Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza by Curtis Ide Read Free Book Online Page A

I mix and knead the dough before I go to work; this takes about ten minutes. I let the dough rise on the counter and let the sauce and cheese defrost in the refrigerator all day. I put the baking stone in the oven before I go to work and set the time bake feature to turn on one hour before I plan to get home so that it can preheat while I drive home. When I get home, I punch the dough down, knead it briefly, and let it rest. While the dough rests, I pull the rest of the ingredients out of the refrigerator and get my pizza peel ready. After a few minutes of resting, I stretch the dough, assemble the pizza, and bake it. Using this method, I can have a homemade pizza ready faster than Domino’s can deliver!
     
    Other than the advance preparation and the carefully choreographed timing, the only thing that is any different than making a pizza the normal way is the amount of time the dough rises. Since the dough has so much time to rise, it typically rises and falls a number of times throughout the day. This does not cause problems, but I generally use only one teaspoon of yeast and do not add sugar if I am going to let the dough rise for this long. When the dough has risen all day, it is generally a little more sticky and stretches more easily than when it is left to rise for only an hour or two; as a result, it feels a little different when shaping it. I just dust the dough more frequently than normal and take a little extra care while stretching it.
     
    There is a reason that dough that rises all day stretches more easily. As yeast divides, it gives off the gas that makes the dough rise but it also gives off some trace chemicals. These chemicals relax the gluten structure in the dough and make it more slack and easy to stretch. Keep this in mind when you are planning to let dough rise for a long time.
     
    Determining Which Style Pizza You Want To Make
     
    This is really the first choice you must make – do you make thin-style pizza, thick-style pizza, or one of pizza’s close relatives? A Sicilian-style, Chicago-style, or Chicago-style Stuffed pizza takes about five to twenty minutes to rise after shaping and thirty to forty-five minutes to bake. This compares to no time spent rising and twelve to fifteen minutes for a thin-style pizza. If you are short on time, the decision may be easy; make a thin-style pizza. On the other hand, if you love thick-style and are going to be home anyway, maybe the decision falls out that way. In essence, you can make any flavor combination with any style of pizza, so it is just a decision of what you feel like and how much time you have.
     
    Thin-style Pizza - Thin-style pizza is the most widely available type of pizza. The shaped pizza dough does not rise before baking and that is what keeps the crust thin. In addition, the pizza usually bakes directly on the floor of a pizza oven; this helps make the crust both crunchy and chewy at the same time. Aside from these traits, there are many variations in the specifics of thin-style pizzas. Each pizza chef or pizzeria determines the exact recipe used for the dough, how they shape the dough, how they form rim on the edge of the dough, what type of oven in which they bake the pizza, and exactly how thin is the crust.
     
    Thick-style Pizza - Thick-style pizza is very popular. The fact that the shaped pizza dough rises before baking is what gives the cooked pizza a thicker crust; hence the name. Pizzerias assemble, rise, and bake thick-style pizza in a pan. You can turn any thin-style pizza into a thick-style pizza by placing the dough in a pan after shaping and allowing it to rise before assembling the pizza. You usually use one and a half times the dough used for a thin-style pizza of the same size and that contributes to the additional thickness in the crust.
     
    Pizza’s Close Relatives - These are in the pizza family, but are not standard pizza. You can use the same dough and toppings from a pizza and shape it in a different way to get a