“I don’t like food, I love it. And if I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.” – Anton Ego, Disney-Pixar’s “Ratatouille”

Continuing the foodie theme we seem to be exploring here at Being Michael’s Daddy, today I present to you – at the request of the illustrious WeaselMomma – my take on pizza.

Note: the simple recipe for pizza dough is at the bottom of the post, in case you wish to skip over my long-winded blathering.

First of all, let it be known that I love food (this should be fairly evident, given my recent proclamation concerning my extensive avoirdupois and antipathy thereof), and I like to cook. I consider myself to be fairly adept in the kitchen, having learned a range of skills over the years. Now I wouldn’t claim to be so tremendously talented as to think I could stand in a contest on the Food Network (my wife and I love the FN show “Chopped”, where they hand the chefs a basket full of truly strange ingredients and expect them to whip up a dish that’s creative and delicious: “Okay, chefs! Please open your baskets. We have sea urchin, whole cloves, the Sunday New York Times, and a bag of glass shards. You have thirty minutes, and the time starts now.”), but I do think I can put my own spin on an existing recipe and have it come out pretty good.

To cook well, I believe you have to really love food. Even if a meal were prepared by a skilled Cordon Bleu chef, it’s easy to tell in the finished product whether the love is there.

Myself, I love a good pizza. Making them as well as eating them.

There were a number of pizza places in the town where I grew up, but only one of them readlly did pizza right, as far as I was concerned.

It was the crust that really did it for me: bready and soft, slightly crisp and well done on the bottom, soft in the middle, and having a lightly crunchy but large and fluffy edge. Since moving away, I found only one place that came close to having that kind of crust.

Nearly every place that makes pizza blows it on the crust: thin and waxy in some cases, floppy and insubstantial in others. Then there are the ones who make a pizza taste like they slapped pepperoni, cheese and spaghetti sauce on a huge Saltine cracker. And don’t get me started on the delivery chains.

In this vast pizza wasteland, I decided the only way to get a decent one was to make it myself.

At its heart, pizza dough is very simple. You really only need four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt.

Over the years I’ve perfected the recipe and added a few ingredients, and changed it from a scripted procedure into an artistic expression.

Before you begin, please understand that I let my dough rise for six hours. It takes time… but it makes all the difference. So for dinner at 6:00, I start in at noon.

Step one: the water
It’s important to provide a good foundation for your crust. The water is the thing. Filtered only. Not distilled, just filtered from the icky stuff and bad tastes. Put about four cups into a microwave-safe bowl and zap it on high for about five minutes, to get it to near boiling. Pour back and forth from one bowl to another. This removes nearly all of the chlorine; the heat and the agitation will let the chlorine escape from the water while letting air in.

Pour off all but two cups of water. Add a tablespoon of sugar. This gives the yeast something to nibble on while they’re waiting for the rest of the ingredients.

Step two: the yeast
When the water comes down to 116 degrees, add four and a half teaspoons of active dry yeast.

Let it sit there for seven to ten minutes. This is the “blooming” stage. Some say it’s not necessary, but I think it helps. In my experience, it gets the yeast good and ready to start going to town on the flour.

Step three: the flour and stuff
I use King Arthur White Bread Flour. Bread flour is a finer grain than all-purpose, and has a higher protein content. You can’t beat it for making pizza dough. Dump in about two cups of flour and stir. In truth, I don’t bother measuring anymore; once you’ve done this enough you can go by consistency (in all you’ll probably use about six cups). Now add three healthy pinches of salt, and about two tablespoons of olive oil.

Keep adding and stirring in flour about ½ cup at a time, until it turns into a loose dough ball. Now you’re ready for the real fun.

Step four: Kneading
This is where so-so dough becomes really good dough.

Kneading is the thing that releases the gluten from the wheat, and makes the dough springy. Without kneading, you end up with a big biscuit. Not tasty. At least, not if you’re aiming for pizza.

I like to knead on a silicone mat, because pretty much nothing sticks to it. But any floured board will do, you just gotta keep ahead of the dough so it doesn’t stick to the board.

With the dough ball on the floured board, press it down, fold it over and repeat. That’s really all there is to it. Oh, and put your back in to it. This is how I justify eating four slices instead of just three; I figure I’ve already burned off the calories just in the kneading.

I like to go for about ten minutes of this, pressing, folding, stretching, punching. Trust me: all that violence is therapeutic. Get your kids involved. It’ll keep them from punching each other for a little while.

