Pizza Dough
(For home--not at Pontillo's)

This is lovingly executed following the recipe of Giada de Laurentiis

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups warm water
1 (1/4 oz) active dry yeast
5 cups all-purpose flour (and extra for dusting)

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt 
olive oil

Preheat the oven to nothin'-----you aren't cooking yet.  That's tomorrow.  

Put water into a small bowl and add yeast.  Stir with your (clean) hand until it has all melted into the water.  In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt together.  Add the yeasty water to the flour mixture and mash together until a dough starts to form.  (If too dry, add some water--if too wet, you're screwed and should go back to the store, buy more yeast and start over.  I'm kidding, just add more flour.)

 

De-bowl your dough and place on a floured work space.  Knead the dough until your form is a ball that is smooth--when in doubt, keep kneading it.  You'll know what smooth is when you get there as it really does become an almost perfect ball.   My family members know the fold technique where, beyond the kneading, you almost tuck it into itself over and over.

Drizzle the inside of a bowl with your oil and put your dough ball in there covered by a damp kitchen towel.  Store it in a safe, dry place.  It will rise and [nearly] double in size after a couple of hours.  When it has, take it out to your work space and relieve it of any air that has gathered. (Just press down on it.)

Cut into 3 equal size pieces and tuck 'em again into 3 balls (at this point each will become a near-flawless, perfectly smooth orb is in your hands). Put them in 3 oiled bowls and cover (again) with a damp kitchen towel and let rest for an hour.  Remove the towel and wrap in plastic wrap and throw in fridge over night and wait till tomorrow.

Notes:

This recipe was made directly from an existing recipe---really nothing is changed here.  Though I know backwards and forwards how to make pizza dough from years of working at our family pizza shops, I only know how to make enough dough in a rip your arm off size mixer and have never made a small amount.  This is a first time thing, so I knead to be gentle--see what i did there?

Tweaks:

The only thing I tweaked was the fancy wording or overly specific things in the recipe.  I think I used sea salt.  It may not be fine sea salt but, truth be told, it coulda been crushed sidewalk salt--I don't really care.  Salt is salt and that's just "fine" by me. 
I also have our family fold technique mentioned in the above steps.

Cheats:

This whole post is a pretty much a cheat against the nature of this bog.  One big (credit-given) hack of a cheat because I didn't even try to make this one my own.

No Verdict on this one as the final recipe will yield a success or failure.

Do you want to be on the mailing list or have recipes you want to share with me?  Contact me at themaniccheater@gmail.com.