Pizza Dough

Here's the recipe I use at home for my pizza. I'd recommend investing in a good kitchen scale if you plan on doing a lot of work with bread or baking. You can use cups and whatnot but weights can change depending on how loosely packed your flour is and a lot bread baking is done with specific ratios for bread hydration. This recipe has been adapted from Richard Bertinet's book Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads.

INGREDIENTS:

• 18oz All purpose flour
• 11.5oz Tepid water
• 10g Dried yeast
• 10g Salt
• 5 Tbs Olive oil

PREPARATION:

First start by weighing all of the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. add the water and olive oil. I personally use my mixer with the bread-hook to knead the dough, but this step can be done by hand.

Hand mixing:
Use a fork to bring all of the dry ingredients, oil and water together into a sticky ball; don't worry if it feels very sticky. As you work the dough it will become elastic rather than sticky as you build the gluten and texture. Scrape the sticky dough out of the bowl and onto the counter, begin to knead the dough.  Keep stretching and folding the dough over itself until you have a smooth consistency and the dough is less sticky (5 minutes).

Note* Try to avoid adding flour as you knead as this will change the ratio or flour to water. You can easily add up to a 1/4 cup which will make your dough stiff.  The dough will be sticky at first but as you knead it will relax and stop sticking to the counter.

Once you have a smooth ball of dough, place the dough in lightly oiled large Tupperware container (it will need room to proof and expand).  Leave this in the fridge overnight and it will be ready the following night.

Pull the dough out of the fridge an hour before you plan to use it. Flour your work surface (I like to use semolina flour for this) and cut the dough it into four and reshape into balls.  Let them rest for the the hour and shape them into pizza shells.