Grrrrrr! How do you make a proper pizza? ....

.... i.e. what did I do wrong?

I made a dough (25g yeast, ½kg flour, a couple dl of water and a some salt). I mixed the ingredients until they were sticky. Then I put it on a flat surface and spread it out, adding enough flour that it wasn't sticky. Then I put all the stuff from my fridge that was in danger of expiring onto it: tomatoes, zucchini, ham and also some onions, blue cheese and a parmigiano-like hard aged cheese on top. Sadly it tasted like a crappy take away pizza.

So now I know how to make a bad pizza, but how do you make a tasty one?

-Otto

Oh my. Where to start?

How long did you knead the dough? How long did you let it rise? Did you use any olive oil in the dough? How hot was your oven?

Let's start there!

Oh my. Where to start?

Oh dear... Was my method really that bad?

How long did you knead the dough?

c.10mins

How long did you let it rise?

About one hour.

Did you use any olive oil in the dough?

1/4 dl, maybe a bit less.

How hot was your oven?

225 degrees (centigrade, naturally).

Converting my normal cup, tablespoons, etc to metric gives the following:
3 cups (710 ml) flour
1+ cup (250 ml) warm water
1 oz. (28 grams) yeast
2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
1 tablespoons (15 ml) salt
1 tablespoons (15 ml) sugar
Mix all the ingredients thoroughly, knead for 5 minutes and form into a ball and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes. Punch down, knead, and spread out to proper shape on a lightly oiled cookie sheet or pizza pan. Preheat oven to 450 - 500 Deg. F (232 - 260 Deg. C). Use whatever toppings you desire. I prefer a simple tomato sauce with oregano, basil, garlic and crushed red pepper, topped with mozarella (thin sliced or shredded), pepperoni and mushrooms. Anchovies and hot peppers also add a nice touch.

Your dough shouldn't have been really sticky after rising. How did it feel after kneading? Was it smooth and elastic? You may have needed more kneading time, as it were. If you add flour, that's the time to do it. (Flour amounts will vary based on humidity, etc, but you know that.)

What kind of pan/stone did you bake it on?

If you are using a non-perforated sheet pan of some kind, you can improve the texture of the crust by mixing in a little cornmeal when you initially mix the dough.

Also make sure you let the oven get all the way up to temp before putting the pizza in.

As to toppings. Often you can really increase the flavor by satueeing vegetables and meats first. Did you use any herbs?


(Now I want pizza!)

Partly it depends on what you're after. I like a thinner crust, so from where I sit, that looks like a *lot* of dough and you'd get a big, doughy kind of pizza. I've experimented with some different recipes but the ones I prefer use a lot less flour than that. You used probably six times the flour I would. Also, when you say you used 25g of yeast, are you referring to fresh yeast? If that's 25g of active dry yeast, that's also a lot of yeast. Finally, I've found I prefer doughs that are the product of long/cool fermentation. If you go to the old WLDG site and do a search on pizza dough, you'll find some recipes posted by Robin and others that I've found to be good starting points.

Beyond the dough, I find the best pizzas to be simple one, focusing on relatively few flavors. When your toppings are a grab bag of stuff from the fridge "in danger of expiring", I'm afraid the result was bound to disappoint even if the crust were excellent.

Cynthia, Mark, thanks! I don't have a pizza stone so I just used a normal pan - I'll try it with some cornmeal next time. Why did I use stuff about to expire? I got out from work much later than I expected so the shops had closed, so I had to use what I had available at home. I know this is never good for dinner. But the crust tips have been excellent! Thank you, all.

-O

Cynthia's responses are right on. But exactly what made the pizza taste crappy? Describe the final result in terms of taste, texture, etc. You should be able to make better pizza than most pizza joints. And I'm sure this forum will help (and so will I).

You got a lot of good advice here, so you don't need mine, but I'm going to pour my 2 cl anyway.

Think about using bread flour instead of AP flour. Bread flour develops better glutens. (A schuss of semolina in there doesn't hurt, but that's Pizza, Part Deux.) To develop these better glutens, you also need to knead the dough enough (20-30 minutes by hand!!). Consider, if you have the time, letting your dough rise in the fridge overnight. After you've tossed or rolled out your dough, let it rest for about 5 minutes.

Cynthia's point about sautéeing the toppings is mucho importante and a big bugaboo of mine. I do not like to put anything raw on top of a pizza which will give off liquid (e.g. tomatoes, zucchini) or grease (e.g. sausage, bacon, pickled sweetbreads). And, for Saint Olaf's sake, do not use very liquidy tomato sauce or let the pie swim in it. Something just a little less viscous than tomato paste is about right.

I have a pizza peel and a pizza stone. When I am in a primitive cooking facility which does not have these items, I will usually flip over a sheet pan or a pizza pan, put some corn meal on it, and then use that as a peel. If I don't have a stone, I will just slide the pizza right onto the oven rack. Making the pie in a pan with oil (like my mother did), just doesn't grab me.

I think the real trick to good pizza is knowing how to make good bread and then not drowning the pie in watery toppings ... although my preference goes for a simple pie with just some tomato product, parmesan cheese, mozzarella, basil and a smidge of red chile flake.

First off, was the flour correct? I have only the must rudimentary clues as to how to make pizza from scratch, but I do know that you need the right flour for the job. I think that for pizza you need a flour with some gluten and stretch to it. So if you were to use, for example, White Lily Flour (which is THE choice for Southern US-style biscuits), it wouldn't work at all for pizza because of its lack of gluten.

You need to make a yeast dough, knead it for a while, and then let it rise, before rolling or spreading it out to the eventual pizza shell.

You want a really hot oven (400 degrees F or more) for baking the pizza.

A moister cheese, such as mozzarella, might be welcome in addition to the harder, low-moisture cheeses you used.

I don't personally like ham and zucchini on pizza, but I won't blame that for the failure of your effort.

I suspect that the formation of the crust was the main factor at fault in your effort. There I can't help. I haven't mastered that yet, either.

So I can see a couple of areas where you might have gone wrong, but I'm not even going to pretend I can do any better.

Good luck,

-Paul W.

Paul, 400 degrees F will get you a mess. 500 minimum, 600 is better. 800 is ideal. And at least an hour of preheating so that the thermal mass can keep the temp up after you open the door.

For the crust, I've been using the wet dough technique (much faster and easier), then the now-canonical Becca method of laying out the dough on parchment paper using oiled hands. The pizza cooks for a couple of minutes until the paper can be slid out from under it, dropping the crust right on the stone.

One thing to emphasize: be brave and push the cooking. When you think it's done, give it another minute at least. It's sort of like prepping onions for onion soup.

You've gotten some good flour suggestions. I'll use either AP or (better) Tipo Fino 00, with about 10-15% added semolina. And, with all due modesty, my pizzas are excellent.

What Stuart said about temperature.

As for the flour, I also use about 10% semolina. My base flour is a mix of King Arthur high-protein bread flour and whole wheat pastry flour. I just add salt, yeast, water.

As for laying out the crust, I use a scattering of course corn meal between the peel and the crust to provide "lubrication." I've grown fond of the crunchy bits this provides.