Andy's Pizza

Make the dough first and let it rise while you do the sauce.

Pizza Dough

3 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flout
1/2 Tsp Salt (I use Sea Salt)
2 Tbsp Honey
1/4 Cup of Olive Oil
2 Tbsp (Yest Tbsp) of active dry yeast. 40% Less for Instant yeast.
1 Cup water 95 to 115 degrees F

I mix with the KA. Put in 2 1/2 cups flour and the rest of the dry ingredients.

After they are mixed put in the honey and Olive Oil.

While all this happening, I proof my yeast in the warm water. If you are using instant yeast just put it in with the dry ingredients.

Add the water

You are looking for the dough to form a ball around the dough hook and the sides of the bowl to be clean. Add Flour 1/8 Cup at a time and wait a minute of so. If you do not have the dough ball add more. If you add too much flour, the dough will get flaky. In that case, add 1 Tsp of water at at ime and let it mix.

When the dough is right turn it out on a floured surface and work it till it feels right.

Wash out the bowl from the KA, dry it and rub some olive oil around it. Put the dough back in the bowl. Put about 3/4 cup of water in the microwave and boil it. Shut the microwave off and put the KA bowl in, leave the cup of water n there. close the door and give it an hour to rise.


Sauce

This has a bang to it, but, not a massive one.

28 Oz Can whole tomatoes in tomato sauce.
12 Oz Can tomato paste.
6 garlic cloves
1 1/2 Tbsp Crushed red pepper.
Generous pinch of kosher salt
3 or 4 Tbsp Italian spices


Put the whole tomatoes in a big bowl and use a pastery cutter to chop them up. We are going for a kind of Gardinera sauce.

Add 2/3 of the can of tomato paste. Stir it in. More or less to the consistency that you want.

Chop the garlic to fine chunky.

Add the spices.

Stir it all together and let it sit 45 min or so.


While the sauce is resting and the bread is rising, prepare your toppings. I chopped purple onions, browned some Italian sausage, chopped some green pepper and sliced some mushrooms.

At this time I shredded 1 # of Mozarella.

OK Now the dough rose. Turn it out on a flored surface and punch it down. Do not kneed. Cut the dough about in half for a large pie. Work the piece of dough till it is about as big and thin as you want. It may be easier to take 1/4 of the dough and make 2 littler ones. That is up to you.

I like my dough paper thin. I then put it on my peel and go to work. I spread sauce generously. I like a saucy Pizza. Put on the onions, sausage, peppers and mushrooms. top the whole thing off and in the oven it goes. It is agreat idea to put the dough on a piece of parchment paper. I have a big stone in my oven and do not need pans. you may.

bake it till it looks done, take it out slice and enjoy.


I used the leftover dough for calzones, or you can frreese it for later.

hope you like it

Andy C

Andy, the most diffiicult part of homemade pizza for me is getting the topped pizza off the damned peel and onto the hot stone in the oven. So I have some questions.

Do you put the parchment paper on the peel, then put the dough on top of the paper? The paper is instead of cornmeal?

And then you slide the paper, with pizza, on the stone? And the paper doesn't burn?

Lee

I don't have a peel so we use a grease splatter screen instead. It is all metal so we make the pizza on that and just stick it in the oven. When it is done you just grab the metal handle with an oven mitt and take it out.
At that point I gently bang it a couple of times on the counter then it pretty much breaks loose and slides off easily.
DW has a great thin crust dough recipe she used, I will try your sauce next time around as we don't have any good ones of our own, thanks!

Lee - That was the chalange for me this time too. Usually, just put the pizza on parchment and slide the whole thing onto the stone. I have had the parchment get kind of dark, but have not had it catch fire. This time, I made the pizza too big and it was hanging off the edge of the peel. I used cornmeal and a good push pull and it came off for me. You could also use tinfoil if you ar econceerned about the temp and the parchment.

Bad thing for me is I used the extra dough for calzones and they opened during cooking. Now I gotta figgure out how to get the burned mozz off my fibrament.

Andy

I cut parchment to the size of my stone, then shape the dough on the parchment and make sure it's not bigger than the parchment. Using the peal to place pie onto of preheated stone.

I just aint that fancy! LOL. Simple motto: Improvise, Overcome, Adapt! Hoo Raa!

This is what I was talking about, actually works pretty good:

When I make pizza, I put 1/2 sheet of parchment paper on my peel, dust it generously with coarse corn meal, then put the dough on top. When the pizza is fully dressed, I slide the whole shebang onto the stone. When it's done I scoop up the pizza under the parchment and put it on my big cutting board. The parchment paper separates from the pizza with no problem.

Thank you, everyone, for your answers.

I will use parchment from now on!

Lee