Recipe: Overnight Pizza Dough

Pizza made in KAF WFO class, using this dough

Pie made with overnight pizza dough in Jeffrey Hamelman’s Wood Fired Oven class

Adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman at King Arthur Flour. Unlike Pizza D’oh, overnight pizza dough a classic Neapolitan crust with nothing but flour, water, salt and leavening. Makes four individual pizzas (approximately 8 inch diameter).

Ingredients:
500 g all-purpose flour
340 ml water at 75 degrees F
1 t salt
½ t active dry yeast

Method (using Kitchenaid or other planetary mixer; the dough is a bit gloppy to mix by hand): Add all ingredients to bowl. Mix on first speed 3 minutes, scraping down the sides as needed to incorporate all the flour. Rest (autolyse) 20-30 minutes. Mix on second speed 5 minutes until gluten is moderately developed.

Bulk ferment one hour. Preshape lightly into a ball and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

One hour before final shaping, remove the dough from refrigerator and divide into four balls. To form each pizza press with the heel of your hand to make a disk approximately 4” across then expand this either by pressing outward on the edges or by tossing the pizza (or a combination) to a finished diameter of 8” or so. The thinner the better, but don’t make it so thin that holes appear. (If they do, patch them with dough from a thicker part of the pizza.)

Place the pizza dough directly on a silicon baking pad, add toppings as desired, then transfer the pizza on its pad to a preheated pizza stone or cookie sheet up to 500 degrees (easy safe way). Or, form the pizza on a peel with lots of cornmeal underneath, add toppings as desired, slide back and forth to test; if there are any sticky spots lift the edge of the pizza and toss more cornmeal underneath; transfer by sliding from the peel directly onto a pizza stone or grill (living dangerously but professional way).

NOTE: “moderately developed gluten” means that you can pull on the dough and it will thin out to the point that you can see light through it (“gluten window”) rather than tearing. If it tears at this stage it is likely to tear when you stretch it into pizza so give it more kneading/development time.

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