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Old 04-11-2011, 02:22 PM   #16 (permalink)
Willravel
... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.
 
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To me, the more simple the pizza, the better.

The sauce should be canned (quality) tomatoes, basil, garlic, quality olive oil and that's it. 6-8 tbs. olive oil in a pan, on medium high heat, then 4 cloves of garlic, finely sliced, a big handful of sliced, fresh basil and 3 cans of whole plum tomatoes. Chop up the tomatoes a bit with a wooden spoon and add kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. After a few minutes, it should be ready, so pour it through a coarse strainer into a bowl, pushing quite a bit to get all the fun stuff. Pour the sauce back into the pan and let it lightly simmer for maybe 5-7 minutes.

For the dough, you want about 3 1/2 cups of bread flour, a cup of semolina flour, about a tbs. of fine sea salt, 2 packs of dried yeast, a tbs. of caster sugar, 4 tbs. of olive oil, and about 2 and a quarter cups of filtered, luke-warm water. Form the flour into a sort of crater on your block and pour in the water and olive oil, along with the salt and yeast, mixing it into the flour slowly moving from the inside out. I like to use a spork for this. When the dough becomes more dough, like kneed it just to the point where it's pliable, elastic, and no longer flaky. Put this into a bowl (with a bit of flour if necessary) under a warm, damp cloth for about an hour.

When the dough's ready, put your stone in the oven at it's top setting and get it hot as fuck. Flatten out the dough in whatever you you'd like, I use a roller, until it's about right, then spread some sauce on it. Toppings can be almost anything, really. You can add some mozzarella and pancetta, for example.

Pull the stone out of your oven and put it on a rack, then drop your pizza on the stone. Put the stone back in the oven until you see browning around the outside.
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