In your recipe, substitute 1 1/2 cups semolina for 1 1/2 cups of the
flour. Semolina is a coarser flour and softens the crust. Also
substitute olive oil for the lard, I think lard hardens the crust,
oil makes it extensible and softer. Also substitute honey or barley
malt syrup for the sugar. Fermentation reduces complex starches to
increasingly simpler sugars over time. Starting with a refined
(simple) sugars is not as effective as starting with a complex
sugar. You don't actually need a sweetener but if you want one, a
more complex unrefined sugar works better. Did you forget the salt
in the recipe or do you not use it?
My Pizza Dough (these ingredients are actually from Peter Reinhart's
BBA; Sicilian Bread). The recipe is a bit cryptic since you already
know how to make pizzas.
The Sponge (16 to 20 hours) - make at noon the day before pizza night
5.2 oz all purpose flour
5.2 oz bottled or filtered water
A tiny pinch of yeast (1/16 tsp or less in winter, half that in summer)
Dissolve the yeast in the water first, even if you use instant
yeast. There is so little yeast in the sponge that you want to be
sure that it is well distributed.
The Dough - the morning of pizza night
All the sponge
6 oz semolina
5 oz all purpose flour
2 tsp sea salt or 1 3/4 tsp table salt
5.5 oz bottled water
1 1/2 tsp yeast
2 tsp honey
1 Tb olive oil
Mix, let rise using stretch and fold techniques, divide into pizza
sizes, place in olive oil-coated baggies and let rest in fridge until
bake time.
Bake hot and fast! I bake on a stone, with the oven preheated to 515
deg F. (My oven goes to 550. If yours only goes to 500 then preheat
to 475). Slide the pizza on the stone and when the rim of the pizza
has puffed up (1 to 2 minutes), turn the oven to "broiler" mode and
crank the temperature to max. The heated broiler elements and hot
oven roof simulate the environment of a wood-fired stone oven. If
your oven reaches max temp and turns off before the pizza is done,
crack the door open to let some heat escape and keep the broiler
on. It also helps pre-roast very moist vegetables like tomatoes to
remove most of their water and to partially pre-cook thick, hard
vegetables like broccoli or asparagus. I usually roast them
also. You can do all this while the oven is pre-heating.
The bottom of the pizza crust should be brown and well cooked and the
rim should be unevenly dark and light brown (and maybe a few burnt
dough-bubbles that will have to be pinched off), and the cheese
toppings caramelized.
Werner