Project Pizza

Hi, there!  I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July, filled with good food, surrounded by good people. This year, instead of grilling or having a cookout, we took some time out to do a little something different on the 4th.  My little one and I embarked on a little project I called, Project Pizza!

We finally made homemade pizza - as in dough and all.  It's been something I've wanted to try for a long time.  I think I first put pizza on my to-do list when I saw this post from Joy the Baker. Subsequently, there have been many hunger-inducing homemade pizza tutorials and posts that I've come across.  But things really tipped the scales when I saw pizza week over at little kitchie.  That did it, and I had to check it out for myself!

I procrastinated a long time because there are plenty of terrific pizza options around so I wasn't sure it was worth going to all the trouble (gotta be honest)!  I guess the same can be said of homemade ice cream and look how that turned out.  In other words, I had a sneaky suspicion that, like most things, homemade has its own rewards.  So to satisfy my curiosity, to finally try out Jim Lahey's famous no-knead pizza dough touted by the world and see if it really is as easy and sublime as everyone says, we got to work.

And with pizza being my 8-year old son's favorite food on earth, I thought I'd get him involved and make a little "project" out of it.  Pizza is the one thing he's expressed an interest in making.  So armed with recipes and my young helper, we made a date to work on our project, and it was a lot of fun!

No doubt, we had to make my son's favorite - Pepperoni!

When we talk about making pizza, I think we're really talking about going to the effort of making the dough.  I knew I wanted to try Jim Lahey's no-knead recipe but to confuse me further, it seems there's an original no-knead recipe and then there's the "updated" no-knead recipe, which requires a longer - as much as an 18-hour - rest time.  I planned ahead and opted to go with the updated version.  I've heard raves about it and given the choice, I assume updated is better, right?  We wanted to have pizza for lunch on the 4th so we started the dough the afternoon prior so that it'd be ready for lunch the next day.

As it turns out, making this pizza dough really is pretty easy.  Now that I've done it once, it'll be even easier next time.  The idea of working with yeast has always been daunting but this has gone a long way towards slashing that "fear" for me.  I think I may be on my way to bread-making soon!

This pizza dough needs just four ingredients and you don't do much beyond mixing it together.  Then, you just wait.  Actually, you simply set it aside and forget about it.  It looks like a mess of nothing at first but grows and comes alive, becoming bubbly and more than doubling in size.  My son was pretty amazed and I think it turned out to be a fun lesson for him. 

It's neat to do something you've never done before, and this was all the more fun since I got to learn along with my son.  And we really did learn as we went along.  The dough was a little stickier than I expected so I used a little more flour when handling it.  I had a big hole in the first pie so I just pinched it together - repeatedly - and took my time with it.  The one thing I've learned and that seems to hold true is: don't be afraid.  It's like turning over a fragile cake; it can sense your fear so be confident...at least, that's what I tell myself!

For the adults, a classic Pizza Margherita

Our first pizza-making endeavor was very successful!  The little one gives the homemade pizza a "9"!  We didn't burn anything (what a relief!) and got to have delicious homemade pizza for our 4th of July lunch.  This may sound crazy but the pizza tasted...light and clean.  I know we're talking pizza but there is something about homemade, where you control and know exactly what goes into it, that makes the food simply fresh and good.  The dough turned out better than I expected.  I was worried it'd be soggy but it turned out crispy, with a nice bit of chew to it.  Placing the dough on top of some cornmeal works really nicely and adds a bit more texture to the baked crust.

Our homemade pizzas might not beat one of those pies from a brick oven but I was very impressed by what we could do in our little home oven at 500 degrees.  Having a bite of the pepperoni pizza really took me back to being a kid in Brooklyn, and made me think about all the times I'd go out for pizza with my friends after school.  Food does that, doesn't it?  It creates and melds together with memories, and I have very fond memories surrounding pizza...and I know my son will too. 

I just have to show some behind-the-scenes pizza making pictures here because they feature my little helper so please bear with me.

The no-knead pizza dough

As I mentioned, I used Jim Lahey's no-knead pizza dough, the updated version that takes a longer rest time.  I also picked up a few tips by checking out his comments and tutorial over on Serious Eats.  

Planning ahead, we started by mixing the pizza dough up around 4pm the day before.  The little one stirs it all together with a wooden spoon first.

