I've found the best results using that flour is to make a ratio of 1 cup 00 to 2 cups bread flour.
1 cup (plus 1 tbl) water. 1 1/2 tsp yeast..2 tsp sugar..1 tsp salt.
Mix in a food processor or better a bread machine and let rise. Punch down and let rise again, perferably overnight or 2 days in the fridge. Well, I use the first ball of dough that night, but the second one is slightly better.
The water ratio might be a bit tricky to get down depending on the brand of 00 and the brand of bread flour and the humidity etc.
I agree: 1 c 00 to 2 cups bread flour works very well. Somewhere around a cup of water--although this varies drastically. I never measure yeast, but 1 1/2 tsp sounds about right. I don't add salt--pizza toppings are almost always salty enough-- but I do add a good glug of olive oil. (Thanks, Marcella.)
I make pizza a lot, so a peel is a must-have, as is a pizza stone. Get the oven crazy hot and slide the pie onto the stone with either semolina or corn meal. (I usually use corn meal and I almost never remember to clean the stone before heating the oven again, which means smoking corn meal. Don't do this.)
I've given up using the stone. It's super power wasteful. You want really high heat.
The "new, new" is the baking steel. But you already have that type of device.
A sheet pan.
I roll out the pizza dough on backside of a sheet pan. I use silpat on top and flour on the bottom to really roll it out cracker thin; Sometimes other times it's just roughly rolled and shaped. The Silpat is just used to cover the dough while rolling it out and moving it around and fliping it...not for any baking. Wax paper would work just fine as well.
I've found that the sheet pan in a really hot oven is actually better than the pizza stone in the final product. If your using 00 Flour in a home oven.
It seem to go against most 'pizza lore'. but the sheet pan works great the heat transfers really quick for the bottom and the top browns great.
Plus...you don't have to heat up the kitchen for 30 mins to heat the stone up.
I use this one: http://www.peterandrewryan.com/baking/2010/01/00-flour-pizza/ I generally get two pizzas, though, not three. I like to double the recipe and get four - I use two to make pizza and free the other two.
It's really not that hard; roll it thin (rolling will generally produce a crisper, and certainly more uniform crust than stretching), cook it hot. If you use stones or steel, preheat plenty- or use a perforated pan low in the oven (works better for me). And above all, be careful with toppings- wet tomato sauces, high moisture cheese, and tomatoes cut side down are all enemies of a crisp crust.
Some tips: You need a ridiculously hot pizza stone or steel that's been in the oven for a good 30 minutes after the temperature registers 525 or higher.
Roll it out thin . . . super thin. Use semolina flour on the top and bottom to help.
Super thin crust pizzas tend to be difficult to move around once covered with toppings. (The dough wants to fold back on itself or get wrinkled.) After giving it a good stretch, and then letting it rest for about 10 minutes, I use a rolling pin to stretch the dough out on a surface covered with semolina. Then I put a piece of parchment on a baking sheet that has one open side. The crust is rolled up and over the rolling pin, with a bit of support from the hand below to prevent it from stretching too much, and swiftly put on the parchment covered baking sheet. Then I I put the toppings on, and slide the paper + pizza onto the hot stone. Of course you must start with a sticky, highly hydrated dough to get the cracker result you want. ;o)
Manufacturers of parchment and other silicone products generally recommend a maximum temperature of 450 or less; I suspect they have their reasons. All that stuff should be unnecessary anyway; if your peel (or cookie sheet) is well dusted it should slide right off; if you leave it too long and it starts to stick, it can easily be loosened up with a metal spatula. I generally just flour it fold it in half and lift it onto the peel; I haven't had any problem, at least up to a 14" pizza.
There is a simple recipe using 00 flour in the Roberta's cookbook. I like my pizza very crisp, too so I just rolled it out thin and bake it on my stone. Very thin and crisp.
Peter Reinhart's cookbook, travelogue, "American Pie" is a great place to find all kinds of pizzas. His quest for the best pizza is a terrific read and the recipes are wonderful. Highly recommended.
10 Comments
1 cup (plus 1 tbl) water. 1 1/2 tsp yeast..2 tsp sugar..1 tsp salt.
Mix in a food processor or better a bread machine and let rise. Punch down and let rise again, perferably overnight or 2 days in the fridge. Well, I use the first ball of dough that night, but the second one is slightly better.
The water ratio might be a bit tricky to get down depending on the brand of 00 and the brand of bread flour and the humidity etc.
I make pizza a lot, so a peel is a must-have, as is a pizza stone. Get the oven crazy hot and slide the pie onto the stone with either semolina or corn meal. (I usually use corn meal and I almost never remember to clean the stone before heating the oven again, which means smoking corn meal. Don't do this.)
The "new, new" is the baking steel. But you already have that type of device.
A sheet pan.
I roll out the pizza dough on backside of a sheet pan. I use silpat on top and flour on the bottom to really roll it out cracker thin; Sometimes other times it's just roughly rolled and shaped. The Silpat is just used to cover the dough while rolling it out and moving it around and fliping it...not for any baking. Wax paper would work just fine as well.
I've found that the sheet pan in a really hot oven is actually better than the pizza stone in the final product. If your using 00 Flour in a home oven.
It seem to go against most 'pizza lore'. but the sheet pan works great the heat transfers really quick for the bottom and the top browns great.
Plus...you don't have to heat up the kitchen for 30 mins to heat the stone up.
Roll it out thin . . . super thin. Use semolina flour on the top and bottom to help.
Super thin crust pizzas tend to be difficult to move around once covered with toppings. (The dough wants to fold back on itself or get wrinkled.) After giving it a good stretch, and then letting it rest for about 10 minutes, I use a rolling pin to stretch the dough out on a surface covered with semolina. Then I put a piece of parchment on a baking sheet that has one open side. The crust is rolled up and over the rolling pin, with a bit of support from the hand below to prevent it from stretching too much, and swiftly put on the parchment covered baking sheet. Then I I put the toppings on, and slide the paper + pizza onto the hot stone. Of course you must start with a sticky, highly hydrated dough to get the cracker result you want. ;o)