You can make simple pizza dough in an hour or two before you want to make pizza, but that is a pale imitation of the great pizza dough this recipe makes.  It’s no more work: you just start earlier and stick the dough in the fridge for 3 days to let it rise slowly and ferment a bit. The result is a smooth cohesive dough as the gluten opens up and tangles together, that is springy, lighter and tastier. 

This just means that you mix up your pizza dough Monday night or Tuesday morning and put it in the fridge, to have pizza on Friday or Saturday. The work is about the same otherwise.

I got this recipe from my friend (and old IBM Instruments colleague) Sue Egan. Her recipe is all in grams, and is really simple to weigh out. I give you the full recipe, which makes 4 pizzas, the half recipe and approximate conversions to English measures. But it is simpler and more accurate to use a cheap kitchen scale. If you don’t have one, put it on your holiday gift request list!

In this recipe, we use King Arthur general purpose flour. Other flours made have slightly different densities. We suggest using Kosher salt, and measuring it by weight is easiest. The density of Diamond crystal salt and Morton’s kosher salt are quite different because of different crystal shapes. Morton’s is nearly twice as dense, so you measure half as much by volume, but of course by weight you just weigh the salt.

We mixed up the dough using a stand mixer. The dough is not so heavy that you need the dough hook beater: the normal beater will work fine. You can also mix it in a food processor or by hand.

• 932 g King Arthur flour
• 560 g lukewarm water
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 16 g kosher salt
• 8 g sugar
• 1 Tb olive oil

Half recipe

• 466 g flour (3 ½ cups)
• 280 g lukewarm water (1 ¼ cups, scant)
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 8 g kosher salt (1 Tb plus 1 tsp if using Diamond)
• 4 g sugar (2 tsp)
• ½ Tb olive oil

1. Weigh out the flour, sugar and salt and add to the mixer bowl. 

2. Weigh out the water, and add the yeast to it. Add to the mixer bowl

3. Add the olive oil to the mixer bowl.

4. Mix until well combined. The dough will be a bit sticky.

5. Place the dough into a covered plastic container with room for 100% expansion, and place in the refrigerator for 72 hours.

Pizza day

On pizza day, take the dough out of the fridge 3-4 hours before you want to use it, so it warms up to room temperature.

1. Put a pizza stone in the oven and heat it to 475˚ F for an hour or so.

2. Prepare the pizza sauce. We use one 6 oz can of tomato paste, one can of water, and 1/4 to 1/3 cup homemade tomato sauce. Put them in a blender and mix in 2 cloves of minced garlic, along with basil, rosemary and oregano. If the sauce seems sour, add a pinch of sugar.

3. Empty the dough onto a floured board, and weigh it in a small, tared bowl.

4. If you use the half recipe, divide the dough into two pieces weighing about the same. In our case we had 744 g of dough and divided it into two pieces weighing 372 g each. Check the weight of both pieces to make sure it is evenly divided. The weight will vary depending on how much flour the dough picks up.

5. Pick up one dough portion and begin tucking the dough ends into the middle. Continue this until you have made a smooth, round ball.  Repeat with the remaining dough.

6. Flatten one of the dough balls on the floured board with your hands. While you may be tempted to roll the dough out with a rolling pin, you will get lighter dough if  you don’t press all the bubbles out, but instead stretch the dough by hand. You can freeze the remaining balls for another day if you wish. We stored ours in a Ziplock freezer bag.

7. To stretch the dough, pick it up and stretch the top of the disk and then rotate the disk. Keep rotating the disk and stretching until it is close to the final size.

8. Here is a good example video on stretching the dough.  If the dough tears, lay it down and patch the dough by pulling a little over the tear.  You can finish your stretching with the dough on the floured counter top, rotating it as you stretch. Resist the temptation to toss the spinning dough into the air unless your kitchen floor is scrupulously clean!

9. Lift the dough and sprinkle a little cornmeal under it to make sure it doesn’t stick to the counter, and slide the dough disk onto a pizza peel. Sticking to the counter is less likely than with 1-hour dough, since the dough is much more cohesive.

10. Pour some of your tomato sauce onto the dough and spread it out, and then add slices of fresh mozzarella.  Top with whatever you like.

11. Slide the pizza onto the hot pizza stone in the oven and bake for about 18 minutes.

And now, you have a delicious pizza with a crust you can be proud of!

Addendum a week later

We made another pizza from the frozen dough ball. It was even more cohesive and easier to stretch. The resulting pizza crust was tenderer and a bit more flavorful.

We’ve been making pizza for many years, making our tomato sauce out of tomato paste mixed with a little homemade tomato sauce. But many people swear by the excellence of pizza made using San Marzano tomatoes instead. 

San Marzano

The San Marzano tomato originated in the town of San Marzano, near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. It’s a plum tomato, but longer and thinner than other plum varieties. It has more flesh than many other varieties, with a stronger, sweeter taste.

