At 10:51 PM 5/22/99 -0700, Al Lee wrote:
>I have what I think is a great recipe for pizza dough, at least it makes
>excellent pizza shells.
>
>Now, I need to know how to get these uniform round, and thin, I think I
>need to toss or spin them. But, there is something I'm missing, either my
>dough is too tough, or I don't let it "rest" enough. When I try to toss it,
>it tends to tear! Any suggestions? My dough is fairly tough, or stiff!
>
>I wonder if I can get apprenticed somewhere to pick up this skill?
You don't need to become apprenticed, you just need to let the dough rise
again. After letting your pizza dough rise the first time, punch it down,
then divide into however many pizzas you want to make from the batch. Form
into round 'boules' being careful to maintain a nice skin (I form these by
carefully pushing the dough up through the bottom until I'm satisfied with
the shape), then COVER and let double in size. I find that an inverted bowl
works fine, although you might want to try the floured cloth technique.
When the dough has risen again, it will be gassy. DON'T roll it out. Use
your fingers to poke it into an approximate round shape, deflating all the
major gas bubbles. It's reasonably easy to then stretch the round disk
with your knuckles, then to throw the slack dough with a spinning motion in
the air, further stretching it and catching it on your bent knuckles, and
yes, this is exactly how the 'experts' do it. It helps if you say,
repeatedly, "Mamma mia, atsa spicy meatball!" for verisimilitude. It will
take you approximately three times to become a veteran at this. Most
people have problems with pizza dough because they 1) roll out the dough,
squishing all the little bubbles that make good pizza and 2) try to work
with freshly kneaded dough, instead of letting it rise and become slack.
It is also worth noting that it is better to have a less sticky dough.
Pizza dough needs to have a higher flour/liquid ratio than many breads, and
also benefits from high gluten, the higher the better, as long as it is
thoroughly kneaded. You should be able to stretch good pizza dough so thin
it's translucent, although you don't have to bake it that way.