Pizza is a hot, open-faced Italian pie with a yeast dough bottom.
That’s what the textbook says about your favorite food. Not very descriptive, is it? While pizza is essentially a simple food, it is so popular it has bred a thousand or more varieties.
There’s thick, thin, pan, and stuffed pizzas. There’s Chicken Alfredo, Hawaiian (with pineapple and Canadian bacon), White, and even Taco pizzas. They are made in wood-fired pizza ovens, they can be grilled, baked, or roasted. There is even a specialty coal-fired pizza made in special kilns at ridiculously high temperatures.
Why is any pizza you’ve ever made at your house not nearly as delicious as one from an italian restaurant? Simple. They have a pizza oven and you don’t. You’re cooking in a stove from Home Depot. Pizza needs that incredibly high heat to cook the dough and the toppings at the same time. At lower temperatures -say 400-500*F – the crust is overcooked before the cheese has had time to melt.
In your home oven, the highest setting is about 500*F. In a commercial pizza oven, the highest setting is 900*F.
These are not the same things.
HOWEVER, even without a pizza oven, you can still make some pretty amazing pizza.
Read on to find out how.
In the US, we have four basic varieties of pizza:
New York-style pizza: characterized by a crisp, thin dough with light tomato sauce and usually a limited number of toppings, given the thin crust.st.
Chicago-style pizza: characterized by a deep-dish dough with an inch or more of toppings and sauce. Sometimes covered with another layer of dough and sauce to make a pie.
Neapolitan-style pizza or Pizza Margherita: made from simple and fresh ingredients such as a basic dough cooked to crispness, fresh tomatoes or tomato sauce, cheese, and fresh basil.
Chain pizza: Think of all the places you tend to order pizza from. They are as close to “real” pizza as Taco Bell is close to “real” Mexican food.
Are chain pizzas bad? Yes. Yes they are. But only in comparison to the real thing. I order from a chain from time to time (and I feel deep shame for that fact but will undoubtedly do it again.).
A bit of history
Do you need to know where pizza came from to enjoy it or cook it well.
Probably not, but it’s interesting and this is how you will win at trivia night. Let’s go.
Pizza didn’t come from Italy. It started in Greece as flat bread made with just a few ingredients, then moved to Naples, Italy sometime in the 1700s. Like so many other amazing foods, it started out as street food for poor people – no tomatoes, no cheese – just flatbread cooked with olive oil, salt, and fresh herbs.
In 1889, Queen Margherita and her husband Umberto I, visited Naples and saw peasants eating this large, flat bread. Curious, the queen ordered her guards to bring her one. The Queen loved the pizza and ate it every time she was out amongst the people, which of course irritated the rest of the Italian nobles. After all, Queens shouldn’t eat peasant food.
Queen Margherita didn’t care. She ordered Chef Rafaelle Esposito to the royal palace and ordered him to bake her a special pizza. To honor the queen, Chef Rafaelle made her one topped with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil (to represent the colors of the Italian flag: Red, white, and green). The Queen loved it and the rest, as they say, is history.
(Sort of. There is tons of argument about if ANY OF THIS HAPPENED).
Pizza variations began to be made in different parts of Italy. Bolognese pizza had meat. Neapolitan had garlic, crumbly Neapolitan cheeses, herbs, and fresh vegetables.
Pizza spread to America, France, England and Spain along with Italian immigrants, where it was little known until after World War II. While occupying Italian territories, many American and European soldiers tasted Pizza for the first time. When they returned to their home countries, the veterans sought out the little Italian restaurants that served pizza, and made it the most popular fast food in the country.
CRUST
To make great pizza, you’ve GOT to make a great crust. To make a great pizza dough, you have ONLY two options:
- exactly, perfectly, slavishly follow a great recipe or
- understand the process of making pizza crust and how dough works in general so you can guess just from reading a recipe whether it will work or not and KNOW how to complete each step in the recipe.
Want to make great pizza? Sure you do. Know this stuff:
A Few Words on Yeast
What are the different types of baker’s yeast?
There are three main types of commercially produced baker’s yeast: active dry, instant, and fresh. All of them will work to leaven doughs in any given yeasted baking recipe, but each has slightly different properties, and, for the more discerning palate, varying flavors.
Live yeast is partially dehydrated, sent into hibernation, and ground into granules.
You’ll often find this sold in ¼-oz. packets or a 4-oz. tinted glass jar in the baking aisle. These dormant yeast cells can be stored at room temperature for several months (or at least until their expiration date) HOWEVER… they are heat-sensitive and how alive they are (their potency) can vary.
