Low-effort, low-mess pizza @ home

[Jaymes]

I've done this for years. In fact, it was my standard "slumber party" menu while raising my three kids. I'd make small (plate-sized) pizza crusts in advance, one for each invitee. And then set out bowls with all the condiments, and let each kid make their own. I baked them on large sheet pans. It was a lot of fun and it kept everybody busy and there was no problem with finicky eaters. Nothing like making your own to see to it that you eat it.

[llc45]

I loved using the Bittman no-knead bread recipe but thought it was lacking in flavor and not so versatile. So, was very excited when that thread referenced a newer NYT article about a similar concept where you make enough dough for four (or 8) loaves and then store it in your fridge for up to two weeks. It develops a slight sour dough flavor and can be shaped. Bingo - not only can I make bread whenever I want, we now have been having pizza at least once a week. I have been very pleased with the results. I find it is much easier to get a thin crust then when I used to use fresh dough. I have been transferring it to a stone and getting the nice crispy crust that I like. Currently, I have been making in the 4-loaf quantiites because I don't have a large enough container but will changing over to 8 loaves as soon as I can acquire something to put it in.

[WiscoNole]

Bookmarked

[Fat Guy]

(Here's the link)

[llc45]

Sorry if this is off topic but I just wanted to mention that I was so pleased with the master recipe that I bought the book. They have adapted the concept for many savory breads and sweet breads including bagels, pretzels, peasant breads, brioche, cinnamon rolls, just to name a few. They say you can pretty much have several different types of dough in storage at one time for different purposes. They have a recipe for Neopolitan Pizza for which they say you can use any of the following dough recipes in the book: European Peasant, Olive Oil, Light Whole Wheat, or Italian Semolina. I, unfortunately, had surgery the day after I received the book so I've done a lot of skimming but not much testing. I have made the master recipe about 4 times so far with some variation each time. I have used that recipe to make bread, pizza and stromboli.

[Chris Amirault]

Been working on this at our pizza-friendly house (one toddler, one 10-year-old, often kid guests), and can confirm much of what's already here. Tonight I took out a bag of dough that had been in the fridge for 15 days and it was the best store-bought dough we've ever had, and much better than most pizza dough you can get around town at pizzerias. The texture, air holes, thinness, and flavor are all great.

[TongoRad]

We've done this a few times recently as well. I'm particularly jazzed about getting that really good crust without requiring a pizza stone and peel(s). It use to be that we'd only make pizza at my folks', who have all of that stuff (as well as a convection oven), but now it is becoming a regular weekend event with the kids.

[Renn]

Not to go on too big a tangent...but a method that I'm loving more and more these days is to use a pain a l'ancienne dough from Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." To summarize, you make the high hydration % scratch dough under ice cold conditions (takes about 8 min)...to prevent the yeast from waking up. Then after a single overnight retardation, you take the dough out to wake up and finish fermenting then bake.

I've also in the past made some way more involved poolish based pizza doughs, gone whole hog with the stone, starting from whole tomatoes, etc... and for the marked difference in effort, I'd say that the l'ancienne dough produces serious flavor (I actually went as far as conducting a blind tasting amongst unsuspecting friends =D)

I've done this in a sheet pan with a piece of parchment and forgot to flour...the finished pie still did not stick and turned out well. Currently I'm playing with how much water to put in the dough as there's a balance between keeping it as wet as possible and making it even easier to handle. In any case...I'd highly suggest trying the method out....you can make the call as to whether it's easier to buy dough and let it retard for X days vs making a quick scratch dough and having a 1 night retard period.

[onehsancare]

Tonight I took out a bag of dough that had been in the fridge for 15 days and it was the best store-bought dough we've ever had

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Huh. Night before last, I took out a bag of dough that had been in the fridge for 15 days, and it was green. I'd planned to make two pizzas, one with old dough and one with new, but that plan was trashed, along with the green dough!

[Ciao Ling]

It's possible that somebody out there is selling good refrigerated dough, but none of the ones I've tried have been acceptable to me. When you produce frozen dough, all you need to do is use basic ingredients. The refrigerated doughs I've seen have had a lot of junk in them. Even the ones that say "no preservatives" have longer ingredients lists than dough should have. I guess people are saying Trader Joe's has good refrigerated dough. I haven't tried it. I've been sticking with frozen. But sure, yes, if you can find a good source of refrigerated dough you may get a leg up especially if the packages are marked with expiration dates and you intentionally buy the oldest one.

