Hi everybody. I'm Leo Spizzirri from the Today what I'm going to show you is a fantastic dough recipe to make authentic New York pizza at home. This dough recipe is really easy to do and I'm going to show you all of my tricks to do it. Right now we're going to be using a dry yeast called Platinum
from Red Star Yeast Corporation. Platinum yeast is a strong yeast that works in an instant, we say, because this yeast does not need to go into water with sugar and bloom. This can go right into your flour and then mixed just as part of the process. The flour that I'm using here today, this is double zero (00) flour. You can use bread flour, you could use all-purpose flour. There is a lot of differences in the protein amount of this flour. If you're going to be working with a dough and leaving this in the refrigerator to mature for maybe 24 or 48 hours, my suggestion to you is to use a little bit heavier flour, somewhere about 14 per cent protein which most of the bread flours that we see on the market are about 14 percent protein. Now if you're going to be using that "Grandma" method where we're going to be making this dough today, it's OK to go with a little bit lighter flour, so an all-purpose flour would be just fine. This is 675 grams of 00 flour. To this I have another 75 grams of semolina flour. This particular one is done in the Italian method. We call this semola rimacinata or reground semolina flour, twice ground, causing this to be very very fine. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to add the semolina into my bowl and I'm going to give this a quick mix with my hands and just kind of incorporate it. If ever you go into the pantry and you start scooping flour to weigh it out and you feel that your flour maybe has the little pebbles, it's like dry inside, this is because maybe some humidity got to it. What I suggest you do if you feel that you have some of those little pebbles or those dry bits of flour, go ahead and sift it. There's something called a sieve, a bakery sieve and it's just basically a screen and you put everything through and then the flour will be nice and open and airy. My Grandma says she used to do this back in a day to make sure that there were no bugs inside but really we're looking to just make sure that none of those little hard beads are inside of this and that's it's a good way to get rid of those. Now my flour is ready. The next thing that I'm going to do, I've got my water. This is 450 grams of water. I'm looking for a water temperature of about 85 to 90 degrees F, a little bit warmer. If we're working in the Grandma method where we're going to be making this dough and utilizing it all in the same day, we're going to be using warmer water. If you choose to use this dough 24 to 48 hours from now, go ahead and use cold water. Your cold water out of your sink, your
tap, should be coming out somewhere about 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Go ahead and add all of your water into the bowl (of the stand mixer). If you use fresh yeast my suggestion would be pull 50 grams of this water out. So out of the 450 grams, put 400 into the bowl and put 50 into a separate bowl
and then dissolve your fresh yeast inside of that water. Then I'm going to tell you when in this process to add that back in. Right now, very simple, I've got sea salt here. This is 21 grams of fine sea salt. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to add my sea salt into the water. You might notice that this is similar to making a Neapolitan dough and the reason is because the New York-style dough is actually a very close cousin of the Neapolitan dough. When we talk about the immigrants coming to the United States from Italy and those people who settled in New York were kind of making that
Italian style pizza but just making it with whatever was available equipment-wise, ingredient-wise and they were making it here so this is where the New York Pizza actually started from. I'm taking a whisk and I'm just going to give this a quick stir and I'm going to dissolve that salt into the water. Very simple. Now at this point I'm going to take all of my flour, I'm going to add all of the flour inside of the bowl and I'm going to start my machine on the first speed. Now what happens is, as this begins to mix I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to add my yeast right now because the water is starting to come from the bottom and up through the flour and then this is the perfect time for the yeast to go ahead and grab inside of it as we're creating gluten. We're going to fold the yeast actually into the gluten and this dough is all of a sudden coming together into a nice little ball in the middle and as the hook continues to spin, it's pulling in the flour from the side very gently and it's very homogeneous, would be a very easy dough. The next thing we've got, I've got my extra virgin olive oil. This is 12 grams of extra virgin olive oil. As soon as this comes up and we can see now that this dough starting to form a ball I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to drizzle in all of my olive oil. This type of mixer is called a stand mixer. In the professional world we would call this a planetary style mixer. This is traditionally known as a little bit more destructive way of mixing because the hook sometimes has a tendency to tear at the dough so as this dough hook is mixing, I'm actually not going to let this dough mix all the way to completion because I want to finish it by kneading it on the counter. I can see that my dough is actually coming to the point where it's starting to feel very soft and I'm going to take all of the dough out of the machine because it's at the point now where it's already created like a nice almost homogeneous ball but it's still not very smooth and I want to finish this by hand. The reason I'm going to finish this by hand is because I don't want this dough to be very dense. By doing this by hand I'm not going to destroy the dough with the machine and my hands are going to let this dough come together very naturally, very relaxed and the final result is going to give you a more relaxed, more open structure dough that'll work very well. Now what I'm doing is I'm working with the heel of my palm and my fingertips. I'm going to take the dough at the part that's farthest to me or closest to you. I'm going to push down with my palm and I'm going to pull back with my fingertips. So that was down and back towards me, down towards you back towards me. I'm pushing with my heel and pulling back with my fingers. and I'm going to continue to do this until this becomes kind of an elongated log or maybe even a little burrito. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this again so it's long ways towards you and I'm going to push forward and I'm going to continue to do this. This is one of those things that now you're going to do this a lot and you're going to find a rhythm for yourself and you're going to feel that you don't even need to pay attention to what you're doing, you can hold a conversation with somebody and continue to knead dough and the dough is going to be kneaded and it's going to be worked very well. The other nice thing is that I'm working on top of a marble surface. Working on top of a piece of stone is also going to help control the temperature of your dough because the stone is cold and it's going to keep your dough nice and cool. If we let this dough warm up too much, the yeast inside of the dough is going to be very active and what's going to happen is the yeast is going to let off all of that carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol and it's going to cause your dough to rise very very quickly, maybe even before you're ready for it so this is a little pro tip. I like to work on top of a stone countertop but if you don't have a piece of stone, you can easily use a wood cutting board even maybe a plastic type cutting board, something that's really nice and smooth. With very little work at all you'll see that my dough is becoming very nice and elastic, it's actually changing colors. It's becoming very very smooth and this is exactly what we're looking for. My dough is actually kneaded to the point where I like this so with maybe just a few minutes, 2 or 3 minutes after coming out of the mixer that's all we're really looking to do is just complete this process because now what I'm going to do, I'm going to form this dough into a nice ball and all I'm doing is kind of just pulling back and pull it forward and then this ball comes together just like this. Now what I'm going to do is, I'm going to take this dough I'm going to stick it inside a bowl with a little bit of olive oil coating the inside. At that point I'm going to put a piece of plastic wrap nice and tight across the top and I'm going to let this rise for about 30 to 60 minutes at ambient temperature in my kitchen. At that point, what's going to happen is Mother Nature is going to finish mixing this. What's going to happen is the water is going to finish absorbing into the flour and you're going to feel that this dough becomes very soft, very smooth, very elastic. At that point after about 30 to 60 minutes when you see that the dough has doubled in size, your dough is ready to divide. Actually I have one here right now that's ready. I stored this with a cover on, the little dish towel on top to keep it nice and warm and you can see the volume of this, how soft it is. This is doubled in size. I press down and I can see my finger indentations inside so this dough is ready to divide. A dough like this I'm going to suggest that you should divide into three to four dough balls. If you're making pizzas at home especially in a residential type oven like I have here, a 12-inch pizza would be perfect to make for yourself or for your family and guests. I would suggest that you take this dough and divide it into four portions. If you have a scale, go ahead and use a scale. That's a really good one to use. If not, you could just very simply take this and divide it, just by eye, cut it down the middle and then cut it into two pieces. I'm going to use my knife just like this. I'm going to open this dough kind of down the middle. Then I'm going to take each piece, cut that again down the middle and here we have a dough portion. I want to take my dough just like this and what I'm going to do is, I'm going to stretch it into something that looks like a square. If I take the points at either end, fold them over inside of each other, that's the way to start. Then take the opposite points, turn them in to each other. Now we've created something that kind of looks like a little square. The easiest way that I can show you to make a dough ball is to continue taking the points wherever you see these points and rolling these in. Then once you get it to where all the points are in just take them and bring them all to the middle, something that kind of looks like a a change purse if that makes sense. As we continue to pull the dough at the top, the bottom of the dough is going to be very nice and smooth and it's going to get very nice and tight. This is basically all we're doing. We've created a very beautiful nice round dough ball. We take this dough ball and all the other dough balls after they're rounded, place each one of these dough balls into a lightly oiled bowl or container. Then wrap each one with plastic wrap. If you are using the Grandma method, put those on the side in your kitchen ambiently and when you see that they've doubled in size, they're ready to go ahead and stretch. What I like to do though is as soon as the dough has been divided and we make the dough balls, still put them each inside of a bowl, still wrap each one with plastic wrap, but then stick them into your refrigerator for about 24 to 48 hours. When you pull them out of the refrigerator, leave them rest at ambient temperature for about 90 minutes. This is going to allow that yeast to warm up. It's going to become active again. It's going to allow the gluten to start warming up, making the dough more soft. I've got one right here. I'm going to show you my method to stretch a pizza dough ball. So now here's the same dough ball that we did. All I've done is I've rested this dough. My dough has been rested for about 24 hours and it's very smooth looking on top, a little shiny. Then what I'm going to do I've got some of that semola rimacinata flour. I'm going to use this as dusting