Day Sixty Seven: Pizza Day

Are you hungry yet?

Today we had pizza for dinner.
It's been a little tense around the house lately, and pizza makes everyone smile. So my daughter Masana and I planned on a pepperoni/fresh garlic/fresh mozzarella/fresh basil pie for dinner. We began making the dough at 10:00AM this morning.

Here's my recipe for the dough, which I think may be have inadvertently "appropriated" from Food & Wine magazine about 7 years ago. My apologies for the blatant rip-off. Anyhoo...

Pizza Dough
1 packet of dry yeast
2 cups warm water
3 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon sugar
4 to 4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
olive oil

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the packet of yeast in about a cup of warm water until it bubbles. Add the salt and sugar. Let it stand for 5 minutes, then mix in the remaining cup of warm water and 1 cup of the flour.

"It's all in the wrist..."

Mix in the additional flour one cup at a time. Once there's about 1 to 1/2 cups of flour remaining, mix dough with your hands and add flour until dough starts coming off the side of the bowl easily. Add additional flour if the dough is still too wet. The dough should be silky and pliable, not so sticky.

Still too wet and sticky. Needs more flour.

Coming off the sides of the bowl. It's getting there.

Massage the dough for a few minutes, then drizzle olive oil all over. Pull up sides of the dough and make sure the olive oil gets between the dough and the surface of the bowl. Take a piece of saran wrap and cover dough. Be sure to place it directly on top of the dough--do not leave any pockets of air. Let dough rise in a warm, draft-free area of the kitchen for at least 4 hours. You can keep the dough in the fridge over night, but take it out 6 to 8 hours before you intend to use it.

Lightly press down the plastic wrap directly on the dough.

And this will turn into...

...this! 

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Remove the plastic from the dough and divide it into 3 equal pieces. Add flour to your countertop or other flat work space and work one of the pieces of dough into a flat disk.  Place flat disk onto a 14 inch round pizza pan and push out sides of the dough to cover the pan. Add toppings: tomato sauce, garlic, fresh mozzarella cheese, basil leaves. Place in the oven and cook for 17-20 minutes.

Our pizza with all the toppings before it goes into the oven. A cooked pie in the background.

That's it. Hope you enjoy our happy pizza.