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I am an erstwhile (weekend) pizza fanatic and even have a backyard wood-fired pizza oven. I dabble with all the dough recipes including using preferments from the pizza gods at Pizzamaking.com but for those times when convenience is paramount, I have found the frozen dough balls sold at the snack concession stand at Sam's Club to be good. It's the dough that they use to make their pizzas. If you want pizza the next day, throw a ball in the refrigerator to thaw. You will have to buy a case of 20 balls for around $15. I store them in a chest freezer. A half ball will make a thin crust pizza for a home oven pizza stone. If you combine dough balls, you can make a beautiful focaccia. For a sheet pan, I also recommend olive oil and a dusting of cornmeal, which gives a nice crunch.

[weinoo]

I am an erstwhile (weekend) pizza fanatic and even have a backyard wood-fired pizza oven.  I dabble with all the dough recipes including using preferments from the pizza gods at Pizzamaking.com but for those times when convenience is paramount, I have found the frozen dough balls sold at the snack concession stand at Sam's Club to be good. It's the dough that they use to make their pizzas.  If you want pizza the next day, throw a ball in the refrigerator to thaw. You will have to buy a case of 20 balls for around $15. I store them in a chest freezer. A half ball will make a thin crust pizza for a home oven pizza stone. If you combine dough balls, you can make a beautiful focaccia. For a sheet pan, I also recommend olive oil and a dusting of cornmeal, which gives a nice crunch.

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Allright, don't you know you're making us city dwellers a bit jealous, with the backyard pizza oven and chest freezer .

Anyway, when I make a batch of dough, I generally double it and freeze my own.

I've also found that Whole Foods frozen pizza dough (I think it's $1.49 for a one-pound ball) works pretty well, especially when defrosted as Ciao Ling says - overnight in the fridge.

[Ciao Ling]

I am an erstwhile (weekend) pizza fanatic and even have a backyard wood-fired pizza oven.  I dabble with all the dough recipes including using preferments from the pizza gods at Pizzamaking.com but for those times when convenience is paramount, I have found the frozen dough balls sold at the snack concession stand at Sam's Club to be good. It's the dough that they use to make their pizzas.  If you want pizza the next day, throw a ball in the refrigerator to thaw. You will have to buy a case of 20 balls for around $15. I store them in a chest freezer. A half ball will make a thin crust pizza for a home oven pizza stone. If you combine dough balls, you can make a beautiful focaccia. For a sheet pan, I also recommend olive oil and a dusting of cornmeal, which gives a nice crunch.

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Allright, don't you know you're making us city dwellers a bit jealous, with the backyard pizza oven and chest freezer .

Anyway, when I make a batch of dough, I generally double it and freeze my own.

I've also found that Whole Foods frozen pizza dough (I think it's $1.49 for a one-pound ball) works pretty well, especially when defrosted as Ciao Ling says - overnight in the fridge.

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I used to live in NYC. I am jealous of not having a Patsy's, DiFara's, Grimaldi's, Totonno's, John's, and the list goes on... and makes me drool thinking of it. I do love my oven though...

[randomwalk]

BF and i have been making supereasy pizzas recently, so i'm happy to see this thread! i buy the dough from a neighborhood pizzeria (don't much like their pizza--too greasy--but really like their crust), for $1.87 (enough for four huge servings).

put half of the dough on our stone (we use the stone...) bake for 4 mins (at 550), remove. Then we add a can (or more...) of diced tomatoes, sprinkle with dried basil (would love fresh if we had it), oregano, hot pepper. Then, top with grated mozzarella (not fresh...we tried fresh, and it was too watery....will have to try the "less-fresh fresh" method!), and whatever toppings we like. (i like mushrooms, and salami added after cooking, he likes sauteed chicken (?)--not our ideal toppings, but easy stuff we have around the house.) Return to the oven for about 5-7 mins.

it's *delish*! it's BF's favorite food, and it's super easy for those nights we have to get to bridge! (we're not old, but we act like it, lol.)

[slkinsey]

So... this weekend I experimented with "massively retarded" pizza dough.

I made up a recipe of dough consisting of 1000 grams of AP flour (Hecker's), 700 grams of water, 1 teaspoon of SAF yeast and 1/4 teaspoon of diastatic malt powder. Mixed the dough by hand only enough to eliminate any dry chunks. Bulk fermented overnight at room temperature so that the dough had risen a little and all the flour was nicely hydrated. Divided the dough into three balls. Two went into small ziplocks in the freezer. One went into a large ziplock in the refrigerator where it sat for around 6 days.

