We have been searching for a good, homemade pizza dough recipe for a very long time. Since 2017, to be precise when JT and I attended a Neapolitan-Style Pizza-making class at The Carleton Loblaws with Chef Rocco Agostino. You may remember Chef Rocco from the time I cooked his meatball recipe from the cookbook, Toronto Cooks for one of the local morning shows; Chef Rocco was also is the proprietor and chef of three of Toronto’s best authentic Neapolitan Pizza places, Pizza Libretto! It takes quite the effort to become an authentic Neapolitan pizza maker, in fact, Chef Rocco had to attend a week-long course in California to do so! We were very fortunate to have Chef Rocco’s experience in the cooking class. Did you know you had to be certified to call your pizza authentic Neapolitan? Ontario only has 4 such certifications and two of them are Chef Rocco’s restaurants! The US has a mere 98 certified Neapolitan Pizza restaurants, Canada has 13 but the entire world only has 711! This website will tell you if your favourite pizza joint is certified. Is your favourite pizza place on the list? How picky are you about the pizza you eat?
Unfortunately, the ovens at the cooking class did not get to the high temperatures that authentic Neapolitan pizza needs so the pies were disappointing but it gave me a quest. It has taken me a very long time to find the best dough recipe because our Big Green Egg doesn’t quite reach the 1,000° F (538° C) that the professional wood-fired pizza ovens do, ours only gets as hot as 600-700° F so we need a bit longer to bake. The professional pizza ovens take about 2-3 minutes to bake whereas ours will take 7-10 minutes. Still not bad in the big picture but our dough needs to be a bit more hydration so it doesn’t dry out as it bakes.
I found this dough quite by accident while looking at my Facebook feed or shall I say it found me! The author claims the dough is 80% hydration. I found that my flour did not absorb the water as readily as the author’s flour so I adapted the recipe by putting ALL of the water into a spray bottle and spraying it into the flour and yeast while the mixer is on low using the dough paddle. The water takes a few minutes to absorb so patience is required so that you are not left with a sloppy, messy, dough.
High Hydration Pizza Dough
Makes two balls of dough which result in two 30 cm or 12″ pizza
For the original recipe, please click here.
Ingredients:
- 400 g “00” flour
- 5 g quick-rise yeast
- 320 g of very cold water
- 10 g sea salt
Directions:
- Combine the yeast and the flour in the large bowl of your stand mixer and fit with the cookie dough paddle. Run the paddle for 30 seconds to combine.
- Keeping the motor on the lowest setting, spray about two-thirds of the water into the flour, allowing the flour to absorb the water as you spray. Then allow it to rest for two minutes and add the salt and mix in well.
- Increase the paddle speed and finish spraying the remaining water to make a soft, sticky dough (around 5:13 on the video).
- Turn off the machine and allow to rest again for about 5 minutes. Then continue to knead the dough on high speed until it pulls away from the bowl. It is still sticky and soft but not as sticky as before.
- Add a little more water to the spray bottle and spray a lttle water on the board, the spatula and your hands and pour the dough on the board (5:48 on the video). Using your hands stretch the dough for a few minutes to develop the gluten (5:44 on the video). Allow the dough to rest for a couple of minutes so that it will become smooth. When rested, work the dough again by pulling and stretching it. When the dough becomes smooth, allow it to rest covered with a bowl for 30 minutes.
- Divide the dough into two and pull and stretch a few more times and roll it into a ball. Cover and allow to rest for 3-6 hours.
- When ready to make your pies, stretch each ball into 30 cm rounds a little thicker at the edges. If it bounces back, allow the dough to rest a little while longer. Once stretched, put your toppings on. Remember that Neapolitan pizza is better with fewer toppings, particularly the sauce or base (less is more).
Notes:
- I use a parchment round beneath my pies because I’ve never quite gotten the hang of sliding them off the peel.
- Pay close attention to the structure of the dough in the original video, it will show you the feel you are looking for.
- The recipe author used a cookie dough paddle and not the hook, I found it to help incorporate the water into the dough better than the hook would have.
That looks very good Eva! Over COVID I experiemented a lot with home made pizza and finally (after numerous attempts) arrived at something that I liked but could be made in a regular oven. I sometimes wish I had a pizza oven!
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Looks fantastic, Eva. And yes high hydration is definitely the way to go with pizza dough. That said, I’m not sure if I’ve ever attempted this level of hydration. But from the looks of the result, I’d say you’ve hit pay dirt.
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That looks very tempting!
angiesrecipes
http://angiesrecipes.blogspot.com
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