Pizza’s not difficult to make at home

Had Marie Antoinette been American, she would have said, "Let them eat pizza." So much better than brioche.

When you think about it, pizza’s so much better than most things. Slice after slice, time after time, it’s our most reliable pleasure. No matter the thickness of the slice, everyone understands the basic architecture: the toasty notes from the outside of the crust, then the layer of sweet, elastic dough, with its teasing tug against the teeth. Pit this against the acidic topping of tomato sauce and caramelized mozzarella, and you have the national dish.

But there’s something odd about our love affair. While most of us eat pizza, few of us cook it. Pizza comes from pizzerias, which guard their monopoly with tales of secret ingredients and high exertions. Real pizza must contain flour from Italy, or water from New York, and be cooked in ovens fired only by timber felled along the Appian Way.

It makes a $1.25 slice taste even better, until the realization sets in that it has to be gastro-hooey. There can’t be pizzerias on every corner because making pizza is difficult. The ingredients aren’t rare, but common, and, it merits stressing in these hard times, they’re dead cheap too. It’s not even like pizzerias spare us drudgery.

Making pizza at home is easy. The biggest surprise is that, for good clean fun, it’s genuinely fun.

Until recently, I was typical: a pizza eater, never maker. What prompted a conversion, I can’t say. Maybe a bump on the head.

As I set out to learn how to do it, this much I knew: Commercial pizzerias use flour that is unusually high in protein, as much as 14 percent or 15 percent. This accounts for the remarkably elastic doughs. But working with high-protein flour is difficult.

So I phoned Sue Gray, director of product development at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vt.,who assured me that a good all-purpose flour was fine and working it would not be difficult.

Her use of "good" merits stressing here. Most flour packages don’t list protein ratios, so go for flour from a reputable producer. King Arthur all-purpose has one of the highest standards, with 12.7 percent protein.

My second question concerned flour age. When overtaken by the impulse to bake, I tend to forget that I already have flour, and buy more, meaning I have cupboards full of flour of indeterminate age.

What about that sack that might go back to last Thanksgiving? Gray assured me that if it hadn’t attracted pests, or absorbed funky smells, it was probably fine.

White flour is produced only from the milled endosperm of wheat grain, she explained, and not the seed coating, so there are no oily constituents to become rancid. But whole-wheat flour, which contains the milled seed coating and its protective oils, goes rancid within three months, she warned.

She quickly added that whole-wheat flour wasn’t right for pizza anyway. It’s too bitter and the bran interferes with the elasticity of the dough. If you see whole-wheat pizza on a pizzeria menu, it’s pandering to whole food masochists. Just say no.

Five basics

Pizza recipes, like most formulas in baking books, tell us what to do, but rarely why, so I went to Danielle Forestier, a San Francisco Bay Area baking instructor recommended by a wheat physiologist at the University of California, Davis.

Forestier was only too happy to explain how pizza dough works, starting with the roles played by each of the basic ingredients — flour, yeast, water, oil and salt.

The flour, yeast and water start fermentation, she said. Flour consists mainly of starch (along with that 12 percent to 15 percent protein). When you add water and yeast, the yeast will begin to ferment the starch, forming gas bubbles, which make the dough rise. It will also convert a certain amount of the starch to sugar, transforming a dull, starchy taste into the sweet, wheaten notes that we associate with good bread.

As the yeast works on the starch, it’s the pizza-maker’s job to go to work on the protein, she said. We do this by kneading. The water converts the protein into an elastic, gelatinous state. As we knead, these protein gels, or glutens, will form the bonds that make the dough elastic, and then extensible into pizza shapes. When it comes to kneading, it is just like bread. We should not knead by pinning dough with one hand and pulling with the other. This will tear the glutens. Instead, we should fold it to trap air, then press and roll — fold, press and roll.

The water and added olive oil also serve to keep the dough supple. The best way to understand what water does is to picture what happens as it evaporates during baking, when the crust becomes firm, and then what happens as bread becomes stale: Those proteins are heading back to their original grainy state.

