Making a great Pizza dough- Step 2 Pizza Dough

Sourced from a number of experts but I follow: Vito https://www.youtube.com/user/maestrovitoiacopelli

Ingredients

1. 700ml of Water Room Temp
2. 40gm Sea Salt
3. 1250 gms Flour
4. Poolish from the fridge made 24hrs Earlier

Steps Stage 1 combine up to working the dough

• Put your water into a large mixing dish – “Same size as you would for a load of Scones If you put it in a small bowl, you will regret this!!”
• Add the polish to the water using a rubber /Plastic spatula and lightly mix the two so you have a watery white soup consistency “Couple of Minutes mixing only don’t overdo it.”
• Add ½ the flour to this soup and mix well, “I suggest a sturdy wooden spoon as it does get harder through the process, and I have broken a few plastic spatulas”
• Add the salt – “I do this in sections salt/mix/salt mix “
• Add the rest of the Flour Now and mix well with the spoon in the bowl , Try hard to keep this going in the bowl as it saves on mess “ right about now you are thanking the fact you chose the bigger bowl and the heavier wooden spoon” Sometimes you need to get your hands in here to finish off use one hand and hold the bowl with the other just to make sure most of the flour is combined … doesn’t have to be perfect because your about to tip the whole thing onto the bench any way.”
• Pour the combined wet ball of dough onto the bench and this is where you need to work the dough to activate the gluten. Take a note of how it looks and feels at this stage as you will see it change. “To work the dough its best to work with one hand .so with the dough in front of you in a ball put your strong hand on the ball and push strongly -push down and forward and then pull pack into the ball. Keep working like this until you start seeing the dough get a little stretchy moving the ball of dough ½ a turn each time.”
• After about 8-10 min working the dough, just leave the dough to rest for 15 minutes

  

Steps -Stage 2 create dough ball for Proofing up to working the dough

Now you have left the ball to rest for fit minutes it’s time to get that ness into a large round dough ball for proofing, you need to have your bowl you have been using washed and cleaned and ready to use for the final process.

• Put a little olive oil on to your hand and using a dough scraper, circle the dough scraping the loose flours and putting all the tailings back into the dough ball a couple of times.
• Now you have a clean ball and clean bench.
• With your olive oil hands, tap on the dough ball to smooth the top putting some oil off your hands onto the ball.
• With your hands come in from both the right and the left-hand side lift the dough in the middle which will stretch the dough slightly as it lifts off the bench, once it’s in the air drop down again onto the bench on one of the sides. Do this repeatedly a couple of times

“Lift from the sides raising the middle off the bench until clear and drop on fresh side.”

• Now make a large ball- Cup each hand and place on the far side of the ball fingers touching and lift and drag back towards you about 100mm each time.
• This is only to tighten the outside of the dough ball so its not trying to work the dough.
• You only need to do this a couple of times or once. The dough ball should look tight tidy and round
• Lightly coat the bowl with olive oil drop the dough ball into it and cover with Cling Wrap and set aside for 20 min to 1hr, because you have used the Poolish method you do not need to leave for too long before you divide into the final balls.

 

 

Steps -Stage 3 create dough balls for Pizza

• Remove the ball from the bowl with a little oil on the hands
• With a sharp oiled knife cut the ball into three sections

“The ball should make between 9 -10 pizza balls of around 240-260 gms each”

• There are a number of ways to make the balls, but I find the easiest is the following....
• Grab one of the sections “you can weigh the whole section and then mark into the 3 or 4 sections “ So now tear off a section where you have marked it twisting and tearing to the approximate weight of 240gms , Keeping the outside surface of the ball tight using two hand tuck into a ball “wrists together use your fingers to tuck the sides into the bottom so you have a tight top and twist the bottom and pinch and place on a lightly floured resting dough rack with the pinched bottom down.”
• Continue this to all the dough and cover and let rest and rise for 2 – 3 Hours or until you are ready to cook.

 

Note: if you are doing this earlier and you have a long time before you cook, you can put these in the fridge now. it will keep fine until you are ready but pull out to let prove 2-3 hours before you are ready to cook.

 Remember when you spress out and stretch the dough to keep the top the top you can flip over to stretch but always try and come back to the top being the top.. Also leave about 20-30mm ring around the pizza , this allows for the end to expand and give you a crunchy outer crust. ..also never use a rolling pin .. be patient and it will get better and rounder every time you do it .. also remember is still tastes awesome no matter what...!

 

 

 

 

The Final product ready to cook in a 300 Deg Pizza Oven

                 

My Wife Favourite

My Favourite

 

 

  

If you are going to freeze the balls “this works brilliantly by the way” Wait until the balls are ready as in ready to cook, then on the container you have them on place the whole thing as is into the freezer and leave overnight. If you are going to do this, think about his beforehand, put the ones you think you are going to freeze on a separate tray you know will fit into your fridge, I also suggest baking paper first and a little flower. This makes it easy to remove the next day. The next day remove as a whole ready to go dough ball. Put into a sealable plastic bag for next time you need it… Just pull out the night before remove from plastic bag, let defrost overnight on a tray in the fridge that has been floured and pull from fridge an hour before you cook to get to room temp and it’s good to go……