Easy and reliable Pizza Dough & Pizza Sauce for beginners

[Tricky]

I am new to this forum but have had my WFO (FB Primo) for nearly 10 years now. Wanted to share a favorite webpage I've used to become a reasonably good at making pizzas (New York style). I struggled at first to get easy workable dough and I'm sure there are others out there like me. I eventually stumbled upon on this website: www.pizzamaking.com. Go to Dough Tools and then the top link Lehman Pizza Dough calculator. I use the recommended settings for hydration (63%) although in more humid months in FL I may use less hydration by a few points. I typically make six 14" dough balls 0.1 thickness 1% salt and no oil no sugar (oil reduces gluten formation I learned). Instant Dry Yeast 1% is what I use. I get a 1lb brick once a year and store in an airtight canister (mason jar would also work well) in pantry. I use All-Trumps flour. In a pinch I suppose a Bread Flour would work reasonably well, or another high gluten flour (Sir Lancelot for example) Mix in a Bosch Universal Plus 800W mixer. My Kitchen-Aid isn't able to easily handle this task. Portion into balls and put in a lightly greased plastic storage container 1qt size, one per container and then put into fridge the day before. I am not sure if this is already posted somewhere in the forum or not. You need a decent digital scale in order to measure the ingredients accurately. Hope this is helpful. The recipe can be adapted for larger or smaller amounts of dough.

For sauce I buy the 28oz(?) canned Whole tomatoes. I use an immersion blender in a bowl with the whole can of tomatoes and liquid adding 1-1/2 Tablespoon of Pizza Seasoning blend and coarsely blending - don't overdo it. Can add additional salt or sugar to taste if you like. I won't get into which brand of Tomatoes is best, but I prefer Cento Organic because they are readily available at local supermarket and relatively inexpensive vs some costly are difficult to find imported brands. I use Penzey's spices brand pizza seasoning, but I'm sure other brands are just fine, and I will be switching to another brand once my Penzey's supply is exhausted. This sauce and dough will get you to making a nice New York style pizza baked between 650-750 degrees in 3-5 minutes. Toppings as desired.

Initially I tried sourdough cultures and ended up with a wet unworkable mess of dough, with many disappointing pizza nights ending in disaster. Put in lots of time effort and money wasted trying to maintain the sourdough culture for very infrequent use. At some point I would like to revisit using sourdough and have a small wine fridge to use to keep the culture in and some vaccum seal mason jar lids with fermentation style valves for proper maintenance of the sourdough. I didn't have these tools when I began. Frankly the above pizzas are pretty great and I haven't since desired trying to make the Neapolitan style pizza again. There is large thread about this over on that site that is quite amazing for those wanting to do Neapolitan style needing guidance.

Thanks for reading and I hope it helps others.
Rick

[Sandieego]

Holy moly! I just read a post from this website. They are really detailed. Like watching the rise of the dough, how many bubbles are in it, keeping rise temperatures constant (in the 60-65 range) and even cite scientific articles and report their own test results. I am starting to use my nearly completed WFO. I have not checked the FB forums how detailed they may be in pizza making, as I am sure they exist). But OMG! I think my pizzas are pretty decent and am hoping to get past the burnt offerings I have had in my first two pizza making sessions. I guess my mix it, wait, stretch it out and cook it approach may need some refining...
Thanks for sharing this.
By the way, no offense to the posters here, there are people there with over 5K posts. Many of them. Did not think there was so much to say about making pizza, but as involved as I got with a pizza oven build, their posts are just as addictive on pizza making.
Not sure if I would start making my own pizza sauce, I use Don Pepino's. No sugar added. Tastes good to me.

[Timothy_W]

A really helpful site. I love recipes in which the author was not too lazy to describe the cooking technology. This is the most productive way to learn recipes and understand the correct cooking technology.