Recipe No-knead pizza dough

[medtran49]

This is a recipe from https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/03/jim-laheys-no-knead-pizza-dough-recipe.html . There are tips on stretching, shaping, baking in a video on the web site. This is a wonderfully puffy, air bubbly dough.

500 grams (17 ½ ounces or about 3 ¾ cups) all-purpose flour, plus more for shaping the dough
1 gram (1/4 teaspoon) active dry yeast
16 grams (2 teaspoons) fine sea salt
350 grams (1 ½ cups) water

Mix flour, yeast, and salt well in a medium bowl. Add the water and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon or your hands. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise at room temperature (about 72 F) for 18 hours or until it has more than doubled. It will take longer in a chilly room and less time in a very warm one. At 78 F, it took about 9 hours.

Scrape the dough out onto a floured work surface. Divide into 4 equal parts and shape them into balls. The dough will be very soft and will flatten out, pull 4 sides toward the center and shape into a rounded shape, using flour generously. You want them still really soft, but not really sticky either. Wrap each ball of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours up to 3 days. Remove the balls from the refrigerator at least 2 hours before you intend to use, unwrap them, place on a floured surface, lay the plastic wrap over them, and let them come to room temperature.

Shape each dough ball into a disk about 12 inches or so depending on how thick you want your pizza dough. If you are not immediately cooking the dough as you shape it, place each disk on a piece of parchment paper that has been sprayed generously with cooking spray. When you are ready to cook, pick up the parchment paper and turn it upside down, placing the dough on your cooking surface (we do it on the grill over a wood fire) and gently and carefully peel off the parchment paper. We prefer to pre-cook each disk of dough for a few minutes on each side just until it is set before adding the toppings as it seems to make the crust a bit crispier.

 

[Morning Glory]

Interesting - I think I did make no-knead bread once or twice before but not for pizza. It turned out full of air holes if I remember rightly (no bad thing). In my case the dough wasn't even reshaped - just plonked on a baking sheet, un-kneaded and left to rise then baked. I don't know if I have the recipe - I might have just winged it! I will have another go to see how it turns out.

Yours has a lot of rising time - I don't think I left mine that long.

 

[Morning Glory]

...looking at the recipe you used again - that is a very small amount of yeast and rather a lot of salt compared to basic dough recipes. Usually it would be 7g yeast and approx 9g salt.

Perhaps that is why the rising time is so long? I wonder why so much salt though...

 

[medtran49]

Salt to give the crust more flavor.

A lot of pizza restaurants let their dough rise overnight, even a couple of days in some cases. They say it makes the dough more flavorful.

None of the pizza doughs I've used have as much yeast as dough for regular bread.

 

[Morning Glory]

None of the pizza doughs I've used have as much yeast as dough for regular bread.

\

That is interesting - I've always made pizza dough with the same ratio. More research needed...

 

[The Late Night Gourmet]

Serious Eats is a phenomenal site...Chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is both brilliant and relatable, and he has other people posting articles who have a similar mindset. I will certainly give this a try.

I think the reason you need less yeast in pizza dough is because you don't really need it to rise much: unlike bread, pizza needs to support wet ingredients while cooking and still stay cohesive.

 

[Morning Glory]

Serious Eats is a phenomenal site...Chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is both brilliant and relatable, and he has other people posting articles who have a similar mindset. I will certainly give this a try.

I think the reason you need less yeast in pizza dough is because you don't really need it to rise much: unlike bread, pizza needs to support wet ingredients while cooking and still stay cohesive.

Pizza dough doesn't generally use less yeast than bread dough. All the recipes I know use more yeast than the above recipe. I'm talking about respected Italian chefs' recipes - like Antonio Carluccio (who sadly died recently).

Of course, I'm not saying its wrong to use less yeast - but I suspect here that the long rising time for the recipe is the key. If you tried to rise this dough in two hours you would have a problem. Slow long rising will partly utilise natural yeasts in the air/flour. Even if you use no yeast at all you can utilise that.

 

[Morning Glory]

I'm now going to eat my words @medtran49 and @The Late Night Gourmet. I watched yesterday an episode of Jame Martin's Mediterranean where he went to an acclaimed pizza place in Italy. They made the dough with very little yeast and left it to rise for 15 hours. It was unclear whether or not they kneaded it. He said it was the best pizza he ever tasted.

However - the lack of yeast is certainly not to do with wanting the dough to rise less. The long rising meant it doubled in size. I think its all about taste as well, since a long rising will give a subtle sourdough taste.

 

[medtran49]

I've got a recipe of this rising right now for tomorrow's dinner. We'll see if I get the same results, though I'm only planning on making 3 pies. Think I'm going to try using what's left of dough for garlic knots later in the week.

 

[Karen W]

My mouth always waters when I look at this Naked Pizza, using Lahey's dough and a Baking Steel, from Alexandracooks.

Naked Pizza
http://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/naked-pizza-basil-

 

[medtran49]

As I get older, simpler pizzas appeal to me more and more. As stated previously somewhere, I tend to prefer Margharita pizzas with thin sliced tomatoes, basil, garlic oil and fresh moz. There are a couple of other pizzas I'll eat, but they are pretty simple as well.

I prefer pizza cooked over wood and/or coals than in a conventional oven.

 

[Karen W]

I rarely, if ever, use tomato sauce on pizza. Too much sugar and a soggy crust. Prefer sliced fresh tomatoes. The pesto sauce topped Pizza appeals to me. The big bubbles, craters, air pockets are right up my alley.

 

[medtran49]

Me too. I almost always brush mine with garlic oil. I'll eat a piece of Craig's pepperoni with sauce sometimes, but I definitely now prefer the vegetarian ones.

If you like spinach and mushrooms, give this a whirl. Do put a little smoked moz on it even if you mix it up with a lot more of fresh. The smokieness, mushrooms and spinach flavors seem to all combine just perfectly for me. If you can get fresh made smoked moz from an Italian deli, it has a much more subtle flavor of smoke than the commercial brands.

 

[CraigC]

I rarely, if ever, use tomato sauce on pizza. Too much sugar and a soggy crust. Prefer sliced fresh tomatoes. The pesto sauce topped Pizza appeals to me. The big bubbles, craters, air pockets are right up my alley.

We tend to grill our pizza prior to topping it. So no soggy dough. I also have a kettlepizza kit for the Weber which allows me to create a wood burning pizza oven with out spending thousands. Then there is the BGE, I can always crank that up to 900F for pizza, gotta be quick though!

 

[Karen W]

Everyone raves about Jim Lahey's dough. That's why I shared it. That, and the herb topping. Her measurements are a little confusing re grams and type of dough, to me, though… Thought it might be helpful for folks (like me}, who use the oven. (Mostly, I make a quicky flatbread version, topped with salad ingredients.)