In a deviation from Steven's technique, I baked on a stone rather than in a sheet pan. I have an extremely heavy slab of slate I use as a pizza stone that docsconz was kind enough to let me have after he had finished some yard decoration.

I spread the dough out directly on a large wooden peel on top of some cornmeal while it was still cold from the refrigerator. The dough was so slack and pliable from the long retardation that I had only to continue dimpling the dough with my fingers in order to stretch it out to the desired size and configuration. Working quickly (70% hydration is a pretty wet dough) I topped with Pomi chopped tomatoes (I'll have to try again with strained,although the chopped worked well) and a mixture of broccoli di rape and cubes of Benton's bacon I had sauteed together.

Oven spring was tremendous, which is one advantage to using a cold dough. All in all, I felt that this was the best pizza dough I've ever produced. I was very happy with the pizza, and it was really no trouble at all. The next day, all I had to do was lift out the stone and brush a few crumbs into the kitchen sink. I've already got a second ball of dough defrosting in the refrigerator right now.

Ultimately, I think it would be a better with simple fillets of San Marzano tomatoes and better/wetter cheese (Whole Foods probably has the best supermarket "fresh" mozzarella I've had, and it's considerably wetter and creamier than the others) -- but it was damn fine just as it was. The wet dough and the great oven spring allowed me to get some really nice char on the bottom without turning the crust into a cracker.

It's really quite easy, by the way, to make and freeze your own pizza dough for this. The beauty of the no-knead process is that it involved only around 10 minutes of work and the only cleanup was tossing the metal bowl into the dishwasher. By increasing the recipe a bit (easy to do using bakers' percentages) I could easily make a month's worth of dough-- assuming a weekly pizza night -- in the same amount of time.

Edited March 17, 2008 by slkinsey (log)

[jsmeeker]

I whipped up a batch of pizza dough yesterday afternoon, with the intention of using it sometime mid-week to make pizzas my normal way. (i.e. "hand tossed", baked on a stone). I always use canned sauce (Muir Glenn pizza sauce) and standard supermarket mozzerrella (usually, already shredded!! ) I've got all of that at home, plus some pepperoni.

So, I guess if I were to try this out, I would do it in a sheet pan, using home made dough (seems silly for me to buy dough for this initial test when I have some in the fridge fermenting away) instead of baking directly on the stone. The question I have for Steven is how much dough do you need/use to full the sheet pan? I see from your pics that you didn't seem to be concerned to fill the pan all the way to and up the edge (like I was expecting). A rough estimate/guess in ounces should be fine. I'll just portion off that much from my dough ball when I get home tonight and toss it into a zip top bag for later in the week.

[Fat Guy]

1 pound of dough for a 1/2-sheet pan. I do spread the dough to the four edges and corners, however there's usually a bit of contraction during the early part of cooking.

[jsmeeker]

I'm all set to make my first pizza usign this method tonight.

How long do you let to do rest once you pull it from the fridge? An hour? The time it takes to get the oven hot? (I think you suggested about 45 minutes). I suppose my dough really isn't "old" by your standard, but I do have more. Maybe I can use that on Friday. That would make 5 days old by then.

On a side note, I looked for frozen pizza dough at my local fancy pants grocery store. They didn't have any. I'll look at my regular neighborhood store next, then Whole Foods. (though, really I'm still wondering if it's worth buying if I can make it so easily)

[Fat Guy]

I prefer a few hours at room temperature, however an hour or less is fine too -- the dough warms up a lot as you stretch it anyway.

Incidentally, the other night I decided to bake the dough before adding the toppings. So I went four minutes with just dough, pulled it out, flipped it over, added toppings, and baked for about eight additional minutes. This approach gives a puffier crust that's more pizzeria-like, however I found that the second bake wasn't long enough to get the sauce and cheese to the state of doneness I prefer. I'll have to do some more experiments.

[jsmeeker]

wow.. what a disaster that experiment was.

The dough was a bit of a pain to stretch out.. But I eventually managed to get it more or less. Into the 500 degree oven. Baked it until the top of it looked like a pizza I normally bake directly on the stone. Pulled the pan out. let it sit for two or three minutes. Then, I tried to get it out of the pan. It was sorta stuck. I managed to cut out a piece, but the bottom was not cooked enough. Back into the oven for a few minutes. Now it's over done on the top. And still sticking.

