dry yeast, I like to add a pinch of sugar to it to make sure my yeast is alive and "wake it up" just a bit. Hydrating it makes it easier to incorporate into the flour.

Mix in the flour until there's no dry flour remaining. It should look shaggy. It should say "Zoinks!" and not "it wasn't me" or you've made it too Shaggy.

Cover it and leave it for 15–20 minutes.

Add the salt, sugar, and olive oil. Knead for about 5–8 minutes by hand or 3–5 minutes in a mixer. You want a smooth, elastic dough.

Let it sit at room temperature for 20–30 minutes, then divide into two roughly 425 g / 15 oz balls. Lightly oil containers, put one ball in each, cover tightly, and refrigerate. If making a single large pizza, you should leave as one ball and use one container.

Ferment

I recommend giving the dough:

24 hours: good 48 hours: better 72 hours: excellent; more complex flavour and better browning 4–5 days: usually still quite good, but it may become a bit too fermented

Baking

Take the dough out 1½–2 hours before baking. Keep it covered and let it warm up and relax. If your kitchen is particularly warm, an hour may be enough. If your kitchen is cold, try putting the dough in the oven with the light (not the heat) on.

For a normal home oven, crank the oven as hot as it'll go, usually 500–550°F / 260–290°C.

Stretch the dough gently rather than rolling it. Leave the outer ~1 inch / 2–3 cm relatively untouched so the accumulated gas stays in the rim.

Apply sauce, cheese, and toppings.

On a properly preheated steel at 550°F/290°C, you're generally looking at around 5–7 minutes. A stone may take 7–10 minutes.

If the bottom is done before the top, finish it briefly under the broiler/grill.

Useful tweaks

For a New York-ish pizza, the recipe above is pretty much where I'd leave it. The little bit of sugar and oil helps compensate for the relatively low temperature of a domestic oven.

For a pan pizza, I'd increase the hydration to about 70%: use 350 g / 12.3 oz water instead. The wetter dough spreads much more easily, and gets very airy when baked in an oiled pan.

For something more Neapolitan-ish, ditch the sugar and oil, use about 310–325 g water, and ideally bake substantially hotter than a conventional home oven can manage.

Notes

Don't worry about the dough looking relatively modest when it goes into the fridge. With only 1.5 g yeast, the whole point is to make the yeast spend the next few days doing its job very, very slowly. The point of the cold fermentation is to develop more complex flavours at the cost of slower fermentation, although it will still rise and get bigger.

If you're in a hurry, you can skip the cold fermentation step, but the dough won't be as complex; just let it sit somewhere warm for 2 hours or until it doubles. It will still be quite good, but not as good as it could be.

Preparation (sauce)

I recommend starting on this several hours before the dough is ready.

Preparation

Mix everything together and let it sit at least 30 minutes, preferably a couple of hours in the fridge. No cooking is necessary. The sauce cooks on the pizza, and leaving it uncooked beforehand keeps the tomato flavour brighter.

Notes

A few tweaks I'd specifically recommend:

MSG

Very good. Makes the sauce taste more savoury and rich. Many pizza places do this.

Worcestershire sauce

At the amounts recommended, it will not taste fishy, but will give a subtle savoury and sweet hint to the sauce. Adding more than recommended will make your pizza taste like a Bloody Mary.

Sugar

Don't dump a bunch in. Taste the tomatoes first. If the tomatoes taste very acidic, add a bit of sugar, but often I just omit it.

Garlic

Garlic powder is good here, but if you have fresh garlic, grate in a clove.

Tomato paste

Adjust according to your pizza. Tomato paste will thicken the sauce. Thin pizza needs thinner sauce than thicker pizza. For pan pizza, I'd go for 50—60 g / 3—4 tbsp of tomato paste.

Fennel seed

I recommend crushing with a mortar, your fingers, or a spoon. Goes excellent with sausage and pepperoni.

Toppings

You can use whatever you'd like.

Toppings I recommend trying:

• Sausage (especially Italian sausage)
• Pepperoni
• Corn (better than it sounds I promise)
• Basil leaves
• Diced tomatoes
• Chopped garlic
• White onions
• Green peppers
• Chicken
• Ground beef
• Jalapeños (some people like this)
• Black olives
• Pineapple (some people like it, some people don't; I'm neutral on this)
• Ham
• Canadian bacon
• Actual bacon

Cheese

I recommend mozarella, parmesan, romano, and colby jack blends.

I usually recommend grating your own cheeses, or using slices of them (especially mozarella), but pre-grated is okay too.

You can experiment with all sorts of cheeses. Provolone, cheddar, and feta are great options. Feta is particularly good with alfredo sauce.

Sauces

You can do sauce substitutions:

• BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce (goes great with chicken)
• Alfredo sauce (also great with chicken)