Be sure to store it away from super warm areas up until the moment you’re ready to bake— yeast will begin to die once exposed to temperatures higher than 120°F. To extend shelf life, store sealed packets in an airtight bag in the freezer to keep the yeast in a more secure state of suspension.
THREE VARIETIES
- Active: The yeast with the sneaky name! They call it “active” when it is actually asleep in the packaging; Active yeast requires proofing before being added to dough and is best for baked items with slower fermentation times; Most recipes call for active dry yeast
- Rapid/ Instant – No need to proof the yeast: you can add it directly to the dough and get kneading! Best for doughs that will rise quickly and be baked soon after forming. Sometimes called “breadmachine yeast”
- Fresh or Cake: stays active longer and goes to work faster; make sure you use the proper conversion when using fresh yeast in a recipe which calls for active or instant
PROOFING YOUR YEAST
Before being added to your recipe, active dry yeast should be dissolved in lukewarm water with a pinch each of flour and sugar to ensure its activity level. If your yeast mixture does not increase in size and become foamy in 10 to 20 minutes, your packet was likely Dead on Arrival and will no longer make your dough rise. How does this happen? How can you buy a packet of dead yeast? The manufacturing process for active dry yeast kills up to 25% of the little buggies.
IMPORTANT: When proofing your yeast, be careful you are NOT adding additional liquid to the recipe. Make sure you take the liquid used to proof the yeast from what’s called for in the recipe (otherwise you’ll throw off the flour to liquid ratio and end up with a sloppy mess). You won’t make bread, you’ll make soup. It will be disgusting.
WORDS of wisdom from chef bates
Still not sure what all this means? Check out this post on Spruce Eats How to Proof Yeast: Test your yeast to see if it’s still good
What is fermentation?
Scientifically, fermentation refers to the chemical decomposition of complex organic compounds into simpler substances.
In baking, fermentation refers to the process whereby yeast converts sugar to carbon dioxide and delicious alcohol flavor compounds, causing dough to rise.
When yeast is allowed to consume sugar really fast – say in an overly warm proofing environment – the less taste, texture and quality of the final pizza crust.
Think about it. Mass-produced bread is churned out quickly to produce more and more product to send to the shelves at Publix or Walmart, resulting in bread that is generally bland, mushy, and lacking in flavor. Why is sandwich bread sold for $3.00 a loaf so terrible? They add a dough conditioner to the mix to speed up fermentation. This step saves on time but does not allow for extended flavor and quality to develop through the fermentation process.
On the other hand, SLOW fermentation improves flavor and texture because the yeast has an opportunity to create more of the alcohol flavor compounds that make good bread tangy and delicious. Long, slow fermentation = flavorful pizza crust, rich in aroma and texture
What happens when you add water to flour?
Gluten does not exist in flour. Surprised? I bet you are.
The endosperm of certain grains—namely wheat, barley, and rye—contains a pair of proteins called glutenin and gliadin, which, when they get wet, absorb water like tiny sponges, and form gluten. When flour is mixed with water, the gluten created by the combination of gliadin and glutenin naturally swells to form a continuous network of fine strands. You don’t have to knead the dough for this network to form… it happens naturally.
Why is gluten so important to great pizza crust?
When gluten is kneaded, the network of tiny strands of protein are strengthened as they come into alignment. Under a microscope, this interwoven collection of proteins actually looks a bit like a net. A “net” is a good way to think of gluten because, as the yeast in the dough eats sugar and creates CO2 gas, the net of strands “catch” the bubbles like a balloon.
Gluten creates this net for catching bubbles because it has four important properties:
- gluten absorbs twice its weight in water
- it’s really sticky
- it is extensible; this means it will stretch when pulled
- it is elastic; when stretched it will return to near its original size.
What is dough hydration and how does it affect the final pizza?
In bread baking ‘hydration’ refers to the amount of water relative to the amount of flour in the dough.
For example if a recipe called for 100 grams of flour, adding 70 grams of water would make a dough with 70% hydration (7:10 ratio). This is relevant to pizza because varying the level of dough hydration directly affects the qualities of a finished crust. Too little hydration and the crust will be dense and dry, while too much water will result in a dough that is sticky, too fluid to shape, and difficult to slide into the oven.
Increasing hydration means adding more water to the dough recipe. Decreasing hydration means reducing the amount of water in the dough recipe.
