How to Make a Perfect Pizza
Making a perfect pizza from scratch can be as difficult as preparing a perfect 5 star dish. However, with the right ingredients, a decent procedure, and a little practice, you can make pizza in your own kitchen that will rival any pizzeria. What exactly defines a perfect pizza? Most people would say a perfect pizza: has a crust that is not too thick, but also not too thin; has just the right amount of pizza sauce made from quality Italian tomatoes and spices; is NOT overloaded with toppings and greasy cheese; is cooked just the right amount of time; and crunches when you bite it. You should be able to hold up your pizza slice with one hand without it sagging at all. 90% of the time pizzas are undercooked. You shouldn’t take your pizza out of the oven until the outer crust just starts to turn black at the edge. To make the most authentic pizza, it must be assembled on a pizza peel and cooked on a pizza stone. To make a perfect pizza every time, use our Gourmet Pizza-Making Kit, its quality cannot be matched! The kit is made from the best Tipo 00 Pizza Flour and San Marzano Tomatoes you can find in the world. You can make a large 14” professional pizza for about $8 with the kit. That sure beats $25 for a delivery pizza that will pale in comparison! Let’s look at the procedure for a winning pizza.
It all Starts with the Ingredients You simply won’t be able to make a delicious, crispy, authentic pizza without the right ingredients. To get the right dough structure and flavour, you need Tipo 00 Pizza Flour and a good quality yeast or sourdough starter. To get the authentic Italian flavour, you need sauce made from San Marzano Tomatoes, or at least a high-quality Italian plum tomato, and the best oregano you can find. Additionally, you need to find a high quality pizza mozzarella cheese. The cheese available in most grocery stores will ruin the whole pizza, the best place to buy high-quality cheese is in your local specialty or meat shop or deli. GourmetPizzaKits.ca offers a kit made from the best ingredients in the world, all for about $8 per large 14” pizza. All you need to do is add water to the crust mix, rise the dough, add toppings and cook. You can’t go wrong with This Kit! You can also buy a premium 15” oversize Pizza Stone on our site.
A Solid Foundation of Dough To get a properly structured dough, you have to either mix it with a dough hook or hand knead it for enough time to stretch the proteins in the flour out. You must use Tipo 00 Pizza Flour for the best dough structure. A properly made dough will stretch out perfectly when you assemble your pizza and it will have that perfect crunch. To get the best flavour and crunchiness in your dough, you should place it into the fridge for at least 24 hours immediately after forming the dough ball. This lets the yeast ferment slower and gives your dough a great flavour. If you’re in a hurry, the dough only needs to rise for half an hour before cooking, as most of the rising will take place in the oven. If you refrigerated your dough overnight, make sure you take it out of the fridge for enough time to come to room temperature (about 1-3 hours). For the crispiest crust, we recommend assembling your dough on a pizza peel and cooking it on a Pizza Stone at 425°F(220°C). A pizza peel is a flat surface on which you can assemble your pizza and slide it onto the stone, usually made of wood. What is the perfect dough procedure? It’s very simple: 1. Place your pizza flour in the mixing bowl(~250g for each 14” large crust). The best pizza flour is only available in wholesale, and is hard to obtain, GourmetPizzaKits.ca uses this flour, so we recommend using our kits for your dough and sauce) 2. If you’re not using the premixed GourmetPizzaKits.ca crust mix, add approximately 1 teaspoon of instant dry yeast and 1 teaspoon of sea/kosher salt to your flour and mix well. 3. Add exactly 55% of the weight of your flour in lukewarm water(80-120°F, 27-47°C), 137g or 137ml for 250g of flour. 4. Mix well by hand or with an electric stand mixer for about 1 minute or until combined well and then let it sit for about 10 minutes to let the dough absorb the water. 5. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, you will get the best results, mix/knead your dough on low for about 5-8 minutes. The dough should be just dry enough to not stick to the sides of the bowl while mixing, if not, slowly add very small amounts of flour or mix until the dough comes off the sides. If you don’t have a mixer, try to hand knead your dough for about 8 minutes adding as little flour as possible. 6. Now form your dough into a nice even ball, grease it with olive oil, grease a bowl, and let the dough rise in the bowl, covered for about 60 minutes or more in a warm environment(~80°F, 27°C), just punch down your dough every 60 minutes if you let it rise for longer. Alternately, you can place your greased dough ball directly into the fridge of freezer right after mixing. Pizzerias usually let their dough rise in the fridge overnight to get the best flavours and structure from it. If you do this, simply pull out your dough and let it come to room temperature before preparing your pizza.
What’s in a Sauce? Everything! The main flavour of your pizza comes from the sauce. The best pizzerias in the world use San Marzano Tomatoes. If you lucky enough to find them, they cost over $10 per Litre! We use San Marzano Tomatoes in our sauce and sell them separately in cans as well. Just the right combination of the best tomatoes, spices, and olive oil will yield you a dynamite sauce! You can cook your sauce or prepare it fresh, it’s up to you. We recommend pureeing the following ingredients in a blender to get enough sauce for 3-4 large pizzas:
-1 796ml can of San Marzanos
Assembling your Work of Art Stretch your room temperature dough ball out by hand without compressing it too much. You might need a light dusting of flour to prevent sticking. Once your dough is evenly stretched out to the desired size, place it on a pizza peel dusted with semolina flour or cornmeal. If you aren’t using a Pizza Stone, put the stretched dough into a lightly greased pan and distribute it evenly so it fills the whole pan. You may pinch up a small crust to hold the sauce in, but you don’t need to if you’re careful with the toppings. The unsauced, and uncovered portion of the dough will automatically form a crust when cooking. Put the desired amount of sauce on your dough (250ml give or take for a large 14”) making sure to leave about 1 inch of bare dough around the edge to form the crust. Leave less for a thinner crust, but watch for spillover! Evenly distribute the sauce taking care to not put too much sauce in the center because it will pool there while cooking anyway. Also go a little bit lighter at the very edge to prevent spillover. Top only the sauce covered portion with the best pizza mozzarella you can find or your desired cheese, grated beforehand. Use a little less cheese in the center because like the sauce, it will collect in the center. Make sure your sauce is covered right to the edge. The higher quality cheese you use, the less you will need to get a fully cheese-covered pizza, about 150g for a large 14”. Now top with your desired toppings using the freshest ingredients available. Take care not to overload your pizza with toppings or sauce because this can hinder even cooking of the pizza. Now slide your pizza onto your Pizza Stone, or insert your pan in the oven and cook for about 15-30 minutes without opening the door at all. Your pizza is ready when the outer edges of the crust just start to blacken. The longer you cook your pizza, the crispier it will be. To make the best quality pizza that will knock your local pizzerias out of the park, try a pizza kit from GourmetPizzaKits.ca!
Jeremy Brochert  |
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