Matt's Pizza Dough

Ingredients

Directions

1. The first step of making the dough is to make your poolish, which is a pre-ferment. Mix together 300g of the flour, 300ml of water, 5g of dry yeast (10g if you are using fresh yeast), and 5g of honey. Mix until it is all together.
2. Put your poolish in an airtight container with plenty of room for it to grow and add the rest of our ingredients the next day. Let is rest for 1 hour outside the fridge, then put it in the fridge for 18 - 26 hours.

1. After that time, you will want to take your poolish out of the fridge, and add 400ml of water. Mix together a little bit (does not need to be perfectly mixed), then add 25g of salt, mix in the salt, then add 700g of flour. Mix until everything is together, and remove from your container. You may need to scrape the sides with your spatula. At this stage the dough will be very sticky! We are creating a 70% hydration dough which will be very sticky, and a little hard to work with! As well different flours absorb humidity differently, so different flours will be different levels of sticky.
2. Start by gently kneeding the dough until it starts becoming less sticky. Your hands will likely be covered in a thick layer of dough at this point. Go wash that off, then apply a layer of olive oil to your hands and to your dough, around 10ish grams. Then continue gently kneeding the oil into the dough. Washing your hands and adding the oil should make the dough much easier to work and less sticky. If however you find that the dough is still to difficult to work with, simply leave the dough covered for 15 minutes, then come back to it, this should really help with the stickyness. Do NOT use extra flour at this stage to make the dough less sticky.
3. Once you dough is nicely kneeded, and starting to look nice and smooth. (This may take 10-15 minutes) you want to form a big ball. To make your ball, you will want to lift the dough from opposite sides, and let the dough fold in around your hands. Then rotate and repeat. You will want a nice ball with a very smooth surface on the top. This is the nice layer of gluten you created. If you do this motion to much you will see the gluten rip on the very top layer. if you do so, just keep going until the surface looks smooth again.
4. You might want to look up some tutorials on how to kneed your dough and make your dough balls on youtube, as its hard to know/describe the right technique by text. There are a lot of good tutorials on there.
5. Next take an airtight container which will have some room for your ball to grow, coat the inside with olive oil then place your dough ball into it with the smooth side up. Place in your fridge for ideally 24-48 hours to allow the dough to cold ferment.

1. After this time, you can take your dough ball out of the fridge, and dump onto your counter top smooth side down. Divide into 6 260g parts. Shape each ball by keeping the smooth side facing down and using one hand to lift all the edges and pinch them together. Then rotate your hand on the ball and repeat, letting gravity pull the ball down, and your fingers pull the edges together to the centre nicely. Again there are different techniques, you might want to look it up on youtube.
2. Let your dough balls all sit covered for 2 hours.
3. Put your pizza stone (or baking tray) into your oven and set it to the maximum heat, ideally on convection. Let the stone preheat for an hour. (yup it takes time) if you don’t have a stone/steel you don’t need to preheat this long.
4. Next take your dough balls and completely coat them in semolina, or just flour if you don’t have. Place some semolina/flour on the counter and start gently pushing the dough to the edges and pinching to for your crust. Imagine you are trying to push all the air in the dough to the crust, then press the dough to lock the air in. Then start stretching the dough. The easiest way to do this is by lifting the dough on on edge and letting gravity pull the other edge down as you rotate the dough.
5. You should now have a nice dough ready to work with. You can then either place the dough on the counter or on your pizza peel (or whatever flat surface you are using) and add your toppings. If you place it on the peel first, you will need to worry about the dough sticking to the peel. Use a lot of flour and shake the pizza once in a while to avoid it from sticking.
6. If you make your pizza on the counter, it is less likely to stick to your peel, but getting it onto the peel without damaging/stretching/ripping the dough is the challenge. Gently lift the edges of the dough and shift it onto your peel. Or if you have a proper peel or a very thin sheet, you can list one edge and slide the peel under the dough in one quick motion.
7. Before you transfer your dough to the oven make sure it very easily slides around on your peel. A dough sticking to the peel is how I have messed up the most pizzas.
8. If you don’t have a proper pizza stone, you can also just make the pizza right on your baking sheet and put that in the oven. Easier, but will not get you as nicely cooked bottom.
9. Let your pizza cook for 10 ish minutes, until the dough is nicely cooked. You should go by looks really, its not to hard to tell when it is nicely done