How to Make Artisan Pizza Crust

Today, what I wanted to do is show you how to make a really basic pizza, dough, recipe. I’ll, show you the techniques and tips that I use it’ll be really easy for you to get the best, flavor and texture out of your dough at home.

. So the basic ingredients we use here we have bread, flour and all-purpose flour, we have salt, instant, yeast and water and honey. , So the flour will be the backbone of your recipe.

. We use bread flour because it does have more protein in it. It’ll be a denser product.

. It actually will make it a stronger dough. So that’s good because it can hold up under the weight of toppings for your pizza and still be able to rise nicely.

. But you also don’t want a very dense dough. So using half all-purpose flour will help balance that out.

. The yeast obviously is the leavener, but also has a lot of the flavor that you expect to get out of that. Honey.

, Most recipes will have a little bit of sugar of some form, because that is what feeds the yeast. . So when you put that in the recipe the yeast has more food, it’s going to rise better and give you a better flavor, and it also helps your crust to brown.

It’s a caramelizer. , So you’ll have a nice crispy crust, rather than a pale and pasty type crust. Same thing for the salt.

The salt strengthens the dough, but it also helps with the crust and the flavor, and all around gives you a stronger dough. . You want to get your dough within a certain temperature.

. Most recipes, you see, will tell you to just use warm water and that usually is okay. But what I do is I take the temperature of the flour before I start and you want your dough to end up between somewhere between 75 to 79 degrees, and that way you get the best rise out of it.

, So I’ve taken the temperature. Now I usually have a thermometer of some form. The flour right now is about 65.

So I want my water to be About 91 degrees to get it within that range. . It just makes up for the difference in in temperature with the flour.

. So I’m going to start off with your water and to that you’re, just going to add your yeast and your honey and then I just usually whisk it to make sure it starts dissolving and none of its left at the bottom of the bowl. .

If your dough is too hot, what happens? Is it rises a lot faster than it’s supposed to and then you’ll end up with a crust that got or a dough that got so tall and rose so high that it can’t even support its structure? It will end up collapsing. And it’ll, be really crusty and crumbly and it’ll taste like this alcoholic flavor from the yeast, and if it’s too cold, what happens? Is it never really rises, never develops the structure or the flavor. .

You end up with a sticky pale crust. . So if you can get it within that temperature range, that’s the best.

, So you Add your flour on top and I leave the salt out for right now. . This is a different technique.

It’s very simple. I’ll, explain why and with these ingredients you just want to mix it for about one minute, just to get it together. .

So I will cover this now and you let it sit for about 15 minutes to rest, and that gives the flour time to develop into dough. , And one thing that’s different about this recipe versus many pizza dough recipes that you find is that there’s no fat. In It a lot of them, it will call for olive oil.

And the reason why is I’ll show you an example. This is a brioche dough. This has a lot of fat in it and what that does is it gives you a really fine, even crumb to your final product.

And I’ll show you a recipe. . This here is a dough that has no fat in it.

, So you see that the fat doesn’t bind around the molecules. You’ll have a really nice air pockets that can develop and expand without any fat, and that’s something That you’re going to get out of this dough. You’ll have a lot of nice air pockets in there to give you some good texture.

. Now that the dough has been sitting for about 15 minutes, we’re gon na go ahead and add our salt. , You just dump it in on the top, and now you’ll continue mixing the dough for about another two to three minutes.

And generally, if you had done it, The conventional way you would be mixing for a six or eight minutes, so this is really going to protect the flavor really nicely. . Okay.

So at this point your dough is your dough is ready. . This is what you want it to look Like. , It shouldn’t be shiny. It shouldn’t be lumpy or sticky.

. You can see here, it’s one nice, big mass and so I’m going to transfer it to a bowl so that it can rise. And in order for it not to stick to the bowl when I’m ready to use it.

I always use some sort of a vegetable spray that way it’s really not Adding fat into the recipe. If you were to coat the bowl with olive oil. And usually just use a dough scraper to get it all out in one nice, big piece.

. So here’s your dough. We’re going to leave it in this bowl in a warm area and it’ll rise.

. It takes between a half-hour and sometimes an hour if your room is a little cooler and of course again you want to have it covered, while it does that. .

So here’s the final dough: this is ready now to divide. . You see that it’s nicely doubled, and so you can turn it out on your workstation.

. You can either use it again, a vegetable spray on your station if you want, or you can use flour. So most people use flour.

Uou, have a clean workstation and then you flour, your area and just turn your dough out on there. . You can do whatever size dough, you want.

, You could do freeform. I always do about Six ounces. .

So I have a scale here. Ready and sometimes you’ll see people just rip the dough with your hands and what you’re doing is you’re ripping the strands of gluten and that’s holding a lot of your air, so you’re really destroying the structure. .

So I use something sharp like this bench scraper to cut through and then that way you just cut off the dough you’re, not destroying it. . It’s a really gentle way to handle it.

Also put flour on the scale so that it won’t stick. , Alright, so I’ll portion. These out you’ll get.

