The Fresh Loaf

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Same-Day Pizza

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Same-Day Pizza

Same Day Pizza

David Snyder

February, 2019

 

When given a choice, I would always make pizza with dough leavened with sourdough. This could be a sourdough made with a three day lead time (See: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34452/pizza-bliss) or even dough made with sourdough “discard.” (See: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37179/pizza-made-sourdough-starter-discard) But, you know, sometimes I decide I want pizza for dinner tonight, not two or three days from now. I have found that the “Same-Day Straight Pizza Dough” formula from Ken Forkish's “Flour Water Salt Yeast” makes darn good pizza.

You do have to decide on pizza for dinner tonight by 8 or 9 am in order to get the dough made and ready for a 7 or 8 pm dinner. I usually plan for it before I go to bed the night before.

Note on quantities: These amounts of ingredients are for about 5 medium-sized pizzas. I usually scale the ingredients for 4 pizzas and actually make two pizzas and a quarter sheet pan of focaccia.

Note on flours: This formula works well with a variety of flour blends. You can use AP or Bread Flour entirely. You can substitute whole wheat for some of the white flour. I have made this dough with Bread Flour and 00. I found the crust less crispy and more chewy than I prefer. I have made it with all 00 flour. The flavor was wonderful, but 00 is milled to work best in a real pizza oven that heats to 700ºF or even hotter. In my home electric convection oven, the best I can do is 500ºF convection bake. Pizza dough made with 100% Italian 00 flour does not brown well. So, a mix of AP and 00 flours is the best I have found to date, giving me great flavor and beautiful performance. Well, a little whole wheat flour doesn't hurt a bit.

Total Dough

 

 

Ingredient

Wt (g)

Bakers' %

All purpose flour

350

35

Caputo 00 flour

650

65

Water (90-95ºF)

700

70

Instant yeast

2

0.2

Salt

20

2

Total

1722

172.2


Procedure

  1. Measure the yeast into a small bowl. Mix it with a couple tablespoons of the heated water and put it aside.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flours. Add the rest of the heated water and mix to fully hydrate the flours. Cover the bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes to an hour. (Autolyse)

  3. Sprinkle the salt over the dough and scrape the dissolved yeast over the dough. Mix thoroughly. (I start by folding the dough over itself repeatedly with a silicon spatula, rotating the bowl 30º or so after each fold. I then squeeze the dough repeatedly with one hand, alternating squeezes with a series of stretch and folds. This both distributes the salt and yeast more evenly and develops the gluten further.)

  4. Transfer the dough to a clean, lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl. Allow the dough to ferment until almost double in volume (6-8 hours, depending on ambient temperature.) Do not under-ferment the dough. In this case, a bit over-fermented is better than under-fermented.

  5. Do a stretch and fold after one hour.
  6. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured board. Divide the dough into pieces – 350g for 10inch pizzas; 700g or more for focaccia; etc.

  7. Form each piece into a tight ball. Flour lightly or oil lightly and refrigerate well-covered until 1-2 hours before use. They can be refrigerated until the next day, if desired. (Note: What I generally do is use a 1-quart Ziploc bag for each dough ball and spread a tablespoon or so of olive over the interior surfaces. Then I put a dough ball in each bag and refrigerate them, ideally for at least a couple of hours.)

  8. An hour or two before use, take the dough balls out of the refrigerator.

  9. Form each ball into a pizza shell by your method of choice. Top as desired and bake. (Note: I bake pizza on a pizza steel, preheated at 500ºF Convection for an hour. These pizzas baked in 8 minutes. Your time may vary depending on your oven.)

Pizza shaped, topped and ready to bake

Right out of the oven

Cornicione crumb

Enjoy!

David

Comments

Elsie_iu's picture
Elsie_iu

The crust is very nice. I feel really annoyed every time I see people leaving the crust uneaten on the plate. Mushrooms are one of my favourite pizza toppings. I do prefer to caramelize them beforehand rather than leaving them raw though. 

Nice bake, David!

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

The mushrooms usually cook more than they did this time. I think it was because the bake was so short. I should try sautéing them first. Maybe with a wine deglazing.

David

Janedo's picture
Janedo

Thanks for taxing the time to write it up! I’m going to try it out tomorrow. I don’t have a stone here, though, so it might not bake exactly how I’d like it too. Or I’ll try it at work one day, too, because we have pizza ovens. I’ll let you know. 

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Pizza was what it took to bring you back to TFL, I'd have posted pizza more often! Great to see you here!

Buon apetito! 

David

Our Crumb's picture
Our Crumb

+1 for that formula -- our favorite, when necessary.  Except that KF left out the first step in his process, as follows: 

      1.  Proclaim loudly, "Damn. I forgot to refresh the starter (or start a poolish) for the pizza."

Nice one.  Pile on the fillings, esp funghi.  We like to add a little EVOO to KF's pizza doughs, esp after having been chastised by an Italian cousin for its omission from pies we made there.  Mai più!

Tom

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Have you tried any other of Ken's non-sourdough pizza doughs? I haven't but this one makes such tasty crust, I'm tempted.