Grrr... Not sure what went wrong, but I think a big part of it was that it was stretched too thin in parts. That, and I think working the dough out sorta embedded the semolina (didn't have cornmeal handy) into the dough too far to make it useful.

Not sure if it make sense for me to try this again. Doing a regular pizza turns out far better for me, and really doesn't seem to be so much work.

[onrushpam]

I, too, had a disaster with this...

Bought a bad of refrigerated dough a few days ago from Publix. It looked great! I set it out when I started pre-heating the oven. It went CRAZY and was very poufy when I took it out of the bag. I could NOT get it to stretch. I eventually tried rolling it with a pin... no luck.

I finally just gave up and through the sauce and cheese on the pile of dough. DH is eating it now. I have no desire to touch it.

Not the fault of the method... but what the heck was up with that dough???

[ray goud]

It's been a while since anyone has posted to this topic, but I ran my backyard bake oven this weekend and feel I must add my input, again.

I previously mentioned the really-easy pizza method of using pre-made flour tortillas instead of pizza dough. This idea came from Jacques Pepin, and it is genius. Remember the title to this topic? "Low effort, low mess pizza at home"? Why have so many focused on the pizza dough, which is probably the messiest part, without the view to eliminating it? This is NOT like "pizza" on english muffins or french bread loaves. This is pizza with a thin crisp crust which browns up nicely, but requires no labor, and is very easy to handle. Just make SURE that you choose a tortilla (you pick your favorite size) which contains NO sugar. Those which have sugar leave an atypical sweet taste in the mouth. I found ones which have no sugar in their ingredient list and which make wonderful-tasting pizzas. It's what we had for dinner last night. A side benefit is that you know for certain that you will have a crisp crust. My only criticism of Jacques' original recipe is that he advocates oil on the outside bottom of the tortilla, and I strongly disagree. Just use some cornmeal, like a regular pizza-dough crust.

Ray

[thdad]

The Pomi Strained Tomato product from Parmalat is indeed a great product. The packaging is sensible as well -- after using it I just wrap it up with plastic wrap and freeze it without even transferring.

The Pomi has a fresher tomato taste than the regular canned tomato products. Too bad I can no longer get it from where I live now...

[Fat Guy]

I previously mentioned the really-easy pizza method of using pre-made flour tortillas instead of pizza dough.

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Ray, on Saturday morning I bought a pack of flour tortillas (sans sugar -- not so easy to find) and have now tried twice to make pizza on them. I haven't been pleased with the results. The first time I tried it at 500 degrees. By the time the cheese melted the tortilla had taken on the texture of cardboard or stale matzah. So the next time I tried it on 350, hoping this would give a different texture, but it came out almost exactly the same -- it just took longer.

What am I doing wrong? Please advise in detail on the proper method. Thanks!

[ray goud]

I previously mentioned the really-easy pizza method of using pre-made flour tortillas instead of pizza dough.

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Ray, on Saturday morning I bought a pack of flour tortillas (sans sugar -- not so easy to find) and have now tried twice to make pizza on them. I haven't been pleased with the results. The first time I tried it at 500 degrees. By the time the cheese melted the tortilla had taken on the texture of cardboard or stale matzah. So the next time I tried it on 350, hoping this would give a different texture, but it came out almost exactly the same -- it just took longer.

What am I doing wrong? Please advise in detail on the proper method. Thanks!

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I have used 500 degrees in the electric oven (with a pizza stone), and 500+ in the outdoor oven (no stone required). Each time they have come out light, crispy, and neutral in taste. Previously I tried the ones with sugar in the ingredient list and the only complaint was the sugar taste itself. Now, I am used to New Haven-style pizzas (Pepe's, Sally's genre), so I am not easy to please. I used very little and no mozzarella, preferring light Parmesan, and only a very light coating of sauce/equivalent. One of our favorites is caramelized onions sauce as a base (lightly, please) topped with Virginia country ham or bacon (plus olives). The main problem, other than the solved one of sugar taste, was cooking the tortilla TOO MUCH, which leads me to believe you may be loading up your toppings too much. (I was born in Napoli, but raised in the US)

Ray

[Fat Guy]

Can you give an estimate of cooking time at 500 degrees in an indoor oven?