The tomatoes originally were grown only in the volcanic soil near Mt Vesuvius, which may have led to their somewhat unique flavor. Here’s a nice summary of the tomatoes and the town where they are grown.

Canned San Marzano tomatoes are widely available, but only those with a DOP label are considered authentic, since they are grown only in the Campania region. Seeds are widely available, and you can grow them yourself, but they won’t be the same as ones grown in the warm climate of southern Italy. 

The tomatoes are indeterminate (which means they keep growing rather than stopping at a particular height) and are thus prolific have a long growing season. My own experience of growing them in New England would suggest that they are a pale imitation of their Italian cousins: they need the Italian climate. They are also somewhat disease prone in northern climates.

So, to make your San Marzano pizza, you would use canned San Marzano tomatoes, just as the Italians do. They are readily available, but more expensive than other varieties. We found a 22 oz can of Cento brand organic San Marzano tomatoes at Stop and Shop for about $6.00. However, you can buy the same tomatoes with the organic marketing label for about $4.00 at Walmart. (For a complete discussion of organic marketing, you can read about how the organic program developed here). 

Our recipe

Still, San Marzano are more expensive. Cento sells a 22 oz can of “canned Italian tomatoes” for only $2.99. But for this recipe, we bought the Stop of Shop Cento organic San Marzano for $6, carrying them gingerly to our car. (We found the Walmart price for the non organic version later).

These tomatoes come in a puree, also made from San Marzanos, but a bit watery to use in pizza sauce, so we scooped out the actual tomatoes and drained them in a sieve before using them.

We always make our pizza sauce using garlic, oregano, basil and rosemary, so we put the drained tomatoes into a blender with the cut up spices and minced garlic. This was really all there was to our pizza sauce, but since it was still a bit watery, we drained it again before spreading it on our homemade pizza dough.

We rolled out our usual pizza dough recipe and slipped some cornmeal under the dough so we could easily slide it onto the pizza peel. We spread the sauce on the rolled out dough. 

Then we added some EVOO and topped the pie with fresh mozzarella, pepperoni, onions and some sliced mildly hot peppers. We slipped the pie onto a hot pizza stone in a 475˚F oven and baked it for 18 minutes.

We’ll have to say that it tasted great. Was it different than our usual recipe? Yes, it did have a slightly different taste.  Was it better and worth the expense?  I think I’ll quote Martha Stewart here, and suggest that you have to decide for yourself. Some people will find it worth it, and others would not be able to tell the difference from ordinary canned tomatoes. It’s up to you!

Pho is a Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and is a delicious work of art. It is not something simple like American chicken noodle soup, but a deep, rich beefy broth made slowly for hours. You can make your own, but a really good pho broth is made by simmering beef meat and bones for 6 hours or more. Even an Instant Pot version of pho takes up to 3 hours of simmering. And, of course, there are pho beef broth concentrates you can buy. And if you do go to all that work, how would you know if you’ve achieved anything like what real Vietnamese pho is like? And these recipes don’t easily scale down to broth for just a few people.

I looked around my area for restaurants that served pho to see what it should be like. There were two places in Norwalk, CT that offered pho, as well as one more in Stamford. So I set out last week to try the closest one, Good Hope Dumpling and Ramen House. They offered pho for $16 and with beef slices added, $20. They also offered pork soup dumplings, a favorite of mine.

Well, their pho came as a do-it-yourself kit. A quart of chicken stock and a bowl containing the rice noodles and bean sprouts, and some rather dry slices of beef. They also provided containers with a lime, some jalapeno slices and a sprinkling of cilantro. They also provide little cups of Sriracha and Hoisin sauces to mix in. As a quick soup, this was OK, but from reading about pho, I expected a spiced beef broth as a base.

The soup dumplings were OK but a a bit tough.

The dumplings at the Ren Dumpling and Noodle house are tenderer, when they are available.

So, I went the following week to the Mecha Noodle Bar on Washington Street in Norwalk. Mecha Noodle Bar is a small chain: they have restaurants in Fairfield, Norwalk, Stamford, New Haven, West Hartford, CT and Brookline, MA, Boston, Columbus, OH and Denver, CO. But here, you can get pho, pho sure! They offer five versions, as well as Steam Bao, Hand Rolls, Ramen and Munchies. I ordered the Pho Bo Vien (with rare beef and meatballs) and an order of Sweet and Sour Spareribs. They also have an extensive drinks menu.

This is definitely where you should go to get pho as well as anything else on their menu. It was superb!
There was a container of spiced beef broth and a bowl of rice noodles, topped with the meatballs and rare (raw) beef, that cooks when you pour the hot broth onto it. The result is shown at the top of the article.

But, while Mecha offers takeout, they suggest that these dishes are better fresh at their tables, and that’s what I’ll do next time. I’m looking forward to it!