Pizza!

I've been busy doing prep work for the new tile floor in the pottery studio, and painting the stucco on the back of the house, but like everyone, much of what I do revolves around the basic maintenance of life—for my dog and five rescued cats, and me.  That of course includes feeding everybody.  The dog eats dog food, and the cats eat, well, cat food—not too appetizing from my perspective.  Luckily, there's also pizza!

Home made, of course, and here's how:

The dough is pretty much the same as your basic yeast bread.  For one 12" pizza, these are the ingredients.
  - Flour.  230 grams, about 55-60 grams of which is whole wheat and the rest is white bread flour.  Bread flour is made from "hard" wheat (high protein, high gluten—to make it stretchy).  Soft wheat flour is used for cakes; "all purpose" flour is a mix of hard and soft.
  - Sugar.  ½ tablespoon.
  - Salt.  1 teaspoon.
  - Yeast.  Active dry.  About ½ teaspoon.
  - Optionally, I add a few shakes of oregano.
  - Olive oil.  About 1 tablespoon (I don't measure)
  - Water.  4 ounces.

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the oil and water, then mix and knead.  I use my 37-year-old stand mixer for this, and use the regular beater bar (because the amount of dough is too small for the dough hook—if you're making dough for two or more pizzas, then you can use the dough hook).  Machine knead for five minutes, or hand knead for 10 minutes.

Take the dough out and compress and round it to make a uniform and smooth ball (actually this is important, so it will stretch out properly).  Put the ball of dough in a container and cover, then put in the refrigerator for 24 - 36 hours.  In other words, make it a day before you need it.

It slowly rises and comes out the next day looking like this:

Your oven and pizza stone should be preheating.  Ovens are different, so you'll need to experiment, so the pizza top cooks at the same speed as the bottom of the crust.  The last oven I had was really hot on top, so I had to put the pizza in at the bottom of the oven, with the temperature set around 480˚.  My current Bosch oven has lots of modes and different heat, so some experimentation was needed.  I now put the pizza in at the hotter top of the oven, and at 450˚.  I use a pizza stone, so the pizza goes in the oven naked on the stone, put in and taken out using an aluminum "peel."  You can get by using a pan, and skip the peel and stone, but your results may vary :-)

Once you stretch out the dough, you don't want it to sit for a long time, or it will tend to stick to whatever it's on.  So prepare everything ahead of time, and don't dawdle.  I make my own sauce.  I start with a can of crushed Italian (plum) tomatoes (with basil).  I add some olive oil, plus a little sugar, salt, and oregano, then blend in a food processor.  I use part-skim mozzarella cheese, grated myself, of course.  If you buy cheese already grated, it has cellulose added to keep it from sticking (cellulose=sawdust).

Stretching out the dough takes a little practice, and your dough has to be correct (strong and elastic, but not too—that is, not like a rubber band).  It can't stick to your working surface, so you must use flour or corn meal to keep it sliding.  Some people use regular flour, some people use corn meal.  I use a half and half mixture of whole wheat flour and semolina flour, the latter being Bob's Red Mill, made with No. 1 Durum Wheat, and ground to a sandy texture (Semolina flour may be hard to find; I get mine from amazon.  Semolina flour is used to make pasta.)  The whole wheat/semolina mixture works great to prevent sticking and it also tastes good.

So spread your counter with the stuff and plop your ball of dough into the middle. You can't have too much; what doesn't stick to the dough will be there for the next pizza (if you're doing more than one).  After awhile, you'll figure out how much you need.

This is the final result.  My pizza takes about five minutes total in the oven.  As always, your results may vary.  For further (professional) advice, the worldpizzachampions series on youtube is recommended.