Hi everyone and welcome back to my kitchen. Today we're talking about pizza. Now before you click off
and say I am not the guy you would normally go to for pizza,
I will tell you that. I'm going to show you what I think is sort of a foolproof way
to approach it with lots of ins and outs. I'm going to give you
the flavors of Mexico, but on a pizza with tomato salsa, some goat cheese, some bacon, a little queso
añejo your and cilantro over the top. This is been our family pizza
for decades and decades. And I guarantee you, once you make it,
it will become your family pizza as well. As we go through this, I'm
going to point out some of the things that will take it to the next level. So the first thing that we have to talk
about is the ingredients for the dough. And I'm starting here
with flour that I have measured out. And you can see that it is on a scale here because measuring flour
without a scale is always going to be a hit or miss kind of proposition,
because way you pack it into the volume measures, the cups, you can pack
way more in or not very much in, meaning that you really literally
have different quantities of flour. So this is about four
and a third cups of flour. If you sort of stir the flour up,
put your dry measure into it and sweep it off the top,
leveling it. And that will give you about about four
and a third cups of that. But if you put it on to a scale,
I've got 607 grams here, you can get that specific when you're using one of these
inexpensive scales that are incredibly easy
to find these days. So if you do any baking,
I suggest you get one of these scales. So I've got that measured
out. Now, what kind of flour is it? Usually the best pizzas will be made with something
that's like all purpose flour, but one that has a higher protein
concentration in it, more gluten in it. And so if you choose the King
Arthur brand, then you're going to be at almost
that 12% protein. You can look right on the bag
and see where that is. But any any all purpose flour will kind of work for this. But the higher
the gluten content for your purpose, the better the puff will be
and the more chew you will get in your pizza,
which is something that I'm going for. Now, you'll notice that this is
King Arthur, but it says double O on it. That's the absolute finest ground,
a version of this all purpose flour. And I'll tell you, it will give you
a really beautiful looking pizza crust. Not all the stores carry this,
but you can easily order it online if you want to take that next step up. Okay. So we've got that measured out. Now let's go to the other very,
very simple ingredients. So we've got water, yeast, salt,
and I'm going to put olive oil in here. I'm working with just room temperature water here,
and I've got one and two thirds cups. Again, if you were just going to
to weigh it out here, you would go to 364 grams
and that would give you exactly the right amount of hydration
for this much flour I'm going to put in this instant or. Yeah, instant yeast you could use
or any kind of granulated dry yeast you could put in here. I'm not going to delve into that. There's lots to say about it. But for all intents and purposes, just take a package of the yeast
and put it in here. If you've got this doesn't measure
small amounts very well, but if you have a jeweler's scale, again,
this is totally geeky, you would measure out nine grams of the of the instant yeast
or the active dry yeast. And then I'm going to put into the water
also four teaspoons of salt here. Now, that's four teaspoons. I'm using the diamond crystal salt here,
which has a slightly different volume than other salts do. But I find this works really well
with four teaspoons of that. And then I am going to whisk that until I see that it's dissolved. That's what I'm looking for
is just to dissolve those two things. In this year's. Okay, I've been whisking this now
for about a minute or so to make sure that it is well dissolved and then pour
that in with the flour there. Nothing, no residue at all at the bottom. I've got a quarter cup of olive oil
that I'm going to put in, which I think makes a more crackly
crust, crackly, crisp crust. And I like that a lot. And then just with a large spoon, I'm
going to stir all of this stuff together. And once I have stirred it together, it'll
look sort of like a shaggy matte mass. That's
what that first stage stage will be. And just look down in here now and you can see what this looks like. It doesn't look completely
like it's come together yet. There's a little bit of dry stuff
still on the bottom of the bowl there. But this is the moment that I just
walk away from it, let it sit for four or 5 minutes and you'll start
to get more rehydration of that dry flour, and it'll start to come together
a little bit more. I'll meet you back here
in, say, four or 5 minutes. Let's look at this dough. Now, I'm just going to put it out here
on the countertop. You can see why I call it Shaggy
looking there. It hasn't really come together. Now, you have two options at this point. You can need it with a machine or by hand. I'll show you
if you're going to be doing it by hand, what the kneading process is like. I like to kind of roll it back and forth
like that, turning it in 90 degrees
each time, a quarter of a turn. And then once I start to feel that it's gotten sort of sticky,
meaning that all of the the dough has I mean,
all of the flour has been rehydrated. I'll sprinkle a little bit of flour
over the top of it. I mean, underneath it
and over the top of it on both. And then I'll start what I consider
to be the real kneading of this. And this would go on for like 10 minutes
or so. So it's fold
the dough down on itself like that and then press away as you go like that,
turn it a quarter of a turn, fold it back over itself
and then press away from you and out. Okay,
so you're stretching the strands of gluten that are in this dough and we want it to look very smooth and we want it to look very, very silky. Okay? It doesn't look like that. Now, that would take about 10 minutes. Or for those of you that have a stand mixer with a dough hook on it, you can just put this in here. I've got the dough hook already attached and then I'm going to just turn it on about a medium ish, medium to medium low speed, and we'll let the dough hook
do this again. We're going to go
