Costco Connection - April 2012

I T WAS A FRIDAY night when Terry Walters found herself with a group of hungry kids and no menu plan. Inspired by the artisan pizza trend, Walters went with what she had on hand and baked personal polenta crusts. ;en she made a toppings bar using everything in her fridge—pesto, spinach, basil leaves, red onion, spring garlic, fresh mozzarella and grated Parmesan—so all of the kids could design their own. Walters, the author of Clean Start (Sterling Epicure, 2010), remembers she stepped up from being the mom who made her kids eat healthy stu; to a new level of cool that night.

Artisan pizza can be dinner for one or the foundation of a party. “The artisan [part] is doing it yourself, the quality of ingredients and the quality of the outcome,” explains Zoë François, a Costco member who is a pastry chef and co-author of Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day with Jeff Hertzberg (Thomas Dunne Books, 2011).

Reinven;n;

the wheel

Artisan pizzas satisfy the pickiest eaters

Basic Pizza Dough

Warm the water slightly: It should feel just a little warmer than body temperature.

Add yeast and salt to the water in a lidded (not airtight) plastic food container or food grade bucket.

Don’t worry about getting them to dissolve completely.

Add all of the flour and mix with a wooden spoon, a 14-cup food processor (with dough attachment) or a heavy-duty stand mixer (with paddle). Don’t knead; it isn’t necessary. You’re finished when everything is uniformly moistened, without dry patches.

Allow the dough to rise: Cover the dough with a lid (not airtight) but leave it open a crack for the first 48 hours to prevent a buildup of gases; after that you can usually seal it. Do not punch down the dough.

After rising, refrigerate the dough and use it over the next 14 days; it will develop sourdough characteristics over that time. Fully refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and is easier to work with than dough at room temperature.

The dough can also be frozen in ½-pound portions in an airtight container for up to four weeks; defrost overnight in the refrigerator prior to baking day. Makes enough dough for eight 12-inch pizzas.

3½ cups lukewarm water (no hotter than 100 F)

1 tablespoon granulated yeast

1 to 1½ tablespoons kosher salt

7½ cups (scoop and sweep)

unbleached all-purpose flour
Flour, cornmeal or parchment
paper for the pizza peel

Pizza design

There are as many pizza-making strategies as there are combinations, but the starting point for any pizza is its base or crust.

Pre-baked crusts, tortillas, flatbreads and English muffins are excellent for hurried evenings or for using up leftovers. But fresh dough is surprisingly simple and offers a level of control over what goes in. Mixing flour, yeast, salt and water doesn’t take a lot of extra time or exotic appliances. François and Hertzberg offer an easy method to make dough that can be stored in the refrigerator and used over the course of two weeks (see recipe).

Once the crust is set, add sauce, spices, cheeses, produce and meat—in that order—or follow your whim. “You can create an entire meal in 15 minutes, and that includes baking,” François says.

Cook it up

Most cooks have all the essential tools in their kitchens already. Number one is heat—as hot as you can make your oven. This is possibly the most important element of a great pizza. High heat echoes the style of cooking used in Neapolitan pizza ovens. It helps cook pizzas evenly in just minutes. With fresh dough rolled into a thin pizza base, high heat can create that crispy crust. Experimenting with heat settings allows you to perfect your pizza’s crust.

A pizza stone (or a grill or a heavy cookie sheet, such as Nordic Ware) delivers heat to cook that crust. A pizza peel (think pizza shovel) makes it easy to slide that prepared pie into the oven—a cutting board or a cookie sheet without sides would be good stand-ins for a peel. Tongs work great for pulling cooked pizzas onto a serving tray.

When assembling your pizza, make sure the pizza dough will slide. A sprinkle of flour or cornmeal will do the trick (the goal is to keep enough flour or cornmeal beneath the pizza so when you transfer the assembled pizza to the stone or other cooking surface, it doesn’t stick).

Let yourself play. Toss the dough in the air or flatten it with your hands or your grandmother’s rolling pin. Forget perfect circles: Focus on the melding of flavors and you can’t mess it up. Let go of what you know, and let the process and the pizza nourish your senses and your soul.