These instructions will make absolutely no sense until you watch about 100 of this guys videos. It’s absolutely ridiculous because he makes it a little differently in each video. The information below is my take on deciphering those 100 videos in attempt to extract the secrets of making a good home made pizza. Once you’ve learned enough from his videos then the recipe below is yours (and mine) shortcut to instructions.
https://www.youtube.com/@vitoiacopelli
Poolish
- In the bowl of your stand mixer with paddle attachment add the following:
- 400 ML water (Use good water. Not from the kitchen sink)
- 400 Grams 00 Flour or Bread Flour (see what I mean about more advanced your gonna need to buy one of those little drug dealer scales)
- 5 grams Yeast
- 5 grams Honey
- Cover with plastic stab 3 or 4 holes in plastic then Rest for 1 hour room temperature
- Put in the Fridge for 16 to 24 hours
Tomato Sauce
You can buy pizza sauce at the grocery store. It’s typically packed in with the spaghetti sauces. Labels and caps look identical. Only difference is that they are in glass jars 1/4 the size of a normal spaghetti sauce jar.
Pizza Dough
- Put your stand mixer bowl with poolish mixture back onto stand mixer machine base
- Install Dough hook attachment
- Add 200 ML water (or grams of water) then set speed to 1. Set a timer for 20 minutes.
- after first 30 seconds add 530 grams 00 Flour (or Bread Flour) You will end up with 5 or 6 pizzas in total. Place into zip lock bags and put in freezer what you dont make.
- then add 15 Grams Salt
- after 15 minutes of machine working adjust the speed to 3 or 4 and then start to add little by little tiny splashes of water (like a table spoon at a time. Just a splash on top of the dough to cool it down. Continue adding splashes of water during minutes 16, 17, 18, 19.
- Reduce speed back down to 1 for last minute.
- Put olive oil on hands and on your clean counter top surface. Take out dough from bowl and place in middle of your oiled countertop.
- Note: Poolish will be the consistency of kids toy slime. It will be sticky if your hands are not coated in olive oil.
- Pull dough and shape into a big flat square and then fold it up like a T-shirt. Then mold the dough into a big ball.
- put little olive oil on top of your big ball.
- cover big ball with large bowl on counter and let rest of 15 minutes
- Use a pizza cutter (or Drywall spatula) and cut the dough into 280 gram balls.
-Place dough balls into lightly floured XL container with its own lid spaced 4” apart. Squirt a little olive oil over dough ball and put lid onto container and let rest for 1 preferably 2 hours room temperature. Watch balls they are done once they get close to touching each other. Place pizza stone into over set at 550 degrees.
-After your 1 to 2 hours of resting they are ready to cook.
-Fill a small container with 50/50 (Semolina and bread flour)
-Take dough balls you are going to cook and place directly in 50/50 mixture and flip over a few times to coat your dough ball.
-You will have to Sprinkle the same flour mixture onto surface of a wooden pizza peel (metal pizza peels are good for taking out of oven but dont work for initially putting pizza into oven. Place ball onto counter top surface and PRESS middle working towards outer edge. Poolish pizza dough does not require a dough roller. This stuff will easily stretch and press out flat with your hands.
-spread 1 to 2 tbs of pizza tomato sauce then drizzle olive oil on top and don’t forget to brush olive oil onto crust. Place pizza into oven on your pizza stone sitting on top oven rack for 4 minutes. (key note: I said 1 to 2 tbs of pizza sauce max. Using more will make your pizza dough soggy and flimsy. A little pizza sauce will go a long way. I love pizza sauce and kept trying to figure out why half the time my pizzas were soggy. Apparently there is a ton of water in pizza sauce.) Important: Once you spread pizza sauce onto dough you have to put it immediately into oven. Do not let your tomato sauce dwell on uncooked pizza dough resting on your counter it will ruin the pizza.
-remove pizza and then add Fresh grated parmesan, Pepperoni, Fresh Basil leaves, and what ever toppings then lastly add Mozzarella on top. Brush crust again with Olive oil then place back into oven for 2 additional minutes or just watch and take out once mozzarella starts to bubble.
Note 1: This recipe is a lot of work. It makes huge mess in your kitchen. You will need a stand mixer. You can use 00 king Arthur flour or bread flour for the dough. This pizza has great taste and texture without requiring a pizza oven. I make this in my regular kitchen oven.
Note 2: Ive adjusted the ingredient volume to maximize each dough making session. I can typically get about 6 to 7 individual 12″ pizza’s out of my standard sized stand mixer. Wish I had a larger stand mixer to make like 20 of them at a time but thats life. Once you get good at making the pizza dough it’s awesome. Simply thaw out your frozen dough balls about 2 hours before cooking. Take frozen dough balls out of ziplock bag immediately after pulling out of freezer or dough will be hard to remove from zip lock bag. Allow to thaw out on olive oiled plate. Once thawed and your fresh mozzarella is cubed and other ingredients are prepped each pizza takes 7 minutes to cook.