This is what I did. I did a double recipe earlier on the dough that I wanted to bring out to you, but what I demonstrated for you is a half of a recipe or one full recipe. , Because that’s something that will fit in a typical mixer that you have at home.

. So this is going to give me about eight doughs, but what you’re going get from the recipe that we post will make about four Pizzas, sometimes five, depending on the size that you want to get. So right now, you’re just scaling it for the right weight and Then you’re going to shape it.

Once you’ve got all of these at the right weight that you want. . So I’ve portioned all my piece pieces out and I do have a little extra.

That happens sometimes and what I’ll just do is I’ll. Just put it on the bottom of the dough, just kind of split it up evenly or you can make a small pizza whatever you wanted to do with that, doesn’t really matter. .

So I’ll put it on the bottom. . So once you roll it, it’s kind of tucks itself into the dough, rather than being a lump on top and now that those are portioned you’re ready to shape it.

. This is the pre shape. That’s really easy to do.

. I usually roll it with my hands, but another way you can do it is to tuck it, and so you just kind of pull from the center and tuck it underneath into the bottom. Until you see a nice clean smooth Round top and what you’d look for on the bottom is just a seam like this.

And then I’ll usually put it to rest on top of cornmeal or semolina and then it’ll sit and rest. You don’t want to use it right away, because when you work with the dough, the gluten gets tough and it wants to contract. Every time you try and roll it out.

It’s just gon na keep shrinking. , So you need to let it rest at least 20 minutes in order to get a better stretch out of it. Okay.

So if you’re gon na do it by hand, this is how I do it. . I use my thumbs and my pinkies to kind of guide and direct.

. I use my thumb’s to pull some dough into it and tuck it into the bottom, and then you just keep rotating it till you’ve gone all the way around, and then you get a nice tight circle and again you see on the bottom is: where you’ll see All the extra. Now that they’re shaped you want to put them somewhere Where they can rest.

. Usually I will. This is what I did last night as I put cornmeal on the bottom.

This looks like a big container, but you spread them apart, because they’re going to spread out a little bit by the next day. , You can use them in 20 minutes if you want, but this dough will also last up to three days in the refrigerator and if You let it sit a little bit longer. You actually develop some more flavors.

, So I usually like to make it the day before and it’s also a lot easier to work with once it’s sat overnight. , So you can put some cornmeal on the bottom of your container and put out your dough’s. .

So if you put cornmeal on the bottom, it’s not going to stick. . If you put flour, the dough ends up absorbing the flour and sticking to the bottom of your container anyway.

. So the cornmeal just kind of creates a nice barrier between your container and your dough and protects it. I’ll.

Show you how you want to shape your pizza dough. . You want to generously flour, your workstation.

. If you get too much flour on it, that’s fine! You can always wipe it off and a lot of times you’ll see people use a rolling pin to shape this. I’ll put a little flour on, but I don’t like to do that because that just pushes all the air out and flattens it and all the air That you’ve worked really hard to create.

. So for the texture I was taught to use my fingertips and what you’re doing is you can see? There’s still air bubbles around here. You’re, just moving the air around you’re, not flattening or destroying it.

. So it’s still in there you’ll still have some nice texture and then, when you’ve stretched it about. As far as you want, you grab it with the back of your hands and you just gently stretch it out and then I’ll go around the crust or the edges about once and that’s ready.

. If you want it thinner, then you keep stretching It. If you want to thicker crust, then you would probably you could either shape it smaller or push it back together.

And then, when you put it into the oven, you’re going to want to put cornmeal here on your paddle and that keeps it from sticking to the paddle when you transfer it into the oven. . So I’ll put this on and before even adding my toppings I’ll.

Do a test just to make sure that it will fight off. If it sticks to this at all as you’re putting in the oven part of it will fall. Back.

You’ll have a deformed pizza, so you see that it’s moving around really. Well, it’s not stuck, and you can go ahead and start putting your toppings on now. , Alright and so just to be efficient.

You want to have all your toppings ready and out I’ll just show you a basic margherita, pizza. , That’s usually fresh mozzarella and I’ll use. Some heirloom tomatoes, also from our garden and what’s really nice, the oven here that we have is about six hundred Degrees like I said.

, So it will bake these in about three minutes. It’s a really fast process. – And I just put some fresh mozzarella on here.

You can put as much or as little as you want. , It’s really up to you. .

It doesn’t have to look at any certain way and then I’m ready to go in the oven. . So here is the pizza.

Just took about two three minutes in the oven and it’s ready. . If you want, you could add some olive oil put some of our estate olive oil on here and finish it off with some basil from the garden.

. So really this is you see, this dough is really easy. .

Anyone can make it. It gives you a really beautiful, rustic, looking pizza and you can have fun. Put whatever toppings you want.

So we hope that this recipe is something that you’ll use at home and please feel free to ask us if you have any questions, leave a comment and we’ll be happy to Respond, and thank you for watching. .