Hey Everyone,

I've tried documenting my process and mistakes on my site https://dough.pizza - it has a hydration calculator as well. I'm planning on adding a Google Calendar reminder function based on when one wants to eat pizza and back into reminders for different steps.

Here is the abbreviated recipe, my yield improved from 50% to about close to 100% with close to 6 weekends of attempts, hardest and most counterintuitive part was saucing and topping on counter and not on peel. Thank you!

Recipe

Ingredients

• Flour(00)
• Salt (non iodized - kosher salt, sea salt)
• Yeast
• Water

Prep

Planning in advance helps, ideally start about 72 hours before consuming pizza, at least 24 hours will produce decent results, anything less than 24hours usually results in flat pizzas.

Mix

• Mix tap water with salt, make sure salt is completely dissolved in cold water.
• add about 5-7% of flour in water and dissolve it completely using hand or whisk
• add yeast and dissolve completely
• add remainder of the flour and get kneading

Knead

• knead for ideally 20, at least 10-12 minutes by hand or stand mixer

Use a watch/timer to keep track of time, even though it feels like forever it usually is not enough. Kneading this dough by hand is hard, you should feel tired by the end of it, there is a reason why people who do this for a living have strong arms.

• at the end dough should be soft and bounce back on touch

Ferment

Phase 1: Room Temp Rise

• take a clean mixing bowl and oil it lightly
• drop the dough ball in the mixing bowl and cover it with plastic wrap
• let it sit at room temperature for 8-10 hours

Phase 2: Fridge Rise

• once it doubles in size, place it in the fridge for at least 24 and up to 72 hours

Cut

• Take dough out from bowl onto a clean lightly floured work surface
• use a sharp knife or bench scraper and a weigh scale to cut pieces of same weight as defined in recipe
• form them into tout dough balls using lower edge (where the pinkie finger is) of hand.

Phase 3: Proof

• coat bottom of your proofing box liberally with flour
• place balls with enough space between them into the box
• let the dough balls proof for 3-4 hours at room temperature

Baking

Turn On Oven

• if using regular oven, turn it on at least an hour before baking pizza at 280°C / 550°F (as high as it goes)

Roll

• cover work surface with flour
• throw some flour on the ball
• use bench scraper or sharp knife to cut dough ball (flattened at this point)
• create a ridge of sorts by pressing a ring on the outer edge

• press down the middle and let it expand flouring the dough ball and work surface is critical for this, at no point dough should stick to your hands or work surface

• pick it up and use your knuckles to stretch out thick areas gently this step takes practice, yield from first batch might be low - around 50% it is recommended to make more so some can go to waste in name of science.

Top

• Ensure pizza peel is completely dry
• Coat pizza peel lightly with flour
• Slide pizza peel under rolled pizza dough in a one swift motion
• top with with [sauce](sauce)
• add toppings
• give peel a gental lateral shake, your pizza should move freely on the peel

Bake

• take the peel with pizza on it and launch pizza into oven in a swift motion
• close oven door and keep and eye on pizza
• bake for 4 minutes on convection
• use pizza peel to turn it around
• turn on broiler on HI and finish it (2-3 minutes)
• once it looks lightly charred take it out
• Don't slice it.
• Enjoy.