Great Eats with Petes

Yes I live in New York and I have a pizza place on every corner (and a very good one right down the block) but sometimes you just don’t want to order in. I grew up with my Dad making pizza at home and yes there were times when we ordered in. There are times when I just want to re-live those times. Since Christmas I have spent some time trying to make good pizza at home. I turned to my Dad because he now lives in Houston where, he can’t find good pizza, so he makes it at home a lot. He suggested I get the Wilton Pizza Pan which you will see me use in this recipe. I have another way that I have been cooking pizza but I will write another post about that next time I use it. The dough that I have found that not only tastes good but is really easy to make is one by Mario Batali. I have tried the traditional yeast, water, flour mixture but it tastes too much like yeast and not enough like pizza. So here you go, my new go to pizza recipe. (I’ll follow up with more as I continue to experiment)

Adapted from Mario Batali’s Italian Grill

3 1/4 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

2 teaspoons instant or rapid rise yeast

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup dry white wine, at room temperature

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

In a bowl fitted with a dough hook attachment place the flour, yeast, salt, sugar, water, wine, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Mix a medium speed until it comes together in a ball and attaches to the hook. Place the remaining oil in a bowl. Take the dough off the hook (it will be sticky) place in in the bowl with the olive oil and form it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with a wet paper towel. Let rise for an hour. It will double in size. This will make enough dough for two thin crust pizzas.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Place some flour on board or on your counter. Place the dough on the board and cut in half. Flour a rolling pin. Roll out the dough to the size of the pan. When rolling out dough roll it from all edges not just in one direction. Place the rolled out dough on the baking sheet. Assemble your pizza. On this pizza I used some marinara sauce I had in the fridge, grated cheese, thin slices of mozzarella, and topped it with sliced prosciutto. Bake pizza for 17-19 minutes (until cheese is melted and crust is crisp). Let it slightly cool, you don’t want to burn the roof of your mouth, and Enjoy!

Tags: dinner, how to, italian, lunch, pizza

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.