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07/19/2018 12:01 AMI love pizza.
I think I have mentioned to you often.
Maybe too often.
Well, anyway, this week we will talk about pizza again, how to make it and where to get it when you go out (for the latter, see Nibbles on this same page).
If you’re going to make it, make it like my daughter Darcy. I watched her roll the dough with a rolling pin and all of her pizzas looked like Ohio or Pennsylvania, while mine often look like Florida or West Virginia. Her dough rolled like a dream.
She also has a wood-burning oven on her Southern California patio designed and built by her husband, Jeff. Once Darcy places her beautifully rolled dough on a cornmeal-dusted wooden peel and adds the topping, all in the kitchen, Jeff takes over and deftly shakes the pizza onto the brick oven in which he has shifted the wood to the back of the oven.
The oven heats up to 1,000 degrees.
My daughter is as intuitive a cook as I have ever known. She did not learn this from me. She listens to what I have learned and takes what she wants. Unless you have a grill or oven that can get to a high heat, your pizza won’t be quite as good, but here are some tips to help. Use a baking stone in the kitchen oven and let it get as high as it can get before you put your pizza on the stone. My gas grill will get to 550 degrees. Even if you don’t have a wood-burning pizza oven on your patio, you still can make great pizza at home using Darcy’s suggestion.
And, if you want to go out for pizza?
Hands down, Frank Pepe’s has the best.
Period.
End of story.
Lee White of Old Lyme has been a food editor and restaurant reviewer for more than 25 years. You can email her at leeawhite@aol.com.
Darcy’s Pizza
Yield: 4 personal size pizzas
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoon fast-acting yeast
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup distilled water (at 75 degrees)
Teaspoon or two of olive oil as needed
In a food processor, pulse the dry ingredients. With the processor on low, pour water and a teaspoon or two of olive oil into the feed tube until it makes a ball. Remove it from the food processor. Lightly oil a large bowl and turn ball around the bowl until somewhat slick. Cover with plastic wrap and allow it to sit in a draft-free room for half an hour or so. Then place the dough, still covered, in the refrigerator. (She does this the night before, but I saw her do that in the morning and we made the pizzas around 7 p.m. that night.)
An hour or so before you are ready to make pizzas, take out the dough and turn it into 4 rounds; cover and let rise at room temperature. Place the rolls into the fridge if your baking stone is not at the highest temperature in the oven.
When ready to make the pizzas, roll the rounds with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface. Place pizza on a cornmeal-dusted wooden peel. Add using the back of a large spoon, pour tomato sauce (she says Muir Glen tomato sauce is her forever sauce). Add topping judiciously (less is better). Great toppings include little balls of mozzarella, shredded ricotta, sausage, olives, baby portabellas, shrimp, or pesto. Shake the topped pizza onto the very hot baking stone. Bake until bottom is golden or even darker brown. Add basil just before serving.