Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Time Pizza Dough

Dear Pizza,









You make me pudgy. You make me doughy. You make me all sorts of things I don't want to be. You make me happy. You make me silly. You make me really, really me. (Loser-rhyme inspired by my friend, Ms. Amirapeanutkarsamishmishcakes. Send her kittehs.) 

Love you lots,
Pizzaslave



I wish I could put this in a simpler way: I love pizza. Not the kind of love that you have for pizza. No, it's an even bigger love. A better love. A monogamous brain-heart love. I order pizza if it's available in the middle of proper "Grown Up Dinners" [because I'm not really a grown up at heart] to everyone's amazement and inner disgust. I order pizza every time at this great Italian restaurant that boasts many other spectacularly creative works of food art. I even ordered pizza once at a German restaurant. It's their fault anyway. They shouldn't have put it there on their menu if they wanted me to order something more German. 


Am I ashamed? No. What I am ashamed of though is that I have yet to find the perfect pizza dough recipe. Perfect-restaurant-material pizza dough. A few months ago, I came close to finding it but... Alas! Woe is me! I lost the recipe! So we're back to square one. Today, I decided to try out a recipe from KitchenSimplicity and was thoroughly impressed with how easy this dough was to manipulate. You were right, Cheri. Pliable? Check. Freezes like a dream? Check. Easy peasy? Check. Husband in love with pizza more than me at that given moment? Check. Ended my search? Not quite yet, but I'll be using this a lot and it's definitely freezer storage material. It's still not the answer to my dreams but it'll work GREAT for evil pizza cravings. It's so light and airy and will work GREAT with kids. I love, love, love, love how thin you can spread it out without it tearing. Did I say love?



Thin Crust Pizza Dough from KitchenSimplicity's Cheri with minor edits
One cup of warm water
1.5 teaspoons of yeast
1 tablespoon of sugar
2.5 teaspsoons of olive oil
1.5 teaspoons of salt
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
4 cups of flour

Don't fear the vinegar or the vinegary smell! It goes away and makes it great. Stir together your water and sugar and sprinkle the yeast over the top. Leave it for 10 minutes until it's all bubbly. Add the oil, salt, vinegar and 2 cups of flour until well incorporated. Add additional flour and knead until pliable, stretchy and barely sticky. It shouldn't make you go "Ew!" when you touch it. Move your dough to a greased bowl and cover. Let your dough rise for an hour or until it has doubled in size. Once it has doubled, punch it down and divide it into the portions you need. I personally made a few smaller pizzas with this as opposed to 2 super large ones. 

Roll and stretch each piece of dough until it reaches your desired thickness and size. I personally have a pizza stone (which is a great invention but not neccessary). You can easily use a regular ungreased baking sheet. 

Coat your dough with pizza sauce and toppings of your choice. Bake at 250 degrees Celsius for 10-12 minutes or until browned and bubbly. It all depends on your oven. 

You can also use the amount of dough you need and freeze the rest of the dough. Grease the inside of a freezer bag, put the rest of your dough in and make sure it's sealed. Next time you come to use it, take it out in the morning or allow it to thaw at room temperature before attempting to roll it out.


For a super simple pizza sauce, combine one can of whole peeled tomatoes with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, half a teaspoon of oregano, half a teaspoon of dry basil, 1 teaspoon of salt and a pinch of sugar if you don't like the tomatoes' acidity. I always add fresh ground black pepper so if you'd like, do that too! You could puree it for a smoother sauce but I prefer a chunkier sauce. Leave it to simmer for 15-20 minutes. Annnnd you've got simple pizza sauce. I have a thing for tomato sauces so I'll be uploading quite a few as time goes by. If you try this out, share your photos. 

19 comments:

  1. This looks scrumptious! I have yet to perfect that thin but crispy yet soft perfect fluff crust!!! I will def try this!!

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  2. Jino: Thank you! Let me know if you try it out. I'd love to see a random photo. :D

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  3. Looks delish! I'm so glad your enjoying it so much. :) Good luck on your search for perfection! :D

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  4. Cheri: Thanks again for your recipe. It really did the trick and I was amazed at how easy it was to work with! I'll be reading up on your other posts. :)

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  5. This pizza looks amazing. Wow. I am going to try this out.

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  6. Memoria: Thank you. Remember to roll it out really thin so that it doesn't puff up too much with the yeast. You've been doing this long enough to get it. Share your photos if you do try it. x.

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  7. yummy and the crust does really look delicious!!! will try as soon as i can
    keep it up sweety :) mwah

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  8. Pati: It really was delicious. Thank you. xx.

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  9. yaa ya sarour you and pizza never ending love .. i will try this recipe its a bit the vinegar is new for me in dough but will try it .. i always want to eat the food when i look at ur pictures

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  10. Mura: Don't be afraid of the vinegar. Bel 3aks, it makes it very easy to manage and super flexible. I also noticed that if you leave it in the fridge for a while before rolling it out, it gets reaaaally easy to manage. Don't forget to roll it out really really thin 3ashan feeha khameera and you don't want it to rise awi.

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  11. Waww this is really irresistable ...!!! Ya bakhtak ya Bitar ...:)))

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  12. Tante Z! Thank you, thank you. I'm trying walahi. Can you tell? Haha! Mohamed says hi by the way.
    Kisses your way. x.

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  13. This sounds great, and I've got my yeast, water, and sugar working right now. You may want to know, you have the salt wrong on the Tasty Kitchen post . . . tablespoons v. teaspoons. I used that much salt against better judgment a couple of years ago, because it was in print in a highly rated bread book, only to find there was an errata sheet, correcting the error. 1-1/2 tablespoons to 4 cups of flour is really a lot! I was hesitant to comment on this in the TK blog, but will move over there, so until you find my comment, no one ruins a batch of pizza dough. Hope you don't mind!

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  14. Vicki, thanks for catching it. I can't believe it was moderated like that. Hmm. Moderation isn't really moderation, isn't it? ;)I wish I could just type in the stuff instead of choosing from a list on TK. I just fixed it there and it's "pending review" now. Thanks once again for the help.

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  15. Thanks so much for this post. I was intrigued by the inclusion of vinegar. The dough is a pleasure to work with, and produced a thin, crust with excellent flavor, that supported our toppings of sauteed peppers and hamburger, and six kinds of grated italian cheese. A delight!
    Thanks,
    DeeElle

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  16. DeeElle: I'm really glad you enjoyed it! :D

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  17. your vinegar-infused recipe inspired me! thanks so much! i adapted your recipe a bit: http://nomnomnaimas.blogspot.com/2011/10/vinegar-thin-crust-pizza.html

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  18. Manong Danny: Hey! Thanks for letting me know and I'm glad it worked out for you. :)

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