flour. I'm going to give this a quick dust right on top of the dough and then right in front of me on my counter, my surface I'm going to give this just a little bit of flour Then very gently I'm going to let this kind of fall into my hand because I want to let the air that's trapped inside of this dough, I want it to remain trapped because as I start to push the dough into a nice round all those air bubbles will get trapped and it's going to create a lighter texture dough because you'll be able to see all those bubbles. I'm going to take a little bit of flour like this, just put a little flour on the top and then I'm going to give this a turn into my flour, turn it once more. Now I've got a right nice round circle here. The idea is that I want one fingers width all the way around the edge. With that in mind I'm going to draw an imaginary line down the equator of the dough. I'm going to use the pads of my fingers from the second knuckle going all the way to the tip and very gently I'm going to press almost to the point where I feel the counter and I'm not feeling any more of that sliding of the dough under my fingers. And as I do this I'm going to be able to bring my fingers around and I'm going to leave one fingers width from the edge. Now I only started in the middle and worked my way towards the edge. I did this on purpose. Now I'm going to take the dough and I'm going to flip it over like this. I can see where my fingers just were. Then this side of the dough is very puffy and what I'm going to do is I'm going to push using the same method, I'm going to push my fingers forward and bring this around and I'm just going to press that one finger's width from the edge all the way around. We call this beading the crust and what we're doing is now we're kind of making this compressed area causing now this pocket which we call the cornicione in Italian. The cornicione will open up and will be very nice and light and airy. I'm going to take the dough I'm going to turn it 90 degrees. I flipped it over, turned it 90 degrees and I'm going to do the exact same thing, starting in the middle and working towards the edge. The reason I'm starting in the middle is because if I was to start here and work my way to the other side, there would be such a buildup of all those gases that the air would escape out the other side and we'd lose them. By this method, I'm trapping them. I'm going to take the dough again I'm going to fold it over and I'm going to just go over and push to the other side, very gently creating this nice round surface. When we're doing Italian style pizzas, we're doing this very slow and I'm using a lot of flour here. Traditionally in the professional pizza world we wouldn't use even a quarter of this amount of flour. What I'm going to do, I've got a lot of flour on my dough. Feel free at home to use flour because this is going to help the dough from sticking to everything. But you can see already with just using my fingertips, I've got a nice round circle here. I'm going to hold my hands up like I'm going to box and my knuckles here are lined up, these straight lines. When I lift the dough up onto my knuckles I'm looking to line up this line of my knuckles with the edge of the cornicione here and the idea is that I'm going to stretch from the sides, not from the middle. One of the biggest complaints, or phone call questions that I get here at the Academy is, I stretch my dough and it gets really thin in the middle or I rip it in the middle. I'm going to show you how to do this so you don't have to worry about that. I'm going to lift the dough. I'm going to put it back onto my hands and again I'm taking my knuckles and I'm lining them up with the edge of the dough I'm going to do this on both sides and all I'm going to do, I'm giving this just a pull. Depending on the size of pizza if you're only making a 12-inch pizza, only stretch 12 inches. Then I've got my knuckles right here on the edge at 12 o'clock, I'm holding it and then I'm going to put my knuckles at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock if that makes sense. Give this the same stretch that we just did. What we're doing is we're stretching from the edge of the dough not the middle. We're allowing gravity to stretch it the rest of the way. Once we have this so that it's stretched I'm going to start working from the edge on the top of the dough and what I'm going to do, I'm going to hold this to the top, I'm holding this right at the edge, you can see where my thumbs are and all I'm going to do is I'm very gently going to work my dough in a circle. I divided my dough balls a little bit bigger so instead of dividing into four when I did my dough yesterday I divided my dough into 3, so this dough ball is a little larger. It's about 412 grams because my pizza is going to be 14 inches and not 12 inches. So with just a little bit of work all the way around the edge all I'm doing is just kind of working my way in this circle, gravity is pulling this dough down and then if I put this down just like this you can see I've got this very nice uniform round circle. This is exactly what we're looking for. This is as simple as it is. Now I've been doing this for a very long time. Don't get frustrated when you see that I opened up this dough ball very simple. This is something that takes practice. Just keep practicing. Use this method and you'll be able to stretch dough with your eyes closed. If you like the content that you see please subscribe to our Channel. Besides this dough, there's going to be other dough formulas on our Channel and then I'm also going to be giving you some of the beautiful New York Pizza toppings that we make here at the Academy. I'm going to give you all the recipes to be able to make those, so if you go to our Channel please click subscribe. If you want to find out more about the North American Pizza and Culinary Academy, you could search for us online at Pizza Culinary Academy.com You can also find us on social media by searching @ Pizza Culinary Academy. We're on Facebook. We're also on Instagram. If you want to find out about me Leo Spizzirri, you can find me across social media at @Ask Leo Pizza. I hope to see all of you in class very soon. Thank you very much.
