Holy shit, it turns out that pizza can be #EasyWeeknightMeals. Let's check this out
We were going for "B+ results for C- effort" here, but now I think it's more like "solid A results for C+ effort". Still, nothing special beyond patience is needed here. Just straight-up "I have a stove, an oven, a cutting board, and a pan that isn't nonstick" requirements for us.
Serious Eats did this, of course:
Skillet-Broiler Neapolitan Pizza
Fun fact: I got pointed in this direction from a Twitter convo between Mitchell Schwartz and Ted Nguyen, being a football fan pays off.
- I'm using a carbon steel skillet with an 8" base, which translates into about 2/3 the dough by volume.
- I have pizza flour but am not using it 100%, I want 2:2:1 pizza flour : AP flour : whole wheat. Because.
- The SE recipe asks for a stand mixer with a dough hook, I don't have counter space for that shit but on the other hand I have hands, and pizza dough is not weird.
- Cleaning burnt-on flour out of a pan fucking sucks, oil works great.
- Cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless steel skillet
- Mixing bowls
- Rolling pin, I use a French pin but follow your bliss
- Silicone pastry brush
- 150g AP flour
- 150g pizza flour (Tipo 00 or whatever)
- 75g whole wheat flour
- 6g salt
- 3g instant yeast
- 3g sugar
- 260g water
- 7g vital wheat gluten (optional but recommended)
This makes five ~130g dough balls, which is enough for a small individual pizza maybe 8in in diameter. I think that's an appropriate size, might increase it a bit but I'm more likely to increase hydration than anything else.
I'm fairly happy with this at 70% hydration but it might go higher. That's a tradeoff between "better flavours from fermentation, maybe better bubbles" and "not being a pain in the ass to work with", and for the most part I'm optimizing for the latter.
Working with small batches of dough like this can suck, you can absolutely double or triple the volumes here and freeze portions you're not going to use within the week.
- This step is optional, but recommended. All it takes is time, and imo the only reason not to make a biga is because it sucks to work it into your schedule. I'll put notes about scheduling below.
- Combine whole-wheat and AP flours and a small pinch of yeast, less than 1/16th of a teaspoon, in a mixing bowl.
75g whole wheat flour
75g AP flour
small pinch of yeast
- Add 95g of water (roughly room temperature) and mix until a stiff dough forms
- Place in a sealed container (I use a 4cu deli container but do whatever works for you, just make sure it's well sealed with plastic wrap if it doesn't have a good lid) and leave on the countertop for ~12h, or until more than doubled in size. The biga will take a few hours to start doing anything, then will grow with a domed top, and when it's just about ready to use the top will flatten or fall in somewhat. At that point you have about 2h to incorporate it; if you aren't ready yet, put it in the fridge
- This step is optional but it builds a ton of flavour. You can omit it and just mix all the flour and water in the autolyse in the next step. Your crust won't taste as good, but if it fits better into your schedule to make a straight dough without a preferment I'd rather you made pizza than sighed and closed this tab
- Combine remaining flours in a large bowl; measure the salt, yeast, and sugar into a small container
150g type 00 pizza flour
75g AP flour
7g vital wheat gluten (if using)
165g water
If you didn't make a biga, that's:
150g type 00 pizza flour
150g AP flour
75g whole wheat flour
260g water
7g vital wheat gluten (if using)
- Make a well in the middle and pour in 165g water, mix by hand or with a wooden spoon or whatever until it comes together as a uniform ball
- Cover with a dish towel and let it sit for ~1h, this is the autolyse and it's basically hydrating the flour without getting any yeast action in
- Flatten somewhat, pour the salt and yeast and sugar on top and the biga (if using) on top of that. Mix again until it all comes together. This might take ten minutes by hand
- Cover the bowl with a dish towel and let it rest 20-30min
- Fold the dough with a bit of stretch, then cover it again and let it rest for 20-30min. Don't flour your hands, wet them instead to stop it from sticking.