The salt will act as seasoning, but it will also slow the fermentation so the dough doesn’t rise too fast, and the yeast has time to convert more starch to sugar. A touch of this sweetness is desirable in pizza crust, she explained. Unlike sourdough, it stands up to the acidity of tomato sauce.

Forestier doesn’t like using food processors to mix dough because they overheat it. Heat, more than yeast quantity, she says, will dictate how fast the dough ferments and rises. The hotter the faster, the cooler the slower.

Most recipes call for dried yeast. The recipe we give here is for a fast-rising, same-day pizza dough. But once you master it, try reducing the yeast slightly (by one-third is about right), then allowing the dough to ferment slowly in the refrigerator for a day, or as long as three days.

"If you let the fermentation go a long time, you begin to develop organic acid byproducts, and they contribute a lot to flavor," explained Forestier. "The bakers who are doing no-time doughs, it comes out looking nice and has nice air bubbles, but it gets stale very quickly and has a flat one-note taste."

With pizza, which is eaten right away, a fast dough is no crime, she added. But allowing it to rise overnight, and making the sauce in advance, makes it perfect for parties.

On the big night, all you have to do is heat up the oven, roll the dough and assemble the pizzas.

Although you don’t need special equipment to make pizza, it helps. There is no crime in baking pizza on a greased and floured cookie sheet. But it won’t help you overcome the home baker’s single greatest pizza-making obstacle. Oven heat.

A commercial pizza oven will easily sit at 600 degrees. A restaurant’s wood-burning oven will be even hotter, 800 degrees. Meanwhile, even if we preheat home ovens to 500 degrees, they lose at least 100 degrees the minute we open the door. The result can be a thick, doughy, undercooked crust.

The trick, then, if using a cookie sheet, is to be sure the crust is thin in the center.

Or use a pizza stone. Set one of these in your oven and it will help trap the heat that is so easily lost in small domestic ovens when the door is opened.

To bake on a stone, you’ll also need a bread peel (the flat paddle-like pizza-slider), either wood or metal, to slip the dough onto it.

One last thing: Home pizza-making is a pie-at-a-time business. Roll out, top, bake. One at a time.

Tomato sauce for pizza

Many pizza recipes use raw tomato sauce. The result is tart and one-dimensional.

This sauce is lightly cooked and made with caramelized onions. It calls for fresh herbs, but dried work too. If using dried herbs, skip the sage and rosemary, and use only a pinch of combined dried oregano, parsley and basil.

In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and stir to completely dissolve. Let it fizz for about 15 minutes. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture, 2 1/2 cups of the flour and the salt, olive oil and water. Mix with a wooden spoon until you have a batter.

Sprinkle a work surface generously with flour. Transfer the batter to the floured surface. Knead in the remaining 1 cup flour a little at a time, kneading for 8 to 10 minutes in all. The dough should be soft and elastic but not sticky; add a little bit more flour if needed. Shape the dough into a ball.

Line a large bowl with a clean linen dish towel. Dust the towel generously with flour. Set the dough in it, fold the towel over the top and mist lightly with water, leaving it just damp enough so the dough doesn’t dry out. (Alternatively, use olive oil to lightly coat the inside of the bowl; turn the dough to coat the surface.) Making sure there is room for the dough to at least double in size, cover the bowl with a plate. Let the dough rest in a warm place for 1 hour.

Sprinkle flour on a work surface. Divide the dough into quarters and form each piece into a tight, smooth ball, kneading it to push the air out. Place the dough balls on a lightly floured surface, cover them and let rise for 1 hour. Or rub olive oil on the surface of the balls to coat, place them on a cookie sheet, cover with a towel and let them rise in the refrigerator overnight.

Makes 4 10-inch pizza, or 8 servings. Each serving: 222 calories; 6 grams protein; 37 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 5 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 436 mg. sodium.

Adapted from “Angeli Caffe Pizza Pasta Panini” by Evan Kleiman