HOME SLICE
USE A LIGHT HAND Going easy on toppings (see p. 78) allows the quality, texture, and flavor of the dough to shine— and doesn’t weigh down the pie.
A good pizza is one of the most rewarding things you can cook
at home. There’s the way dough feels alive and responsive in
your hands. The crackling sound a knife makes while crunching
neatly through a properly baked pie. The fragrant steam that arises when you bite into a pillowy, chewy, tangy crust. The joy shared among the lucky people at your table. I’m especially attuned to these pleasures because pizza success eluded me for too long. My pies would come out of the oven blistered on the outside and gummy on the inside (cooked at too high a heat). Often my dough tore while I tried to shape it (weak gluten network). My crust lacked flavor (not fermented long enough). Thus began a low-key quest for a bulletproof recipe that would work in my home oven so I could finally bake a proper pie. I referenced cookbooks and talked to experts; I learned about hydration ratios of flour to water and protein levels in supermarket flours. I acquired tools, including some fancy outdoor pizza ovens. (See p. 80.) Still, perfection remained out of reach.
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GIVE IT TIME Fermentation (with sourdough starter or a mix of yeast, water, and flour—see p. 74) gives the crumb its airy structure and complex flavor.
Enter my pizza-loving colleague Mary-Frances Heck. The dough, she knew, was key, and she set to developing a flavorful, forgiving pizza dough that didn’t require fussing over. Then our fellow pizza-head and recipe developer Paige Grandjean refined the recipe further in the test kitchen. After that, we pressure-tested the recipe with a team of test kitchen cooks in their home kitchens with basic residential ovens. Sure enough, the key to good pizza is good dough. And the dough that resulted from our repeated testing, tinkering, and evaluation (the dough on p. 74 and the cornerstone of this story) is very good. It has complex—but not too tangy—sourdough-like flavor, and it’s elastic and easy to work with—perfect whether this is your first time making pizza or your 50th. We then gave toppings, tools, and cook times the same workout. The result of our collective quest isn’t just good pizza at home—it’s great pizza at home. So go ahead. Get out your favorite toppings, crank up the oven, and pour yourself a glass of wine. It’s pizza night in America. —HUNTER LEWIS