Imagine a really dry dough with very little water in it. That dough is a brick. Dry dough is strong but not at all stretchy. Also, once baked, it would be very dense and well, disgusting.
On the other hand, a very wet dough with not much flour is slime. Wet dough has almost no strength whatsoever but it is very stretchy. When baked, the dough would be much lighter but it would not be able to hold a shape. These extremes illustrate the importance of proper hydration. For pizza, we need a dough that is:
- stretchy – so that we can stretch it out thin
- strong – so that it doesn’t tear and can hold its shape
- airy – so that we get a nice light crust
Achieving all these qualities is a bit of a balancing act. When reducing hydration you will always lose a little stretchiness and when increasing hydration you will always lose a little strength.
But it’s not that simple. Different flours absorb different amount of water so you have to add different proportions of water to flour to achieve the same results. Here are the general hydration percentages for the different kinds of flour you might use when making your pizza:
- Italian 00 flour — 55%-60% hydration.
- Standard all-purpose white flour — 65%-70% hydration.
- High-gluten bread flour — 70%-75% hydration.
- 100% whole wheat — 70%-80% hydration range.
What is the autolyse stage?
In addition to the two proteins which create gluten, flour ALSO contains enzymes that break down long proteins into shorter ones in a process called autolyse (auto meaning “self” and lysis meaning “break down”).
Bakers have known about this process for years, and many incorporate an autolyse step into their recipes, mixing together flour and water and allowing it to rest before adding the remaining ingredients and kneading. Autolyse cuts kneading time, and produces a dough easier to shape, with more volume, better texture, flavor and color.
Pronounced ‘auto-lease’ to rhyme with ‘please’, the French expert baker Raymond Calvel coined the method in his book ‘The Taste Of Bread. In his experiments he noticed that mixing flour and water together and allowing it to rest resulted in a better quality bread, with less kneading time.
The science behind it comes from two enzymes at work; protease and amylase. Protease breaks down protein to start gluten bonds forming, and amylase breaks down starches into sugars that the yeast will consume when added later. The process allows the dough to start gluten development in a passive way, and will require less kneading to produce better results.
What does salt do to pizza dough and why should you wait to add it?
Salt greatly reduces the effects of the enzymes at work during the autolyse stage so it is important it is NOT added early. Salt also tightens the dough and makes it more challenging to knead. ON the other hand, if you DON’T add salt to your pizza crust, it will taste flat and disgusting.
So… don’t add salt at the beginning. (But don’t forget to add it later. You’ll be sorry.)
What is “oven spring?”
When bread is introduced to the oven, two things happen, the yeast gets a final “kick in the pants” and goes crazy producing CO2 gas. It’s as if it knows it’s about to die and wants to enjoy its last meal. Also, the moisture in the crust is converted to steam and pushes up on the dough, helping with the last push upward and outwards.
Oven spring continues until two things happen: the high heat kills the yeast and the exterior gluten structure of the dough (the crust) sets, holding in the outward motion. Oven spring is important in pizza making because the crusty rim of the pizza SHOULD puff up while the toppings hold down the center.
What is a cold fermentaiton?
Cold fermenting your dough—that is, storing it in the refrigerator after forming it—improves both its flavor, texture, and its browning characteristics as the yeast slowly gets to work digesting carbohydrates.
Pizza dough gets better and better over the course of a few days in the refrigerator, peaking at about 3 days. Of course this means you will need to add in time to remove from refrigeration, allow it to come to room temperature before stretching and baking.
What are the stages of fermentation?
- Pre-ferment: Many professional pizza makers take a small amount of dough, often from a previous batch and allow it to rise before adding the rest of the ingredients. This preferment is rich in flavor and adds much to pizza’s tangy, rich crust.
- First Fermentation: After adding the pre-ferment to the dough, the first fermentation takes place; this can take as long as 48 hours for a cold-fermented dough and as short as 90 minutes in a humidity and temperature controlled proofer.
- Second Fermentation: Punch down the bread, knocking out the CO2 that has formed, shape it into the form you want to slide into the oven.
- Proofing: After shaping (also called “makeup”), the bread is proofed again. This process can last anywhere from one hour to one day.
- Oven spring: Finally, the loaves of bread expand by means of yeast and steam during the baking process until the crust has set and the yeast dies.
Stretching your dough
Most beginning pizza makers freak out a little when it comes time to stretch the dough they’ve made into a roughly pizza-like shape.
Never fear! It’s not as hard as you think and really just requires practice and a couple of pointers.
You can do it!
