How to Make Great Tasting Pizza in Under 10 minutes (sort of)

Wayne Yoshida and Lisa Gallagher both asked for my Indestructible Pizza Dough recipe. I call it indestructible because it's nearly impossible to goof it up. It can also handle freezing cooked or not.

Pizzas fall into two groups

There are the artisanal ones that are cute and leave you looking around for something to eat. They are ingredient-stringent. The dough is custom matched to the toppings with varying degrees of success. Usually, the dough is thin, crispy, and heavily flavored. They may (sometimes) be a higher level of cuisine, but they rarely satisfy.

My preferred type in what I call a topping-based pizza. It's sort of like a New York style pizza but with the pepperoni under the cheese where it belongs. (let the flaming begin)

The dough is neutral or lightly flavored. It's more a topping delivery system than the focus of the show.

Neutral should not mean boring or flavorless.  It still needs to carry its weight in the pizza flavor universe.

It must also remove the "guilty" in "Pizza is a guilty pleasure." If you like your pizza swimming in grease, you won't like this one.

The trick to great pizza done quick is to have your shells pre-made and par-baked. I usually make four at a time. I par-bake, cool and freeze. They thaw in about the same time as it takes for me to chop my toppings and preheat the oven. Sometimes, I freeze the shaped but uncooked shells. 

This dough doesn't care.

This recipe can be done by hand in a big mixing bowl or a big cutting board. It's really an enriched crusty bread dough. In fact, I sometimes make it in 100g buns for sausages.

It's much easier to make in a mixer. You need to knead dough 1000 times. That's about 10 minutes at low speed in a mixer with a dough hook attachment while you watch. 

It's a good fifteen to twenty minute workout by hand.

I'll set the recipe for 1900 grams of dough. That's good for 4X 14" shells using 475 grams each. If you want 16" pies, use about 625g each to make 3. For 12" pizzas, use 350g and make 5.

Or, just pop the recipe in a spreadsheet and calculate exactly the amount you want. That's why even Amercian bakeries use metric weights.

Note: This recipe is fine for a stand mixer of 5.5 quarts which is fairly standard. You may be able to go up to 2200 grams in a 5.5 quart mixer, but keep an eye on it! More than that will climb up into the gears.
The voice of experience

If you have a moral objection to par-baked shells, you have two choices. You can shape the dough into balls for freezing. You can shape the dough into shells and freeze those. 

This dough is really indestructible.

Things you'll need

If you plan do to any sort of baking, get a scale. Get one that has a maximum capacity of 5 pounds/11kg. Baking is applied chemistry. Precision counts. 

Set it to grams and weigh to the number. No need to learn the Metric System. 

A pizza peel is nice to have but not absolutely necessary. You can use metal salad tongs and the clean back of a cookie sheet to transport raw dough and cooked pizzas.

Also nice to have are round pizza pans. Regular cookie sheets are fine if you like the free-form or rectangular look.

If you're doing this by hand, you'll need a "main." That's French for  "hand." It's a D-shaped plastic scraper, Every pastry chef has dozens. Just cut an old plastic margarine tub into a D-shape about the size of your hand. Use it to scrape sticky, icky dough off your cutting board or work surface. 

A 4" paint scraper (new) does the trick just as well.

Ingredients (grams)

• 724  -  Water, (warm if by hand, cold if by mixer)
• 21  -  Yeast (Instant, use 30 if Active, 60 if fresh)
• 1076  -  All-Purpose flour 
• 21  -  Salt
• 61  -  Oil (no need for your best olive oil, any will do)

Mixer Method 

• Place mixer bowl on scale. Zero out (tare).
• Add water, tare, add yeast. Stir 
• Tare. Add flour.
• Tare. Add salt on one side. Tare. Add oil to the other side.
• Mix on low to combine
• Scrape down sides.
• Mix on second speed for 10 minutes.
• Dough part is done

Hand Method 

• Find yourself a big mixing bowl or a humongous cutting board. I used to use my travertine dining room table until my wife put an emphatic stop to that.
• Pile the flour. With clean, dry hands, make a well in the middle.
• Add about three-quarter of the water and all the salt. Stir with your fingers, but keep the well
• Add the yeast. Stir that like you did with the salt.
• Add the oil.
• Start stirring the wet stuff while gradually picking up some dry stuff.
• Add the rest of the water before the well disappears completely.
• Use your "main" to keep everything together if it tries to escape.
• Mix with your hands and your "main" until you get a goopy mess.
• Knead it 1000 times. No, I'm not kidding. Count them out or just keep at it for 20 minutes. Fold the dough onto itself. Press with the butt of your hands. Repeat.
• Dough part done

Shaping

If you want to freeze the balls for later use, go ahead and do that now. Skip the rest. You're done. 

They'll thaw and rise at the same time. Freeze in plastic bags that leave space for a doubling of volume or you will have exploding bags of dough.

Cover and leave in a warm place for 45 minutes to an hour. If your house is cool, use your oven with the inside light on. It will rise to about double.

Back to your trusty kitchen scale.

Weigh out the size you need and form into balls. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rest 20 minutes to a half hour.

Roll the dough out to about 1/4 in/1cm. If you're feeling adventurous, roll to about a half inch (2cm) and hand toss it. It looks cool and is easy to do once you get the hang of it.

It also impresses the hell out of people.

Try not to hand toss pizza dough under a ceiling fan. 'Nuff said.

Here's a video on how to hand-toss pizza. This guy is alot better at it than I am and looks better too.