And he keep going until the water is largely incorporated and the dough starts to come together.  (Look at my 8-year old's hands...still so itty bitty.)

Then we reached in and used our hands.  I was surprised by how soft the dough was.  My son said it felt like bubble gum!  

Once we scrunched it up by hand, we set it in a bowl.  It doesn't look like much at first.  I was a little nervous but kept the faith.

Sure enough, that little bit of yeast (just 1/4 teaspoon!) worked its magic and by the next morning, the dough had puffed up to more than twice its original size and it was filled with bubbles.  We were impressed!  Like Jim Lahey says, you want to keep that gas in the fermented dough as much as you can even as you press or stretch the dough out later.

We turned the dough out onto a floured surface.  The dough was sticky so I used a good amount of flour.

I divided the dough into 4 pieces.  Then, time to shape them into rounds.  Fold the right and left sides down and towards the center.  Repeat with the top and bottom and set the dough seam side down.  I dusted the tops with a bit more flour since they were sticky, covered the dough with plastic wrap, and let them sit for about an hour before using.  

Four hands are better than two...

Making the pizzas

Before I get to the full pizza-making, I have to tell you that I was *this close* to going with one of the pizza recipes from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook.  Deb has a way of making everything sound simple.  While I ultimately went with the Jim Lahey version that I'd heard so much about, I did pick up some great tips on general pizza making from Deb.

For instance, I used Pomi brand strained tomatoes (it comes in a carton; I'd never heard of or noticed it before!) and simply dressed it up with a bit of olive oil and sea salt for the pepperoni pizza.  For the Margherita, we dressed it up with a touch of olive oil, red pepper flakes, sea salt, and a small minced garlic. 

Working hard for his lunch - using the garlic press, which he says is cool

That, and a little fresh basil, was most of what we needed.  I bought and used shredded, low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella for the pepperoni pizza and sliced up mozzarella from a ball for the Margherita.

Prep done, it was time to make the actual pies!  

I was a little adventurous at first and tried stretching the dough and rotating it around my knuckles.

A large hole materialized pretty quickly in my first pie and put me in my place. I set the dough down on a baking sheet coated with cornmeal (needless to say, no pizza stones in my house) and we got working on stretching the dough out by hand.  We were careful to heed Jim Lahey's advice to not work the dough too much and to leave some of the bumpy bubbles in the dough.

The rest is just fun stuff.


We used a small amount of sauce and kept the crust pretty minimal.  If you want to, you could brush the crust with some olive oil for a little more color.  I'm good with it plain like this.

In a 500 degree oven and in under 10 minutes, the first pizza was out of the oven!

We started working on the Margherita pie as the first was baking and before we knew it, the second pie was ready.  Right out of the oven, we threw on some shredded basil and it was ready to eat!

Project Pizza culminated in a nice lunch - we did it!  It was a neat little activity for the early part of the holiday, before we met up with family for dinner and headed out to see fireworks in the evening.  

After we polished off our pizza lunch, it was time for mom and dad to clean up the kitchen!  With 2 more rounds of pizza dough in the fridge ready for another meal, I can picture some delicious possibilities..but if our 8-year old has anything to say about it, I see many pepperoni pizzas in my future!


Recipes:

Jim Lahey's no-knead pizza dough
Recipe is available over at Food 52
Also check out some tips at Serious Eats

I wanted to mention that for the red sauce, I used some suggestions I found from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook.  I remember learning a while ago that you should use raw tomatoes, not cooked sauce, for pizza, since the sauce essentially gets cooked while the pizza bakes and you want to keep it tasting fresh.  I was surprised but it made absolute sense when I thought about it.

So for these pies, I used about 1/3 cup of strained tomatoes (Pomi brand sold in cartons) per pie and dressed it up slightly with a touch of extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, red pepper flakes, and a small minced garlic (in the case of the Margherita pie).  The book also mentions that a pinch of sugar and a few drops of red wine vinegar can also bring out the flavors of processed tomatoes so you can experiment.

I used about 6 ounces of shredded part-skim, low-moisture, mozzarella for the pepperoni pizza and about 4 ounces or so of mozzarella, thinly sliced, for the Margherita.  Once the Margherita pizza came out of the oven, I threw on a handful of shredded basil leaves.