Out of Pod Experience

Not sure if some of you recall, but I have been studying culinary, working to be a chef. My studies are progressing very well and enjoying every bit of it! Now, I want to get better experience on making better pizzas, especially regarding pizza doughs.

So I have few questions I would like to ask to the community of Eve that can provide me any better/advanced techniques, advices/tips relating to pizza, (especially don't and do's). So far, you guys been a great help in the past and would like to ask for more! :)

I have made two pizza dough balls and both in the refrigerator. My plan is to have two pizza doughs ready for an fun activity at a daycare I work in.

First question is pizza dough. I would like to ask what is your favorite ingredients when making pizza dough? I have use a pretty simple recipe I followed from Basic food class which is salt, active yeast, all-purpose flour, and olive oil (to brush the dough's surface then let it proof). When I made it from class, it was good and fluffy. You can see this pizza I made few weeks back in class. I was the only one in class that actually did stuffed crust. :O

Second question is relating to storage of pizza dough. I have searched on the net, wondering if I could store the dough overnight and seems I can, few commented that it can be in the 'fridge for a few days. Also read that before using the dough from the 'fridge, I need to let it out for an hour. I am wondering if you guys have any advice/tips for proper storage of the dough and using after taking out of the 'fridge.

And my final question, just an opinion from you guys. What is the most important part of the pizza? Bread/Crust, Sauce, or Toppings? It is not necessary to explain why, but you can if you want to. :)

Thanks in advance for reading and replying!

I think what most places miss is making a sauce that is more than just tomato paste. Spice up the sauce and the whole pizza just gets better.

This is truth. Spices in general make everything better.

Also, use good cheese.

Heavily depends on the type of pizza you want to make.

I personally prefer either the brick/stone oven Napolitan thin crust pizza (which I am lousy at duplicating, especially since I don't have access to the proper oven type) or variations of deep dish pizza made in a regular oven (without the pre-baking of the dough period) where you use regular dough, as if you'd be making bread.
You can of course make a "regular" deep dish pizza (you semi-bake the dough first), and THAT one you can easily keep in the freezer a longer period of time, then add toppings and re-fire later.

The part I like about the non-pre-baked "deep dish" style pizza is that the ingredients mix more thoroughly with the breaddy part, but not everybody likes how you have to eat it - you either cook it just right and then you almost have to use a fork and knife OR you slightly overcook it to be hand-consumable (but that can take a while) and the window of proper consumption (temperature-wise) goes away pretty fast. On the plus side of slightly-overcooked, it's VERY storable in the fridge afterwards, very filling, and extremely easy to reheat (microwave short heat-up does wonders, and the taste is almost unaltered).
I am talking at least roughly 2 fingers depth to the resulting pizza (1 inch or even more).

P.S. If you go with that type of pizza, DO NOT add the tomato sauce until the very end. In fact, add it ONLY as you eat it, and only on the portions you eat. A fairly typical rectangular 10"x14"x2" baking tray should yield 6 portions of very roughly, say, about 5"x5"x1.3", each of those enough to quench a moderate hunger all by itself (that's more than one pound worth of pizza for EACH serving). Yeah, you start with about 3-4 pounds of dough and 3 pounds of ingredients... and you cook it for more than one hour at medium temperatures.

I do plan on applying to some italian restaurant to start off my career. Wish I could check out Europe! I live in San Jose, California.



I agree with you there. I do personally think dough is the most important part of the pizza.



Hm! I never really tried "deep dish" pizza before. I shall add this type of pizza into my tablet as "To make in the future"! Also added the Napolitan thin crust pizza. Went through the and found this particular recipe for the dough on Napolitan.

• 4 1/2 cups (20.25 ounces) unbleached high-gluten, bread, or all-purpose flour, chilled
• 1 3/4 (.44 ounce) teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon (.11 ounce) instant yeast
• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) olive oil (optional)
• 1 3/4 cups (14 ounces) water, ice cold (40°F)
• Semolina flour OR cornmeal for dusting

Also saved the link/recipe. If you're interested, I took a look here, Akita. I learned quite a bit yesterday and today when I made the dough a day earlier. I guess more yeast you put in, the faster it proofs. and if I want to store overnight, I should use much less yeast. Quite a learning experience!

From what I checked out regarding the deep dish, it is pizza with thicker dough, and more topping fillings. By saying using fork and knife, that means you knead the dough as long it isn't anything warm, like your hands?

Thanks on the tip on the sauce! Do you have any particular kind of sauce you like? Or you make sauce yourself? (Could you please tell me the ingredients as well? :) )

Chicago-Style Deep Dish <---- Pizzeria Uno's, one of the best.

Regarding fork and knife: Deep Dish pizza requires you to eat it with a fork and knife if done properly, its more like a pie than the usual image of pizza.

By the way, bake with fire from below, not from above (nor both directions). No separator/spreader plate needed either, just place it high enough above the bottom flame to not burn it.

For ingredients, I like to use sweet semi-moist cow cheese as a "base"//lowest layer, various meats (either sliced or diced, the thinner//smaller the better) as the next layer, and end up with large flakes of "melty" kind of harder cheese, in about equal weights.
Feel free to insert various fruits or vegetables of any kind into or between any one of the lower layers.