David

Our Crumb's picture
Our Crumb

A version of his Overnight w/Poolish is our non-SD house favorite.  We do it 40% whole grain (often durum) and add some EVOO.  Spinach+Mozz+Pesto+Parmagiano (or Fontina or ...) is a favorite filling.  Need a hotter oven though :-(. 

Tom

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

This really is a tasty "bread." I used leftover dough to make a focaccia or "pizza rosa" to go with our omelets for dinner last night.

 

David

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

So if i make SD and YW levains then no one gets exactly want they want but no one complains too much either:-)  Your pizza shows why pizza of all kinds is just about the most craved and favorite food everywhere in the world now a days.  I've had my baking steel by the back door for months now but keep forgetting to use it for anything much less pizza.  The girls are hooked on pizza made on the grill so maybe I should just put it in there so I don'r forget it again.

The pizza turned into focaccia is really killer too.  Well done all the way around David!

Janedo's picture
Janedo

Same day pizza

Made the dough and then realized I didn’t have much to actually put ON the pizza. Flour here has bad quality proteins? I’m convinced, so the sides developed nicely but not really open. Great dough!! Thanks for sharing. 

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

It looks good. All it really needs is a little EVOO. Maybe a tomato. A little cheese. Any veggies hanging around. Looks like you found some pig part.

Can't you get "Manitoba" flour where you are? 

I'm going to try making pizza with some durum flour and WW.

Happy baking!

David

Janedo's picture
Janedo

Manitoba flour in Africa? Our flour comes from a variety of places... Ukraine, France, USA... but I think those countries send their worst, unsellable elsewhere flour. Nothing really controllable that can be written nicely on a package. Baking is a challenge over here!

WhollyBread's picture
WhollyBread

David, was interested in your suggestion to use Manitoba flour. here in Brazil, it isn't easy to get but I have some and was thinking of using it in a pizza but was under the impression that it wasn't the right flour. Is that the equivalent of bread flour or should I mix some "00" Molisana Gran Tenero that I have?

Tks for your time.

Wholly

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

If your 00 flour is strong enough - say around 11.5-12 % protein - there is no need to add higher protein flour. My suggestion was to Jennifer (Janedo) who was stuck with very weak flour. FYI, I have recently been mixing Caputo 00 red label with an AP flour that is 11.7% protein for pizza dough. However, I recently got some Caputo Blue Label. My next pizza will use that. Maybe with a bit of Durum flour. I am not familiar with Molisana Gran Tenero. The bag might have the protein content.

I guess you are going to need to experiment and see what seems to work best for you.

David

mwilson's picture
mwilson

Looks great David.

I simply must have a pizza right now, con funghi!

Great cornicione.

Kudos, great work.

-Michael

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

This is as close to "right now" pizza as I have found that is also really good eating. And it is photogenic, for sure.

David

bonnibakes's picture
bonnibakes

Thanks David for the many years of posting & sharing your recipes, opinions and experiences here. I've learned so much! This is the first time I'm making this pizza dough and it's currently chilling in the refrigerator. We'll be having some tonight topped with Shaved Celeriac & Smoked Mozzerella, inspired by an epicurious.com recipe.  https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/pizza-bianca-with-scamorza-and-shaved-celery-root-51209650  There is more dough than we need so I thought I'd try freezing three 350 gram balls in their oiled zipper freezer bags. Have you ever successfully frozen this dough? 

Bonni

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

I can't answer your question based on experience. I know freezing sourdough pizza dough doesn't work, but instant yeast are more hardy. If you try it with this recipe, please let us know how it works for you.

David

bonnibakes's picture
bonnibakes

Your posted Same-Day Pizza dough was wonderful last night and I recommend trying epicurious.com's unusual combination of celeriac, smoked cheese, Reggiano Parm & onions (referenced above) with it. The result in a 500 degree convection oven on a baking steel was delicious! I have 3 dough balls left over that have been sitting in the refrigerator now for 24 hours and I'm going to freeze them. My experience with frozen yeast based pizza dough, done while testing recipes for Peter Reinhart's book, was very successful so I'm optimistic. A state I rarely find myself in these days. I'll report back soon. I love the TFL community with its generosity, support, encouragement and humor. Makes one feel human.

bonnibakes's picture
bonnibakes

after spending 3 weeks in the freezer and defrosted overnight in the refrigerator. My son made them at his house so I can't comment on technique. He said the dough was very easy to work with and he made two separate pizzas, larger than 12" each. One he flattened to make a thin crust pizza and the other had a traditional raised crust. The thin crust was almost cracker like (I think he stretched it too far) but the other crust was "tough and chewy" and didn't rise as much as the fresh dough had. I think the dough can be successfully frozen but attention may have to be paid to how long it's allowed to warm up before shaping & baking. It may be Spring on the calendar but it's still Winter in NYC. I suspect that after removing the dough balls from the refrigerator they weren't left on the counter long enough. I look forward to making the pizza dough again. Thanks David!!

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

I made pizza just a few days ago with this recipe.

I made just enough dough for two pizzas. Next time, I will make extra and try freezing a couple balls. I think your assessment is entirely correct. I would let it ferment at room temp for a few hours after an overnight thaw in the fridge.

David