And if you are still nervous, here’s a video from our friends at King Arthur’s Baking Company:
SAUCE
While the dough is important – and it really, really is! – the sauce is almost as vital. Lucky for us, making great pizza sauce just requires understanding three simple rules:
- cook it low and slow
- make it thick
- keep it simple
Cook it low and slow
Tomatoes are amazing vegetables, filled with bright delicious flavors …. which evaporate into the kitchen as you boil them mercilessly on the stove. Fresh tomato flavor is derived from volatile compounds, right? Heat increases their volatility. During heating, these compounds escape into the atmosphere, creating the wonderful tomato aroma that fills a kitchen when there’s a simmering sauce pot.
Unfortunately, this also results in a corresponding flavor loss in the sauce. Why? The flavor LEFT THE POT and is floating around in the atmosphere. Also, the caramelization that happens with tomatoes under higher temperatures can easily turn the sauce from a beautiful crimson to a brownish-red color (a sure sign of a poor quality sauce) and a burned or bitter flavor.
The solution? A VERY long cook time at a VERY low temperature.
Make it thick
Pizza sauce is not like pasta sauce. With a pomodoro or marinara, there are lots of ingredients that blend together – onions, garlic, lots of fresh herbs. With pizza sauce, we want the opposite: a thick, heavily flavored sauce that will not weigh down the dough or be so wet is absorbed into the crust, turning it slimy.
This is why so many pizza sauce recipes either call for the addition of tomato paste or cooking the sauce down by 1/3 to 1/2: they are looking for that thick consistency that leads to a sauce that is spread more than one that is poured.
Make it simple
The best pizza sauce recipes don’t have a ton of ingredients. The sauce isn’t the star!
To make great pizza sauce, make sure the acidity of the tomatoes is balanced with a tiny amount of sugar, don’t neglect the salt, add a strong aromatic backbone (a blend of dried herbs), and a pinch of heat. The recipe below for pizza sauce will LOOK simple (but the layers of flavor will win you over on the pizza).
Recipes
Pizza Dough
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon pure olive oil
- 1 teaspoon instant yeast
- 1 ½ cup cool water
- 4 cups bread flour
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
Instructions
- Combine the sugar, yeast, olive oil, and water.
- Knead in the flour until everything is incorporated and there are no dry sections of the dough.
- Cover with plastic wrap and bench rest for 15 to 30 minutes to allow dough to hydrate.
- Add salt. Knead by hand for 10-15 minutes or in a stand mixer with hook attachment for 5-10 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic.
- Tear off a small piece of dough and flatten into a disc. Stretch the dough until thin. Hold it up to the light and look for baker's windowpane. If the dough tears before it forms, continue kneading until dough passes window pane test.
- Roll the dough into a smooth ball. Place into a stainless steel bowl. Add approximately 2 teaspoons of olive oil to the bowl and toss to coat. Cover tightly with plastic wrap.
- If baking immediately, bench proof until doubled in size. Shape and bake.
- If baking later, refrigerate. Remove from refrigerator 3 hours before baking to allow to return to room temperature and finishing proofing, if necessary. Shape and bake.
Pizza Sauce
Ingredients
- 28 ounces whole peeled tomatoes canned, with their juice
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 2 medium cloves garlic grated on microplane grater (about 2 teaspoons)
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- Pinch red pepper flakes
- Kosher salt
- 1 medium yellow onion peeled and split in half
- 2 6-inch sprigs fresh basil with leaves attached
- 1 teaspoon sugar
Instructions
- Process tomatoes and their juice through food mill. Purée should not be completely smooth, but should have no chunks larger than 1/16th of an inch. Set tomatoes aside.
- Combine oil and butter in medium saucepan and heat over medium-low heat until butter is melted. Add garlic, oregano, pepper flakes, and large pinch salt and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant but not browned, about 3 minutes.
- Add tomatoes, onion halves, basil sprigs, and sugar. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to lowest setting (bubbles should barely be breaking the surface), and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half, about 1 hour.
- Discard onions and basil stems. Season to taste with salt. Allow to cool and store in covered container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
Great Links
Autolyse Pizza Dough by Crust Kingdom
Pizza Hydration by Pizza and Other Bread
Understanding the Role of Fermentation by Bake Magazine
What is Gluten? The Science behind great pizza crust by Serious Eats
New York-Style Pizza Sauce Recipe by Serious Eats
Pizza Physics: Why Brick Ovens Bake The Perfect Italian-Style Pie by NPR