AB in 5 Minutes A Day - Neopolitan Pizza Dough

By Foodiewife

The secrets to this pizza are to keep the crust thin, don’t overload it, and to bake it quickly at a high temperature so it ­doesn’t cook down to a soup. It’s unlike anything most of us are used to eating — especially if you make fresh mozzarella!

Ingredients

• 1 pound ­pre-­mixed boule dough
• Cornmeal for covering the pizza peel
• Topping: your favorite seasonal ingredients

Preparation

Step 1

1. 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven with a baking stone (scraped clean) at your oven’s maximum temperature — the hotter, the better. (Another option is to use the baking stone over a grill, which takes about two-thirds of the time.)

2. Prepare the toppings in advance. The key to a pizza that slides right off the peel is to work ­quickly.

3. Follow Step 5 of The Master Recipe (below):
Prepare a pizza peel by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal to prevent the loaf from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven.

Sprinkle the surface of the dough with flour, then cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-sized) piece with a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on four “sides,” rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go, until the bottom is a collection of four bunched ends. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it doesn’t need to be incorporated. The bottom of the loaf will flatten out during resting and baking.

4. Flatten the dough into a 1/8-inch-thick round with your hands and a rolling pin on a wooden board. Dust with flour to keep the dough from sticking. (A little sticking can help overcome the dough’s re­sis­tance to stretching, though, so don’t overuse flour.) You also can let the partially rolled dough relax for a few minutes to allow further rolling. Stretching by hand may help, followed by additional rolling. Place the rolled-­out dough onto a liberally ­cornmeal-­covered pizza peel.

5. Distribute your toppings over the surface, leaving some of its surface exposed so you can appreciate the individual ingredients — and the magnificent crust! — of the final product. No further resting is needed.

6. Turn on the exhaust fan (or use lower heat and bake a few minutes longer), because some of the cornmeal will smoke. Slide the pizza onto the stone (­back-­and-­forth shakes can help dislodge it). Check for doneness in 8 to 10 minutes. Turn the pizza around if one side is browning too fast. It may need up to 5 more minutes.

7. Allow to cool slightly on a rack before serving.