Family Pizza Night: The Competition

Every. Single. Friday. We have family pizza night. I truly look forward to it every week, and it never gets old. Every Friday afternoon, my heart leaps because instinctively, my body knows that once I get the boys home from school, the comfies are going on, we shall feast on cheesy, delicious pizza pie, and then all five of us will pile onto our king-size bed and fall asleep watching a movie (Ok, that part is most often just me, but I have no shame. Sleep rocks.) Typically we order from a local pizza joint with really good New York style crust, but John is always requesting a DIY pizza night, so for his birthday last week, I figured I’d indulge him.

I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect Italian/New York style pizza dough recipe for years. I’ve tried many different ones and found myself too disappointed to share any of them. Not that they were bad, but they just weren’t scratching that itch for me. I like a relatively thin bottom crust, with a pillowy soft, medium-girth outer crust with a flavor so simple, yet so phenomenal that you don’t even have to dip it in ranch to enjoy it. Am I reaching for the stars here??

Turns out, it’s not just the actual dough recipe that makes a big difference, but also what you DO with it once you’ve stretched it and topped it that really takes it to the next level. Since it was John’s birthday, I had to make sure I was at the top of my game, so I put in a call to my old friend Marvin, a brilliant landscape architect turned pizza proprietor + founder of Federalist Public House in Sacramento. I drool over their pizzas on Instagram daily, so I figured there was no better place to go for pizza guidance.

The recipe he recommended was so simple and easy – not to mention delicious – just how I wanted it, because, you know, that’s how the Italians do. They don’t fuss around with ten million crazy, hard to find ingredients. They stick with just a few, simple, quality components. And make magic from it.

Then Marvin showed me exactly how to form each dough ball, or stretch it if I so desired. In my case, our pizza night was to be a competition comprised of five personal-sized pizzas, so I didn’t really need to stretch my balls. Insert ball jokes here. I made my dough balls the day before and let them rest, covered, on a big, oiled sheet pan in the fridge overnight so that at go-time, all I had to worry about was gathering my ingredients.

Marvin also gave me tips that proved crucial to achieving the kind of results I was after. I shall dispense said tips…now.

1. Use bread flour. It stretches better.
2. If you’ve refrigerated the dough, let it sit at room temp for at least two hours (still covered) before forming/stretching.
3. When forming your pizza rounds, take your room-temp dough balls and lightly coat in flour on both sides, shaking off excess, then on a lightly floured surface, using the pads of your fingers (that section between your top + middle knuckles), gently work the air out of the center of the dough ball and out toward the edges to form that crust lip, kind of turning the dough round and round as you go. Since we were doing small pizzas, I stopped once my rounds were about 6-8 inches in diameter. If you want a bigger pizza, this is where you stretch, so you just pick up the round by your closed-fist knuckles and work your way around at the edges.
4. Preheating whatever surface you’ll be cooking your pizza on is a MUST. Marvin recommended a pizza stone, so I went out and got one, but since I wanted to cook all the pizzas at the same time and only had room for three of the five on the stone, I also used a cookie sheet to cook the other two.
5. Pizza Stone + Big Green Egg (or any charcoal grill) method: I set up the Egg for indirect cooking with a deflector plate, then set the grate on top of that, and the pizza stone on top of that. I heated the grill (with the pizza stone on there the entire time to preheat along with the grill) to 550ish degrees.
6. Cookie Sheet + Oven method: I put a rimless cookie sheet in the oven to preheat along with the oven. Set it to convection 500 degrees (as high as mine goes).
7. At go-time, we all decorated our pizzas on a floured butcher-block countertop, then to transfer each pizza to the grill or oven, I floured a rimless cookie sheet (you can use a pizza peel if you have one, but I do not) and with the largest metal spatula we have, I carefully scooped up each pizza at one edge and kinda scooted it onto the cookie sheet, one at a time. So then I’d take that one pizza out to the grill or to the oven and, carefully holding the pizza by the crust edge closest to the grill to help it along, I slid it off the floured cookie sheet and onto the scorching hot pizza stone. Repeated with the other pizzas until I ran out of room, then did the same with the others, but in the oven, onto that sizzling hot cookie sheet. You should hear the pizzas sizzle the moment they hit the pizza stone or cookie sheet. That ensures that the crust will cook evenly and crisp up nicely without burning. If need be, rotate the pizza here and there to make sure the crust gets evenly scorched. Our small pizzas took about 7-9 minutes to cook.
8. Don’t overload the sauce or toppings. It makes it harder to get onto the pizza stone or cookie sheet, and you’re more likely to end up with a too-floppy bottom crust.
9. Speaking of sauce, Marvin recommended making a simple, homemade sauce with just canned whole tomatoes (I used one 28 oz can), garlic (I used 3 cloves), basil (I used a handful of like 7-8 big, fresh leaves), sea salt (good pinch) and fresh pepper. I just stuck everything in the blender, zapped it until smooth-ish, then cooked it down for an hour or so in a saucepan over med-low heat. It. Was. Perfection.
10. For toppings, set out an assortment of cheeses (I did straight mozz, burrata, smoked provolone and romano) + veggies (I did fresh green bell pepper, jarred roasted red pepper, onion, olives, shrooms, fresh basil) + meats (I did cooked, ground Italian style pork, lightly sauteed pancetta, pepperoni + homemade meatballs) so everyone can switch it up.

Y’all, I’m not messin’ around when I say that, combined with the tips + tricks Marvin gave me, this pizza was every bit as good as any pizza I’ve ever had in New York, which is saying a lot. This will definitely be THE dough recipe I use henceforth, and thus, there will be many more DIY pizza nights in our future. Fun was had by all.

Plus, since Luke ultimately won this round with this bad boy, I’ve gotta have a do-over so I can claim that title.

Print Recipe

The Best Pizza Dough Ever

I think the name says it all. This recipe is simple, easy and deeeeeelicious.

Servings: 6 personal pizzas

Ingredients

• 5 cups bread flour
• 3 tsp instant dry yeast
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 1/2 - 2 cups water lukewarm

Instructions

• Add dry ingredients + 1 1/2 cups of the water to a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and mix until fully incorporated, adding the extra water as needed to create a soft, but not sticky dough. Knead with the dough hook for about 10 minutes.
• Lightly dust clean countertop with flour and divide your dough into six equal balls, if you want to do small 6-8" personal-sized pizzas. Otherwise, you can make fewer, but larger dough balls for larger pizzas.
• Shape dough into balls by folding ends under, rounding each into a tight ball. Place on a lightly oiled sheet pan, cover with plastic wrap or foil or a damp kitchen towel and place in fridge overnight.
• Remove dough balls from fridge at least two hours before making pizza.
• Preheat oven or grill (set up for indirect heat) to 500 - 600 degrees (or as high as your oven will go). Preheat pizza stone or cookie sheet in oven or on grill as well. Pizza stone needs a good 45 minutes to heat up.
• Use the pads of your fingers to gently press air out from the center of your pizza rounds, and toward the edges to make that crust lip. Lightly sauce + top pizzas as desired.
• Use a pizza peel or floured cookie sheet to transfer pizzas from the counter to the oven or grill. (Read tips in blog post for a good technique.) Cook 7-10 minutes (for smaller pizzas), rotating pizza every so often if desired to evenly brown the crust.
• Let cool a couple minutes, then slice and serve!