Tim’s Bitchin’ Pizza

Originally posted on June 3, 2004

Here are the ingredients, cost ($3.48 – $4.48 per pizza) and recipe for my first homemade pizza complete with nifty photos of most of the process too.. Woo?

Mixing Directions:

1. Pour warm water into large mixing bowl.
2. Add sugar and yeast to water, then stir until dissolved.
   Let sit for 10 minutes for yeast to mature (It will get foamy when ready).
3. Add salt and olive oil and stir again.
4. Add 1st cup flour and whisk it in. Do the same with the 2nd cup of flour.
5. Add 3rd cup of flour and combine (whisk probably won’t work now, I used a spoon).
6. Then add final 4th cup of flour and mix it in by hand, begin to kneed dough.
7. Add dusting flour as needed while you kneed dough for another 5-10 minutes or so.
8. Once dough no longer sticks to your hands lightly coat dough ball with olive oil and place into a lightly oiled mixing bowl.
9. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or foil and set aside to rise for 60-75 minutes (I let mine rise for 75 minutes).

After the mixing and kneading of the ingredients I balled up the dough, put a little olive oil on the dough ball, and put it in a lightly oiled bowl. Then covered it and let it rise for an hour.

After about an hour and 15 minutes covered in the unlit oven the dough had risen a bunch, it was over twice as big, d’oh..

Note: Make sure the dough is at least twice the volume it was. If it takes two hours so be it, don’t get anxious!

Then I punched down (deflated) the dough, dumped it out and cut it in two pieces. (This recipe makes two crusts)

After cutting the dough in two chunks I kneaded them a little more and balled them up again.

One dough ball I lightly covered in olive oil and placed in a zip lock freezer bag for later use (I later found out the bag was way too small and the dough rose more and broke it, use a larger freezer bag than the one pictured!). The other I placed back in the bowl for 15 more minutes to rest and “proof.”

Then I worked the dough ball on a lightly floured cutting board, flattened it out, and even tossed it a little over my knuckles to spread it out, woo. You could also just roll it out with a rolling pin too, it’s just less fun that way.. It should be fairly thin at this point, maybe 1/8 of an inch thick or so. Basically it fit my 14″ pizza pan when done.

Note: You can see the gluten proteins have made it “stretchy” (if you’ve done everything right so far), and the dough is stretchy and somewhat elastic. It should not break or tear easily if you decide to toss it around a little over your knuckles.

Now we’re ready for the other ingredients like pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese.

Update: I’ve finally gotten around to putting up a recipe for simple pizza sauce from scratch using whole tomatoes. Check it out here!

I placed my dough on my pizza pan, slapped on some pizza sauce and spread it around..

Note: I’ve heard nothing but good things about using a “pizza stone” (see right column link), and plan to buy one in the future and try it. But to be economical I’ve only bought a plain ‘ol pizza pan for now.

Update: Soon after making this first pizza I bought a baking stone. After four years I would never bake bread again without one!

Then I added a light layer of the mozzarella cheese..

Then sprinkled on a tiny bit of garlic salt and parmesan cheese, added lots of pepperoni, and topped it off with a bunch more mozzarella cheese.

I had preheated the oven to 450° F and then baked the pizza on the middle rack for a little over ten minutes or so.

Update: Hotter is better! Go for 500° (and less time) if your oven will do it. I do.

And there’s the finished pizza cut up and ready to chow down on. mMmm. Check out how the mozzarella cheese is stringy and stretches from the pan to the plate. Woo?

Other Translations!
I noticed a while back that others have translated the recipe into Arabic on the following sites. I kinda wish they would have posted a link back to my site and given the proper credit though.

http://www.14noor.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=90058

http://www.arabseyes.com/vb/showthread.php?t=11485