If you know me, you know that I have come to detest “pizza joint” pizzas.  I especially abhor pizzas made by big national and semi-national companies such as Domino’s, Little Caesar’s, Papa Whatever’s and various other pizzerias run by people of questionable baking skill or talent.  I’ve come to realize over the last several years that pizza is an art form, not fast food, and that care in the construction of and prudence in the selection of pizza ingredients is necessary to make a delicious pizza.  I’ve gone from having a one-night-a-week-delivered-pizza dinner with my family to almost entirely avoiding pizza chains over the span of a few years, and it all began with my stint as a Pampered Chef rep.

As a Pampered Chef representative I learned that a pizza stone is imperative for good pizza making.  Conversely, though, the Pampered Chef method of using the stone was not the most effective way of making a delicious pizza.  Actually, it turned out to be the worst way.  Basically, to cook the pizza the pie was assembled on a room temperature stone with a pre-made dough and stock toppings.  It was then baked in a preheated stove at around 350 degrees or so for a half hour or so.  What this produced was a pizza with a barely cooked crust and toppings that were cooked thoroughly.  Obviously, this pizza was not delicious.  Heck, it wasn’t even good.  I toyed with the recipe a bit changing the method only slightly, never really yielding improved results.  Then came Alton Brown and his Food TV program, Good Eats.  The sun shone bright and the angels sang.

By the point of Alton Brown’s entry, I’d already invested about a year’s time in figuring out the secrets to an amazing crust with delectable toppings.  Alton Brown’s advice was simply this: the baking stone goes into a stove preheated to a whopping 500 degrees for 60 minutes.  Then the pizza goes on the stone utilizing a pizza peel.  Ah!  Advice from a master rarely ever is wrong.

So, then I had a method.  The problem that faced me was finding a decent recipe for a hearty, yet light crust for thin pizzas.  The one that I’d been using was good, but not excellent.  It was missing a little crunch in texture and a little succulence in flavor.  I’d made adjustments to the basic pizza dough recipe like adding some wheat flour and more yeast, less yeast, more sugar.  Nothing really made it better or, at least, more flavorful and robust.  Last year I decided to try an amalgamation of a bread recipe that I absolutely adore from Baking Illustrated and the standard pizza crust recipe that I’d been trying to perfect.  Finally, I’d come up with something that seemed to hit my senses the way I wanted it to.

The recipe for my pizza crust is divided into two sections.  The first part is the mixing of the sponge that will be the wet, sour dough that will be added into the second part, the main dough mixture.  Here is the recipe as I have it recorded at the moment.  It makes three approximately 14-15 inch thin crust pizzas.

Superb Pizza Crust

Sponge

2 cups white all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp. instant yeast

1 cup room temperature water

Combine all ingredients in mixer bowl.  Combine ingredients on low setting with a dough hook until it forms a sticky mass, about 3-4 minutes.  Move sponge to a medium sized bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Let rise for at least 5 hours or, preferably, overnight.  Refrigerate after rising for up to 24 hours until ready to combine with pizza dough.

Pizza Dough

3 cups white all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp. instant yeast

1 3/4 cups warm water (110 degrees)

1 tbs. sugar

1 tbs. salt

2 tbs. olive oil

If sponge is refrigerated, remove sponge from the refrigerator to allow the sponge to reach room temperature again.

Combine water and yeast and let stand for 10 minutes until foamy on top.  In the meantime, combine flour, salt, and sugar in mixing bowl.  Add olive oil to the water/yeast mixture and then pour into dry ingredients in mixer.  Mix with dough hook until a sticky mass is formed about 4-5 min.  Shut off mixer, cover bowl loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, add the sponge to the dough and mix with the dough hook at low speed until combined, 3-4 minutes.  Mix at medium/low speed for one more minute until dough pulls from the sides of the bowl but is still sticky at the bottom.  Remove dough from the mixing bowl and transfer to a lightly oiled bowl at least three times the size of the dough mass and cover tightly with plastic wrap.  Allow to rest in a draft free area for about 2 hours, or until dough is at least doubled in size.

Once dough has risen, pour onto a floured surface and roll into a thick log.  At this point, start preheating the stove at 500 degrees with the pizza stone on the bottom oven rack.  Allow to preheat for an hour.  Using a dough cutter cut three equal portions from the log and then shape each into a round ball on the floured surface.  Cover each loosely with plastic wrap or light towel and allow to rest for 45 minutes.

Form pizza dough into crusts by flattening on a lightly floured pizza peel.  Using fingertips, flatten the dough to the outer crust and work the dough top and bottom until the middle area is thin and the edges are thicker.  Assemble the dough onto a appropriately sized sheet of parchment paper, trimmed to fit the pizza.  Lightly brush the edges of the dough with olive oil.  Top with your favorite toppings and insert the pizza on the parchment on to the pizza stone using a pizza peel and bake for about 10 minutes.

So, there it is.  After about two year’s worth of experimentation, this is the best recipe I have come up with for some excellent homemade pizza crust.  What about the toppings, you ask?  Be patient my friends, I’ll cover that some time very soon.  Until then, fill me in on some of your own ideas or secrets for awesome pizzas.  Bon appetit!