Toss flour on to it from time to time to keep it from sticking. Be secure in the fact that you’ll go through quite a bit of added flour just doing this part.

After ten minutes, let the dough rest for a bit. You’ll be able to finish it off in round two.

While you’re waiting, wash out the mixing bowl you made the dough in. You’ll need it for the rising process.

With the bowl rinsed and dried, get back to beating that dough to a pulp kneading, for another five minutes or so.

Once it’s fully kneaded, form it into a ball, coat it well with olive oil spray (it comes in a handy spray can these days – better living through science!) and plop it in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and let it sit on the counter for four hours.

After four hours, lift the towel and punch it down once. Replace the towel. After two more hours, the dough is ready to use. It’ll make about five 12” pizzas.

To form the crust, grab a baseball-sized wad of the dough and form it into a ball. Coat it with flour so it doesn’t stick to everything. Put it on a flour-coated rolling board and roll it flat and stretch it out some.

You can toss if you like (that’s what I do) or you can just roll it out until it’s the size you like. Keep in mind that tossing is nicer for making that large, fluffy crust edge. You can roll it out thick or thin, it’s up to you.

Essentials
Another thing I like to use is a pizza peel. I have two of them; that way I can be working on one and scooting pies out of the oven with the other. It’s also handy to have a handle on your rolling board, since while you’re putting toppings on your pizza you want to give it the shake test to be sure it hasn’t stuck to the board; otherwise getting it off the board and into the oven is going to be a very frustrating adventure. Just give it a few back and forth shakes with each topping addition; the pizza should slide back and forth. If it doesn’t, carefully lift up one corner and toss a little bit of flour underneath. Repeat until it does slide. Keep doing that test until you’re ready to put the pizza in the oven.

The last essential for making pizzas is a good pizza stone. I have two of those as well. The best pizzas are baked hot and fast (no wisecracks, NukeDad), and to keep the heat up when you’re opening the oven door constantly there needs to be a decent thermal mass in the oven. Pizza stones are made for this. They’re large stone disks you can get at decent kitchen supply stores. They can pretty much live in your oven full time.

About half an hour before you intend to bake your first pie, set the oven to 475. It needs to take a good long time to reach full heat and get those pizza stones good and hot through and through.

Bake time for the average pie is about 8 minutes at 475. Your mileage may vary.

Toppings
I have not yet perfected my own sauce (though I did get a very good recipe from Darrin at Dad’s Dish), but the best sauce I’ve been able to find commercially is Contadina (in a can, not the squeeze bottle). Every time I find it on sale somewhere I snap up six or eight cans. It’s just the right level of sweet and savory for my taste.

Fresh mozzarella is the best, but it’s really hard to shred. If you can deal with big cheese wads on your pizza (making a Margherita pizza is done best this way), great – go for the fresh stuff. If you can find a way to dry it out sufficiently to make it shreddable without turning into a mass of cheese mache’, or if you don’t mind spending half your day cutting the cheese into little tiny individual strips, then good on you. Other than that, you can get by with the pre-shredded mozzarella in a bag at the store.

Beyond that, it’s all up to you. I like olives, pepperoni and green pepper myself. My wife and I have been happy with the Hormel turkey pepperoni, believe it or not. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t like turkey anywhere but on Thanksgiving and maybe as smoked sliced sandwich meat. Ground turkey is an abomination and has no place in my house. But the turkey pepperoni is actually pretty dang good, and a healthier substitute for the regular stuff.

When you pull the pie out, let it cool for about 90 seconds before you cut! Let the heat redistribute, and the cheese have a chance to firm up just a smidge, otherwise you’ll have naked crust and a pile of boiling hot toppings in your lap at first bite.

Bon Appétit, everyone!

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The basic recipe:
Put two cups of lukewarm water into a bowl.
Add one tablespoon of sugar, stir.
Sprinkle with four and a half teaspoons of active dry yeast, wait seven minutes.
Stir in two cups of flour.
Add three pinches of salt, and two tablespoons of olive oil.
Stir, and add two to three cups of flour.
Turn out onto a floured board and knead for ten minutes, adding flour as needed to keep it from sticking.
Let dough rest for two minutes.
Continue kneading for five minutes.
Form into a ball, spray with olive oil, place in bowl, cover with damp towel.
Let rise four hours.
Punch down.
Let rise two hours.
At this point, the dough is ready to be rolled, stretched and/or tossed into pizza crusts. With toppings added, bake at 475 degrees for eight minutes.