This pizza crust has been morphed from several different sources and proven in action for school fund-raisers (Fall Festival!) and hundreds of slices at home. Several folks have asked me how we did it... so, thanks to state-wide sequestration we have the time to document our process. So here it is... please enjoy.
Step 1: Collect Up Your Stuff
You'll need:
- 22 1/2 oz. Flour (see below)
- 1 1/2 tablespoon Sugar
- 1 tablespoon Kosher Salt
- 2 teaspoon Instant Yeast
- 3 tablespoon Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
- 15 oz. Ice Water (see below)
For the Flour
We've tried several flours and mixes. We haven't made a bad batch so far. There are minor differences depending on what you settle on. We've tried 100% bread flour. That makes a nice puffy crust. It was a little too "bready" (imagine that) but good. We tried all "00" flour. It was good but the flour is expensive. It was a little chewy for our taste as well. We read somewhere that we could cut in 50/50 "00" flour and all-purpose flour. That seemed to give us the best texture. You're welcome to try others and there are great websites dedicated to the differences between flours. Post your results below!
For the Water
Some recipes call for lukewarm or room temperature water. When we use the food processor, the water goes from lukewarm to really warm... really fast. America's Test Kitchen recommends using ice water and that worked out great for us, so we recommend filling a 4 cup measuring cup with ice and water.
Let it sit for 5 minutes and then pour the cold water into another measuring cup using your hands to stop the ice from getting to the second cup. Then you get your 15 ounces of ice water... without the ice.
Step 2:
Put the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt into the food processor with a normal blade. Pulse 6-7 times to combine until there are no visible clumps of yeast showing.
Step 3:
With the processor running, drizzle the water and olive oil through the feed tube into the flour mix. Let it run for about 15 seconds after you're done pouring until the dough becomes a shaggy ball.
Step 4 (if you have a wimpy food processor):
The dough can be a real bummer on the food processor, so here you can dump the contents out and split it in half. You're making 2 pizzas anyway, so you can split it now or later.
Step 5:
Process the dough until it becomes smooth and soft. This will take about 15-30 seconds more. If you have 2 dough balls from step 4, do this for each one individually. Here's picture of the difference between the first process and the second. You can see how smooth the dough on the left is.
Step 6:
If you haven't already split the dough... do so now. Knead the dough into smooth boules (balls). The dough can be sticky, so you can use flour on your hands, or a little olive oil. The dough rises and isn't pretty so don't fret too much here. Just get it close.
Step 7: Chill (you and the dough)
Smear a little oil on the tops of the boules and cover with plastic. You can put them on a plate and cover them up with plastic, or put each dough ball into its own quart sized zip-lock bag. The dough should stay in the fridge to ferment for at least 24 hours, and up to 5 days. We've done both and the longer it stays in there, the more flavorful it becomes.
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