the best pizza at home in seattle

So, if you can make some good pizza you can have a great way to get friends to your house in lieu of going out somewhere and spending a ton of money on beverages and tasteless food. Today I'm going to share a dough recipie i like to use.

First things first, ingredients

4 Cups high gluten flour
1 1/2 tsp dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups warm water

For this first part of the recipie I like to use this mixing thing that should come with all Kitchen Aid mixers. If you have an Electrolux mixer or something I am incredibly jealous and you probably have something way cooler.

Put all dry ingredients in your mixer and get them well blended. With the mixer at a low to medium-low speed slowly pour in a cup of water and let dough contiune to mix for about 5-8 minutes. If the dry ingredients don't want to join their little friends in the mix use a spatula to get that stuff off the sides.
After the 5-8 minutes of mixed partner dancing let the dough, which should look more like a batter at this point, rest for 20 minutes. This is how it should look.

During this time I like to clean up around my house or grab some more coffee or take a shower or something. This dough is best to make in the morning and let it rise while your at work (or in my case (unemployed) I would be at the gym or practicing trumpet or at some coffee shop where I can be around people and act like I'm working on my novel. Or I could grab a copy of 'War and Peace' and pretend to read it while listening to 'Goosebumps' books on tape. Spooky!!

Now that you've let the dough rest for the yeast to get all active and stuff change the mixing element to a dough hook. Alternate adding small amounts of flour and water until you've used the full amounts.

Don't be a slave to the recipie only the consistancy! Your dough should look pretty wet and not stick to the sides as it's mixing. However, the dough will remain stuck to the bottom of the mixing bowl like a Spiderman string thing that he shoots out of his wrist.

Huh, I wonder what would happen if Spiderman got all depressed and tried cutting his wrists? Dark and disgusting I know and I appoligize if you find that offensive but it just seems to me that it would be a little like hitting a can of silly string with a hatchet or something.

Remove the dough hook and get all of that stuff off of there and use a spatuala to scrape the wet messy dough onto a well floured surface. You can kneed the dough a little at this point and get it shaped into a large flat thing like this. The dough should be like pretty springy and elasticy and stuff.

Now using a knife you just rinsed with some cold water cut that thing up into 3-6 pieces depending on what type of pizza you'd like to make. I'd recommend the 6 pieces of dough if you're planning on making smaller Neopolitian style pizzas. If you'd like a more traditional crust try 3 pieces. For this pizza I'm doing 3 pieces so i can have a good crust on the edge and make it super chewy.

Roll the dough triangles into balls and coat them in a thin layer off olive oil and place them on an oiled baking sheet.

Now cover the baking sheet with either a kitchen towel or plastic wrap to keep the dough from drying out. I don't believe in putting the dough in a warm place really because it can make it rise too quickly and really just like way too much. Just leave it on your counter or something and make sure that your dog doesn't get after it because you'd have one big mess to cleanup after your dog gets sick all over your couch.
Once you get home it wouldn't be a bad idea to turn on your oven... and now for the heat secret. Of course for pizza you want the absolute highest heat possible in your oven so crank that thing as high as it will go (550 degrees is typical). Ok, so the trick to getting a ton of heat is to use two pizza stones. Put one stone on the top rack which should be either as high as it can go or one below that and the second stone should go on the second to lowest rack position. This method traps heat in the cooking zone because both stones are able to conduct a TON of heat and kind of create a vortex of heat for flavor and even cooking.

On the lightly floured surface you can begin shaping the dough by stretching it out while spinning it on the floured surface. This dough is super easy to strech and won't bounce back like some other recipies. Don't worry about getting it paper thin for the purpose of the pizza we're making, just get it a good 14" size.

Next go around the edges of the dough and pinch and crimp and stuff to make a crust like a pizza has. At this point you could fold some string cheese in there like a stuffed crust pizza but I think that might be kind of disgusting...

Now take that shaped dough and place it on a floured pizza peel or the back of a baking sheet that is well floured and add the sauce and fixings. Toppings: Sauce (recipie to come!!), Mozerella, Peperonni, Hot Italian Chicken Sasuage and more Mozerella.

The baking time really depends on the real temp of your oven. I think this pizza took about 8-10 minutes and came out like this.

The crust is crunchy on the outside and super chewy. The sauce is a little spicy and a little sweet, the sasuage is a little spicy and the peperonni gives it that familiar flavor you love... unless you got sick from a Chucky Cheese peperonni pizza and threw up in the ball pit when you were 5 and all of your friends laughed at you and you only eat cheese pizza now.