The Elements of Pizza

Pizza has been called il sole nel piatto—the sun on a plate—

DETAIL 1: MATCH THE DOUGH AND ITS HYDRATION TO THE OVEN AND ITS BAKING TEMPERATURE

Make sure you are working with a mature dough ball, according to each recipe’s instructions. It should take very little effort for it to stretch out to the dimensions of a pizza. If it’s too elastic, the dough needs more time. When working with the pizza doughs in this book, flour is your friend. Generously flour your work surface, then leaving abo

In Naples they base their ingredient quantities on one liter of water, whereas in French baking we base ingredients on 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of flour. This turned on its head my French baker’s method (and my mind-set) of mixing flour and water, letting it rest for 15 to 20 minutes (what we call the autolyse period), then adding salt and yeast, th

DETAIL 7: MAKE PIZZA WITH MATURE DOUGH BALLS In other words, allow for a complete fermentation and physical development of the dough. To get the best flavor and best texture of the pizza, you can’t take shortcuts and rush your dough.

Another scale (inexpensive—around $13) that measures in the 1/100-gram increments is useful for measuring yeast. I like the American Weigh Scales ACP-200. It measures from 0.01 gram to 100 grams. Several dough recipes in this book call for very small amounts of yeast—0.1 or 0.2 gram. Using volume measures, the closest I can come to describing these

Higher protein flours form a stronger gluten web and can give the dough greater strength than dough made with low-protein flours. High-protein flours can also make dough that is elastic and difficult to form into a pizza—it needs longer fermentation to break down the gluten a bit. In time, the gluten network in dough degrades. Enzymes eat it up, li

It took a while to realize what was right in front of my eyes: think like a pizzaiolo, not like a bread baker. Pizza dough and bread dough have different needs. Bread wants to expand to its maximum volume; pizza does not. Pizza dough has structural needs—to stretch without breaking and without being too elastic.

An improvement to the earthen pizza stone is now on the market: the pizza steel, made from ¼-inch-thick steel. Steel is more conductive than stone, and in all of my test baking I get superior results with the steel. The stone doesn’t release its heat as fast as the steel does. A greater intensity of heat hits the bottom of the pizza crust, which is