- Fold the dough twice more, at roughly 20-30min intervals
- Oil up another bowl and dump in the dough ball, flop it around to coat, then seal with plastic wrap and let it hang out in your fridge at least overnight
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Pull out the dough, turn it out onto a floured work surface, and portion it into five pieces. Each should be about 130g / 4.6oz
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Flour your hands just a little and form the portions into balls by tucking the edges underneath, rotating the dough in your hands a quarter turn, and repeating
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I'm going to assume you're cooking one pizza and saving the rest of the dough for later
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If you're going to make pizza in the next few days, put a bit of oil in each of four 2cu deli containers and a dough ball in each. Close them up and put them in the fridge. If you're going to freeze the remaining dough, wrap the balls in plastic wrap and freeze them on a sheet pan, then seal them in a freezer bag
Leave the fifth on a work surface dusted with flour, covered with a dish towel, for 2h
- Dump your dough out onto a floured surface
- Dust the top with flour and roll it out to about 8in. If you don't go all the way to the edges you'll get a bit
of a crown
- You should be able to roll out the crust with, say, half a dozen passes of your rolling pin. If it springs back forcefully, it's underproofed. Let it rest under a towel for, say, 30min and try again
- Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rest for at least 30min. 45min is fine, 60+ is probably overproofing territory
- Get your toppings ready, you'll want about 2tbsp sauce and I like about 25g of shredded melting cheese (low-moisture mozz, swiss, cheddar, whatever). The rest is up to you
- Arrange a rack in your oven such that the skillet is as close to the broiler as you can get it. Use an upside-down cast iron skillet or sheet pan as a spacer if you need to
- Heat your skillet of choice on high and turn on the broiler
- Add a bit of neutral vegetable oil to the skillet and swirl to coat
- Using the pastry brush, brush the rim of the crust with oil from the skillet
- Once the oil's smoking drop in your crust and top it with sauce, cheese, toppings, and maybe a bit more cheese
- Slide it under the broiler and let it cook there for, idk, 2-5min. Really depends on your broiler, check visually for nice browned spots on the crust and cheese. I broil it for 2m30s, pull it out, use a spatula to rotate the pizza 180 degrees, then broil it another 2m30s or so
- Pull the skillet out with a dry towel and put it back on the burner. Check the bottom of the crust with a fish spatula, if it's not cooked to your liking crank that burner back up to high and cook it until it's ready
- Slide the finished pizza onto a cutting board, slice it into quarters, and enjoy
- One way to do this is to mix the biga in the morning, say 8am, and let it rise during the day. Then at around 8pm you start the autolyse, mix the dough at 9pm, fold it a few times and fridge it around 11pm or whatever "bedtime" looks like for you. Then you pull the dough from the fridge around 5pm the next day and cook around 7:30pm
- Another way is to mix the biga late on a Friday night, maybe 10pm. Then you mix the dough late the next morning, fridge it for a full day, and pull it out 9:30am Sunday to cook at noon. Obviously there are many ways to make this work, and the bulk ferment between mixing the dough and portioning and shaping is the most forgiving time variable, you could go two days if you wanted, maybe more
I mixed my dough on Monday night and made pizzas Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Keep the dough in the fridge for idk probably a week at most, and bring it out a couple hours before you want to eat so it can proof.
If you make way more dough than you want to cook in a week, you can freeze the rest. Wrap each portion you're going to freeze in plastic wrap after shaping it into balls and put those in a ziploc bag, then right into the freezer. If you want to be detail-oriented about it, freeze the plastic-wrapped balls on a sheet pan and then stuff them into a ziploc. Thaw them in the fridge overnight or whatever and then treat them as usual.
This method adapts really well to focaccia, as you'd expect. I like to make four somewhat larger portions of dough, stuff them in deli containers in the fridge, and bake them for lunch sandwiches. Be the envy of your co-workers!
I increased the volume of dough by a third and swapped the pizza flour for AP:
- 320g AP flour
- 80g whole wheat flour
- scant 7g salt
- 4g instant yeast
- 4g sugar
- 280g water
Otherwise the method is the same, you might do an extra fold for a bit more gluten development.
I've tried rolling the dough balls really thoroughly to eliminate a seam on the bottom and it doesn't much matter, but is fun to try.
I think these benefit from a little extra time in the fridge to ferment, although if you bake a portion the day after mixing the dough it'll be fine.
When you take the dough out of the fridge to proof, immediately pat it into a circle about 6in wide, turn it over, and fold the sides in to make a rectangle about 3in by 5in. Let it proof in that shape for 2h before baking. I like to bake these in a 5in by 7in casserole dish that I've rubbed with butter and then oiled (the butter seems to be crucial for preventing the focaccia from sticking, and it probably makes the bottom brown a bit better), which I cover with a towel while the bread proofs. YMMV and I bet an eighth pan would work fine too.
About 20min before the dough's ready, heat your oven to 425.
When the dough's proofed. stretch it a bit to fit the casserole (or to whatever size you want your sandwich to be). Use your fingertips and go from the middle out, pushing damn near all the way through the dough and stretching slightly, then move out another inch-ish from the middle and repeat. This is hard to describe but easy to do. Then drizzle some olive oil over the loaf and stick it in the centre of the oven for 20min.
After 20min, check on the loaf -- it should have some nice colour on top, up to a deep brown/mahogany on the high bits. If it's still pale, give it another 5min and check again. Lift it out of the casserole / off the pan and let it rest on a rack for ~10min. (Normally this isn't necessary, but we're shooting for something a bit thicker than your standard focaccia and I find it benefits from resting a bit.)
Put the loaf on a cutting board, press down with your palm, and halve it with a serrated knife cutting parallel to the board (rather than, like, trying to balance it on edge and cut down, but I'm not your dad and you can cut your bread however you please).
Miraculously, these loaves are fairly robust (and stand up to wet fillings pretty well) but also soft enough that loose fillings don't squeeze out more than you'd expect. I've particularly liked:
- Chicken salad with capers
- Carnitas, half an avocado, and chipotle mayo
- Steak, sauerkraut, and cheddar
2021-11-04
- increased dough batch size
- increased hydration
- fold instead of kneading
- roll out dough 30min before proofing
2021-11-10
- increased hydration again
- autolyse
2022-04-30
- focaccia method
2022-05-29
- increased suggested proofing time from 2h to 2.5h, added a cue for noticing underproofed-ness
2023-03-26
- biga method, five portions, and a bit of guidance around cheese