• 6 to 6 1/2 cups of flour
• 1 1/2 tsp instant or active dry yeast
• 1 tbsp. plus 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 1/4 cups cold water
• 1/2 cup cornmeal or semolina flour
What to do:
1. In the mixer bowl of your food processor, stir the flours, yeast and salt together. Pour in the water and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until everything comes together into a “shaggy dough”.
2. Put the bowl on the mixer and attach the beater – not the dough hook. This dough is too wet for regular kneading. Mix on low speed for a minute then beat on high speed for 3 1/2 minutes, scraping down the beater and bowl halfway through.
3. ***Steingarten explains the way to know when your dough is perfect: With well-floured fingers, pull off a piece of dough about the size of a walnut and roll it in flour. You should be able to stretch it with the fingers of both hands without breaking for at least 3 inches across.
4. Scrape the dough out onto a heavily floured work surface. Fold one side over the other and allow to rest for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, cut dough into 4 equal pieces and shape each piece into a ball and place each in a well-oiled bowl to rise until double in size – about 3 hours. ***NOTE: Steingarten likes to then put his dough balls in the fridge for an hour… if you have the time, do so, otherwise, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.
5. Preheat your oven to as high as it can go (at least 500 degrees!) and allow the pizza stone to heat up for a half hour to one hour.
6. On a well-floured surface, pat each dough ball into as flat of a circle as possible. Stretch it by draping the dough over your fists, knuckles up, passing it from hand to hand until it reaches about 12 inches. ***NOTE: This is the thing, do not despair at this point if it’s not going as perfectly as you want. This is not as easy as Steingarten says. With practice, it’ll be easier. But, we give the fist to fist way a try for a bit, then bust out a well-floured rolling pin and literally attack the dough with our pin until it gets as thin as we need it to be. We like it to be about 1/2 a centimeter thick when we first cook it on the pizza stone.
7. ***This is where I do things a bit differently than Steingarten. Using oven mitts, take your pizza stone out of the hot, HOT oven. Scrape your pizza dough off your floured surface and place on the hot stone (it will begin to cook immediately) and place back in the oven for two minutes or until there is a tiny bit of color on the surface and edges of the dough. Remove from oven and place back on your work surface. It will be ’stiff’ but not fully cooked.
8. Depending on what type of pie you are making (red pie, white pie, olive oil and herbs-brushed pie), put down your ‘wet’ ingredients first (i.e.: tomato sauce). Don’t put too much on, just a thin layer for taste.
9. Add your toppings (go light like the Italians – you don’t need to have 2 inches-worth of toppings to make this pizza taste good) and then your cheese (get low-moisture mozzarella and fresh buffalo mozzarella that’s as low-moisture as possible – the moisture in the cheese could moisten your crust and cause it to be too wet and heavy).
10. Add the topped pizza back to your pizza stone and put back in the hot oven for 4 to 7 minutes, making sure all the cheese is melted and bubbly and the crust has some color to it. Remove from oven and allow to rest for a moment before biting in.