pizza dough and "anything goes" pizza

It was my new years resolution this year to master bread and yeast products. I haven't 'mastered' it yet, but I can make a mean sourdough ciabatta and yeasty things like pizza dough and cinnamon scrolls! (a LETHAL skill to have). Yeasty stuff is a bit difficult to grasp at first but eventually you will get it! I make this batch of pizza dough, roll them out into mini pizzas and keep them in the freezer in between pieces of baking paper, ready to go whenever I feel like it.

pizza dough: ingredients

2 tsp of yeast
1 tsbp sugar
1 1/2 cups water warm
3 cups of flour
Pinch of salt

method
1. Mix warm water, sugar and yeast together and leave for 10 minutes. The yeast should 'foam' and/or come to the top of the water like this:



2. Then add flour slowly until the dough is pliable and slightly sticky (you don't want it so sticky however that you cant knead it). All flour is different so you may need to add more flour, or less, so always mix bread products minus 1/2 cup of flour until you know how much you need (boom chic!). Dust your work surface and work that bread! About 6-8 minutes of kneading should get it elastic, you can feel the difference immensely, in the beginning it was kind of rough and un-uniform, by the time its ready it should be smooth, elastic, fully worked in almost exactly like "play-dough".



3. Lightly oil a bowl and put your dough baby in it. Turn the dough so it is covered in oil and cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel. Yeast is like mold (or is a mold I cant remember) it loves moisture and warmth. I usually turn my oven on to heat up for pizza time and let the bowl sit on top of the oven. Unless its hot hot summer you will need some heat help with making dough rise in Melbourne. It should take between 45-60 minutes to double in size. You can notice the difference, the dough basically becomes 'alive' and puffy (and be patient! if you have that warmth there the dough WILL rise, stop looking at it!). The marker on the bowl was where the top of my dough baby came to before it was left to rise:



4. Punch that dough! No I mean it! Punch in the centre to deflate all the air out of it and knead it for a minute. At this point in regular bread making you would shape it into a loaf and let rise again until doubled, but we don't need that for pizza bases.

5. Break off handfuls and roll out into pizza rounds (I'm rolling them out for single servings, use your noggin to cater to a larger bunch). I usually roll them out quite thin because the pizzas rise a fair bit and I like a thin crust. You will see when you're rolling it out that air bubbles will form in the dough constantly, its alive and burbling! so cool! Store in the freezer between pieces of baking paper.

6. Pizza is a great poor option. Next comes "anything goes" pizza, I had sun dried tomato tapenade, used that as a base, then used all the vegies I had in my fridge that were about to die, spanish onion, mushrooms, asparagus, sun dried tomatoes, and thin slices of garlic on top. Yum yum.