probably 8 to 10 minutes on this until it looks very smooth
and very elastic. Okay. I don't know if you can see
exactly how different it looks, but it looks like one smooth, homogenous
hunk of dough right now. And you can also see that it is completely
coming away from the sides of the bowl. And for about the first 5 minutes
of the kneading by machine here,
it was completely stuck to the edges. It was just moving around. That means that we have developed
a lot of gluten here. This is about nine
and a half minutes or so. So I'm going to turn this off and take
the dough off of the dough hook like that. Now, this is a pretty
what we would call hydrated dough. So it's going to be kind of sticky. But you can see if I just dump this out,
I will need to put on some flour here so that it doesn't stick
because it's a sticky dough. And also, when you're getting it out, if you just dip your hand into the flour
container, it will come out much easier that way
and then just bring it out. You're not going to do this. You're going to leave it in the bowl. But if you have been kneading it by hand
and that's what I wanted to show you here, if you have been kneading it by hand,
you want to need it until it looks like this. Just see how much smoother it looks. And it's super elastic. It holds together
really, really beautifully. Okay, now to the rise. I always start this the day before. I want to use it. At this point,
I would cover it with plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator
and just let it rise overnight. And about 2 hours
before baking the pizzas, you would take it out of the refrigerator
and dump it out. I've got one that has risen like that and I want to show you what that's like. This was covered with plastic wrap,
which always tends to stick to it. So I kind of gather it up like that
and then we'll put that over here to the side again with a floured hand. I'm going to take this out. I'm also at that same time deflating it. You can see how it is trapped all of the
bubbles from the yeast in there. So I'm just very, very gently pulling it out and giving it
a little bit of flour on the top. This is such a beautiful dough
to work with. Okay. So the next step that we have to take
is to divide it into dough balls. And I find the easiest,
easiest one to work with is dividing it into six pieces here
so that this would make six sort of about 12 inch pizzas. This is one of the most useful pieces
of equipment you can have in the kitchen because you can scrape things
out of the bowl with it or you could use it
just to cut things up here. I'm going to cut this in half
and then cut each half into about thirds. This is another place here where you could easily use your scale. Let's see what that looks like. Okay. This is going to be much smaller
than this one. So I'm going to take a little piece
off of that first one there. So let's roll them into balls next. It's a very easy thing to do. Lots of people online, you'll see, do this kind of thing
where they're tucking it under. But this is actually a trick
that I learned in Mexico for making conchas those old streusel
topped rolls that they have there. And that is to cup your hand
over the top of it and give gentle pressure to it
as you roll it around. Now, if you put too much flour,
it'll just slide. But if you have just a little bit of flour
on there that gets absorbed, you'll see that
it creates a beautiful sphere like that. One more time. I'll show you that. So you just cup your hand
over the top of it. I have. I should probably have just
a touch more flour on my hand like that and you just start rolling around. Now, you saw it slip there
because it has too much flour on it. But as that flour gets absorbed in here, then I will I will be able to feel it
catching a little bit and be able
to give it a little bit more pressure. And this will produce a beautiful ball,
but that needs a little bit more. I could see that it wasn't
really very together on one side. So that's that. Okay. After you have done
all of the dough balls, then we're going to let these rise
for a couple of hours as we get all of the ingredients together
for the toppings. Okay, just a second. Before we go on to the toppings here,
I forgot to tell you a couple of things. One is that
we're going to let these rise again. So I'm putting them on some parchment
paper here. Or you could just lightly flour
your baking sheet and put them on that lightly
flour them on the top too, because I would cover these
with plastic wrap and then set them aside at a regular room
temperature for them to warm up to room temperature
and then have the opportunity to rise a second time. So I'm going to set these guys over here,
but I wanted to talk about why I started so the night before, because that's
really a big deal that you've done that. So for me, starting it the night before
develops so much more flavor. There are people that will start
their dough three or four days in advance so that it actually takes on
a kind of sour quality, that sourness of sourdough bread. And so a lot of people like that, I'm
doing this without sour dough starter, but at least I have to let it to mature,
I will say, overnight in the refrigerator. And that's just the simplest way
that you could do it. Now, on the days that I don't get
it started the night before, what I do is just started in the morning
and just let it sit at room temperature for five or 6 hours
until I get ready to make the the pizzas. Okay. So now it's on to the toppings. As promised,
this is a roasted tomato salsa pizza. I have the roasted
tomato salsa already made here. I've done a number of videos
showing you how to do that so you can search YouTube for that. We've got some crumbled goat cheese here. This is the Mexican queso añejo. And over in this towel is the cilantro. Now, since it's the height of the summer,
I went to the farmer's market and I got some patty pan squash,
which I roasted here, and I grow a lot of squash. So I harvested
some of the male blossoms off of that that we could use
on the final decoration of this pizza. But bacon is one of the essential
parts of it to me now. It's delicious without it. And I have done that when I've been
feeding a bunch of vegetarians. But I will say that I really love it
with bacon on it. So I'll show you how
I'm going to get to that bacon part of it. I've got bacon. This is the bacon that we get hickory
