That's Amore!

When I was a young kid, dinnertime was always a strictly enforced, highly predictable routine. Mom would make dinner while Dad finished up the day's work on whatever painting he was working on in the studio. My brother and sister would play in the backyard, usually with me chasing after trying desperately to be included in whatever intrigue they'd thought up for the afternoon. We'd sit down to dinner, I'd dawdle over my peas until everybody else was excused, long after dessert, and I was left pushing my peas around on the plate until I finally managed to choke the last one down. Then it was usually time for bed.

New Year's Eve was different though. New Year's Eve was one of the only nights of the year when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to love dinner. I'd spend what felt like the entire day watching my dad work in the kitchen, slaving over his dough and assembling ingredients for homemade pizza pies. Our house would smell like a pizza shop, the welcoming aroma of mozzarella cheese drifting through the air whetting our appetites, until finally, dinner would be ready and we'd (gasp!) sit down with our pizza in front of the television to watch the beginnings of Dick Clark's New Year's Eve Special. It was one of the meals I looked forward to all year, for many reasons not the least of which being that I knew I wouldn't spend the evening fighting with my dad about eating those god-forsaken peas. To this day, I look forward to homemade pizza pies with the enthusiasm of a child, and tonight is no different. It's not New Year's Eve, but that doesn't mean it's not a perfect day for pizza!

One of the most important elements of any pizza is its crust. Yes, the ingredients you elect to put on top of that crust are certainly crucial as well, but the crust is the foundation upon which the success of the entire recipe rests. I've tried several of the options available at the grocery store for pizza crusts: Pillsbury's refrigerated pizza crust, pizza crust mixes, even Boboli (and store brand) pre-made crusts. Nothing even comes close in quality to the taste and texture of homemade dough. "AAAACCKKK!" scream my readers with the fear of Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo. No, seriously, homemade pizza dough is really quite easy to make. And, believe me, once you've learned how to make it, you too will find yourself turning your nose up at the "conveniences" offered at the grocery.

The ingredients for a basic pizza dough are, well, pretty basic: flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil. You can infuse your dough with any number of seasonings, if you like, but these basic ingredients do well on their own to make quite a tasty crust. The first critical secret to making successful homemade yeast bread, including pizza, is in weighing your ingredients instead of measuring them by volume. Water, salt, and yeast are pretty easy to measure accurately by volume, but flour packs very easily, making volume measurements inconsistent. If you measure your flour by volume, you can end up with too little or far too much flour, and then you'll have a dough either too wet or dry to work with. Invest in a good digital scale, start measuring your flour (at least for yeast bread recipes), and you'll see consistent results each time you make homemade bread. The second critical secret to successful homemade yeast bread is in adding all your flour in the beginning of the mixing process instead of adding it gradually as almost every major cookbook (Betty Crocker, Joy of Cooking, etc.) directs you. Follow the cues of professional artisan bakers like Jeffrey Hamelman and Eric Kastel who expand on the scientific reasons for why adding the flour all at once is critical to good bread. According to them, flour added after the mixing process has begun will never be as hydrated as the flour added in the beginning. The goal during the mixing/kneading process is to create long gluten strands, which are the bedrock of any bread's structure, and these under-hydrated particles of flour actually impede these gluten strands from forming. Ideally, you wouldn't adjust your recipe once the mixing process has begun, but if you do have to adjust, they'd prefer you add water to a dough that is too dry rather than adding flour to a watery dough.

And, finally, the pizza crust recipe!

Pleasantly Pea-less Pizza Crust
(Makes two crusts)

Ingredients:
21.4 ounces flour
14.1 ounces warm water
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. active dry yeast
2 tbsp. olive oil

1. Mix yeast and water and allow to rest for a couple minutes before mixing process begins.

2. Add yeast-water mixture, flour, and salt to stand mixer equipped with the dough hook attachment. You can use your hands, but the process is much easier with a mixer.

3. Mix on Speed 1 for 3 minutes, watching to make sure dough is not too wet or too dry. You want to have a little bit of dough (about the size of a silver dollar) stuck in the bottom of the mixer bowl.

4. Turn off mixer, lift hook, and remove dough from hook and place back into bowl. Add olive oil.

5. Mix on Speed 2 for 4 minutes.

6. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently.

7. Shape into a ball and place in a buttered bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Rise for 1 1/2 hours.

8. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and fold. Return to bowl and allow to rise for another 1 1/2 hours.

9. Turn out onto floured work surface. Divide the dough evenly, shape into rounds, allow to rest for 10 minutes, and shape into pizza crusts. These videos are especially good for demonstrating the shaping techniques, but I would go much leaner on the flour they use to dust the dough during the shaping process.

10. Preheat oven to 500. Yes, 500.

11. Dress with toppings of your choice and bake for 18-20 minutes. Rest for five minutes before serving and enjoying your very own homemade, pleasantly pea-less pizza pie!