That was regarding the consistency of the pizza at "ready to eat" time.

Because the dough is thicker and you pile up a lot of (at least partially "wet") ingredients on top, the pizza is half-baked, half-boiled at a certain point, and it's (in my personal opinion) the tastiest at that precise moment. If you try to portion it though, the upper layers of the dough (where it came into contact and started mixing with the ingredients) will still be quite moist and you won't get a solid enough bottom crust to pick it up in your hands, it would keep breaking into small pieces and the toppings would slide off.
That's why you'll need to eat the pizza similar to how you'd eat lasagna, for instance. So you place it (the portion) on a plate, you cover it with as much sauce (or ketchup) as you like, and you start cutting bite-sized pieces out of it, like you would cut a steak.

If you keep it cooking longer, the bottom and top parts go crispy (you usually want to use either a thin layer of butter or oil on the bottom before you place the dough, or at least a greased baking sheet ; you also want to place the "melty" kinds of cheeses on the top), the middle will be firm too. That's the style that keeps best in the fridge.


If you go with the pre-half-baked dough variant (add the ingredients any time after half-cooking the dough) you get a crunchy lower crust (careful not to burn it), a spongy dough middle, and a mildly crunchy semi-elastic mid-level separation between dough and ingredients. That one you can bake with fire on both sides, especially after adding the ingredients, and you don't necessarily have to put the melty cheeses on top (in fact, you'd probably like it with the melty cheeses below and the meats on top).


Depends on the mood, available ingredients and available time.
The base is almost always tomatoes.

Most tomatoes you find in supermarkets are kind of crap for sauce, they yield a pretty tasteless and thin broth, you're better off just buying ketchup instead. Stick with farmer's market tomatoes if you want to make your own sauce. And make sure you taste them first, heh.

For long-term storage, you usually take a large batch of tomatoes and pass them through a "shooshing" machine (I don't know how you call it in english - it's like a meat grinder but with a long stalk full of holes, smaller than the tomato seeds). And then you keep boiling the tomato juice until you can no longer make out any tomato filaments and the taste changed enough.
You can also keep on boiling if you're not happy with the consistency of the pre-sauce.
Optionally, you can add ground bell peppers, or even spicy peppers if you want, or any other things you think you may find tasty.
You can add some salt too if you like, but it's not mandatory. You can always add that later.
If you boil the pre-sauce enough (especially if you add a lot of peppers to the mix) you can use it as actual sauce later.
ALWAYS sterilize the containers in which you'll keep the tomato juice or pre-sauce, both before and after filling (before in the oven, afterwards in boiling water). We usually use one liter bottles with "freshness check" seal twist caps, but any hermetically sealable container will do fine.

Alternatively, if you can't be bother to do all of that once or twice a year (or if you are not too concerned over the difference) you can always just use plain ole' commercial tomato juice as the base.

If you feel the tomato juice // pre-sauce (depending what else you already added before) is too watery, you can always boil it some more. If in a hurry, or if you want a more poignant taste and/or a creamier texture, you can always add white flour to taste.
You start with as much flour as you want to add, and slowly add tomato juice or pre-sauce, until you get a sort of dough, mix well to remove any clumps, add more juice slowly, keep mixing, then boil it all until the flour taste vanishes and it blends in with the rest of the sauce.
Alternatively, you can start by lightly sauteing the flour in a bit of oil (or butter, or fat), then after you eliminated all clumps (only works well with small quantities of flour), adding some fresh sliced tomatoes or other vegetables (usually just sliced peppers, maybe even some onion or garlic, but even flaked carrots can work if you get the taste of it, try it on a very small batch first), then when you're happy with the colour, pour the tomato juice in and let it boil slowly (light occasional stirs, the more flour you put in and less juice, the more often you have to stir) until you're happy, then add whatever spices you like and let it simmer lightly for a few minutes.

Or, you know, just get some ketchup if that's too much work

the role of the cheese in a pizza is more to keep everything in place. Indeed, the cheese doesn't need to have a very strong flavour. However, it doesn't need to be tasteless either.



Piece of advice: olive oil is paramount

Let's just say that when you grow up in a communist country you end up learning how to cook whether you want to or not
I used to hang around people who cooked often, and cook myself often enough too (especially in the university years), but not that much lately (can't seem to find the time for it that often nowadays).

Still helping around the house on "major ops" though (pickling various vegetables, making jam, making tomato juice, etc).
Some things are "meh, good enough" out of the store, but a few just don't taste right unless home-made the way I'm used to.

For instance, pickles (I think that's what you call them... in English, do you call them pickled pickles or just pickled cucumbers or what ? Not quite sure).
Every time I try some from a store or made by most other people they're barely palatable. They taste way too vinegary.
The recipe we use calls for loads of salt, a few horseradish roots sliced in 2 or 4 by length (depending on how thick it is), garlic, some green (as in, unripened) grapes if you can find any, some dill, some summer savory and only a pinch of vinegar.
And of course loads of cucumbers (fresh picked, from the farmer's market, not store-bought sterilized ones - EXTREMELY important) and water.

Naaaah, the surgery and the fatness are only weakly correlated. Thin people get their gallbladder removed too.