smoked from the guy who does all of our pork, Greg Gunnthorp
and all the pork for our restaurant. And I'm going to chop it into thin strips here about well,
less than a quarter of an inch. And I'm showing you this
because this is the way I like to to cut bacon and cook it. If I'm going to use it more as a flavoring
or a crunchy topping on something. So I'm cutting crosswise here. And then I'm going to put it into a pan
that I have already heated and I've got it over medium high now. A lot of you probably have
your own special ways of cooking bacon, and I would suggest that you follow those. But this will just show you
another alternative here. So all of this bacon
is going to go into this preheated pan. You can hear it
start to sizzle immediately here and spread it out so that it's in an even layer. And then I'm going to with a spatula here, just start to move it around. Now, this is the way that I cook bacon
over a medium high heat, not low heat, as most recipes will tell you when I want
beautiful, crunchy little pieces, this will take several minutes to cook,
but you can't walk away from it because we're working over a much
higher heat, which will give us beautiful, browned quality
and really delicious flavor. But you have to kind of keep it moving. After about a minute,
it will have rendered a lot of fat and then I really start stirring it
as it finishes cooking and crisps and browns. Okay, this is done to the stage
I want it to be. You can see that
it has really changed colors a lot. It looks beautifully browned
and I'm collecting it all up here and with a slotted spoon
I'm going to drain it on paper towels. Okay. And don't forget to pour that once it's cool down into an airtight container
and keep it in your refrigerator. It's the perfect thing to saute
onions or potatoes or what have you. And okay,
now we've got all of our ingredients ready here to go on
to the making of the pizzas. So I'm going to show you one of those guys
and how I do that. A pizza
peel is really very useful for this. Or you could use a cookie sheet
with no sides on it that you can you can use that. I'm going
to take one of the balls of dough here that has risen for a couple of hours, put it on a lightly floured board and then give it a little bit of flour
over the top as well. Now, there are several different ways
you can do this. You could use a rolling pin
if you want to, and it won't be quite so puffy on the rim when you do that, but it's totally fine. You could do that
or you could press it out with your fingertips,
as I did on that one. Like just use your fingertips
to make it into a round. And then I do it over the back of my wrist
a lot of times letting it hang down and then just constantly be turning it between the hands like that
and allowing the weight of the dough itself
to kind of stretch out. And then when you get it to be about that
12 inch size, let's see what this looks like. It's almost to a 12 inch
that's eight inches. So it's almost to the 12 inch size. And we want it to be pretty
thin on the inside and a little thicker on the outside. I'm going to just lightly dust this peel with the flour and lay the dough on that. Give it one last little stretch here. And then I always do this. I make sure that it is moving free. It's not sticking anywhere there. So our next thing here is going to be
to put the toppings on it. It'll take about a third
of a cup of this roasted tomato salsa. It's just a thin layer of it on there. So we'll start with those three
really big spoonfuls like that. And we want to take it to within a half
an inch or so of the edge of this dough. I could use just a touch more over here. A lot of times people want to load it up
with a lot of the sauce or salsa that they're using on the pizza
that never turns out really good at all. Now, we're going to put on the goat cheese
about the same quantity. It'll be about a third of a cup of
the goat cheese that goes on here. And I like to just break it
into little pieces. These will soften during the bacon baking,
but they they don't really completely melt. But I want to evenly distribute
that over the top here now because I have this roasted patty pan squash here. I'm going to use that.
But you don't have to. Or you could chop up some poblano peppers
that have been roasted. Those are really delicious
on this kind of pizza. I just kind of go
from one thing to another and then sprinkle the bacon over the top of that and it's looking really good already. Make sure that it will move on the peel. And now we're ready to go to the baking. Okay. This is what I brought you out here
to show you. This is one of those
great new pizza ovens. And I know a lot of you have them. This is the OONI. And you know, what I really love about it
is that it can heat up to really high temperatures
in about 20 minutes. You can see that this one's at 760
degrees, way hotter than I can ever
get my oven inside. And the other thing that's great about it
is it's got this flame that just shoots right across the top,
meaning that you can brown the top of the pizza way
better than you can in the oven. So again, I will make sure that this is
got some sliding around properties and do the exact same thing
that I did inside, which is to let it go off a little bit
and then just pull it out. And then we're going
to close the door here and where the other one takes like around
8 minutes or so to bake. This one will be done into it's been about a minute or so. And now I'm going to just go in here
and I'm going to turn it around. It's a little bit when you watch the pizza
guys do this, it always looks like there's
absolutely nothing to it. But I like to just kind of turn it around
so that can evenly cook, move it back into the oven,
and then we'll let it go for another minute or so. It's looking mighty good right now. Just look at how beautifully browned
that is. I like those little dark splotches
on the edge of the pizza. I think that's really, really delicious. And now we're going to go
with the final toppings here because. The queso añejo the squash blossom and the cilantro leaves. Now, what I have to do now,
because it's just seems so delicious looking here
is to use my little pizza cutter to cut out a little slice. Yeah, it's going to be kind of hot,
but I just can't resist coming up. Oh, look at that
beautifully browned crust underneath.
