Mastering Pizza

When testing fresh flour for the pizzas in this book, we milled on the finest setting of our home mills. For every 1,000 grams (2.2 pounds) of flour we milled, we sifted out about 100 to 200 grams of bran/germ flakes. That’s an 80 to 90% extraction rate, which is high-extraction flour. Anything above 75% is considered high extraction.

Hotter ovens cook dough more quickly, giving water less time to evaporate, resulting in a softer overall texture in pizza. Cooler ovens cook dough more slowly, giving water more time to evaporate, resulting in a crisper overall texture in pizza.

you’ve never made pizza dough before, I highly recommend starting with Bonci-style Al Taglio Dough (this page). I’ve fallen in love with this kind of dough recently, and the basic recipe in this book couldn’t be simpler. It calls for dry yeast and store-bought bread flour. You don’t need a mixer. Just stir everything together in a bowl with a spoon

SOURDOUGH AL TAGLIO DOUGH AT 80% HYDRATION: For the complex flavor of wild yeast, replace the dry yeast with 200 grams (about 1 cup) active Bread Flour Sourdough Starter (this page). To account for the flour and water already in the starter, reduce the flour and water in the dough by about 100 grams each. In other words, use 400 grams (about 3 cups

That brings us to one of the most important points of this book: to get the kind of texture you’re looking for in a pizza crust, it helps to balance the heat of your oven with the water in your dough. Think about it. Classic Neapolitan pizza (Vera Pizza Napoletana) is baked at about 900°F (482°C), the dough is pretty low in water (55 to 59% hydrati

SINGLE NAPLES DOUGH BALL AT 70% HYDRATION If you’re baking at 500° to 600°F (260° to 316°C) and want a single Neapolitan pizza tonight, try this dough recipe. A stand mixer does all the work. After mixing, you let it sit on the counter for a couple hours, ball it up, and let it sit again until you’re ready to make pizza. Simple! You can also double