Hello,
Welcome to Day 5 of Pizza School!
OK, let's review one more time. To make excellent pizza at home, you should:
- Use a high-hydration pizza dough.
- Use four, good-quality ingredients.
- Handle the dough gently.
- Bake it on a preheated Baking Steel.
Here's one more tip: If time permits, make your dough ahead of time and refrigerate it.
Why? Because dough benefits from a long, slow, cold fermentation, during which time enzymes in both the flour and the yeast break down the starches in the flour into simple sugars, which ultimately contribute both to flavor and to browning.
Cool, right?
In my family, as in many, we have a long-standing Pizza Friday tradition. As such, I always make my dough on Tuesday or Wednesday (or if I forget, Thursday). I like to mix my dough in the early afternoon, let it rise for an hour or two; then I portion it into four pieces, ball them up, and transfer them to the fridge, where they'll stay until Friday about an hour before dinner time.
Another way to do it is this: mix your dough, cover the bowl with an airtight container, and immediately transfer it to the fridge for at least 24 hours but for as long as five days. Remove and portion about an hour before you pan on baking.
In addition to the benefits I know my dough will receive, I love the convenience of getting the Friday-dinner prep out of the way.
This concludes Lesson #5. See you tomorrow, when I'll share a few more of my favorite pizza-making tools as well as my go-to pizza toppers.
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