The Obvious Secret to Great Pizza

Over the last couple of months we have had a great deal of pizza, from our humble home baked pizza to the finest of Italian thin crust pizzas. We have been trying to break away from the frozen pizza aisle at the grocery store and experiment with various pizza recipes we find in one of our many cook books or on the internet. Below is a variation of the pizza recipe offered by Jim Lahey in his book ‘My Bread’. The key to this recipe is cooking the pizza at a very high temperature resulting in a crispy crust, and golden mozzarella baked on top. I think this pizza is close to wood oven quality, and is easy to put together.  I altered the original by substituting in whole wheat flour and reducing the cooking time. Due to the longer rising time for the dough I would have to relegate this recipe to a weekend though, as I am not willing to spend 3 hours on a weeknight to have dinner on the table.

Pizza Dough

2 cups all purpose flour

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

2 1/2 tsp yeast

Table Salt ¾ tsp

¾ tsp sugar

1 1/3 cups water

Oil for pans

Mix ingredients until a smooth ball forms, cover and let sit for 2hrs

Preheat to 475 f

Roll into ball and divide into 2 sections, cover with moistened clothe for 30 min

Stretch out pizza dough across 2 oiled baking pans sprinkled with semolina flour (or cornmeal)

Top with pizza sauce, your favourite toppings and good quality mozzarella (or if you’re like, us the kind that is on sale)

Bake for 20 minutes