secrets to great homemade pizza by sean lannin - restaurants downtown chicago deep dish pizza

Pizza is the sum of its parts;
It's pizza crust, pizza toppings, pizza sauce.
Make every one as wonderful as you can, and you will be sure to make the best homemade pizza.
Try the following secrets when you make a homemade pizza.
Bake pizza crust separately: it is best to bake pizza crust first before adding ingredients and sauce.
There is a good reason to do so.
If you bake at the same time, you may get a pizza with over-cooked ingredients, burnt cheese and uncooked flat crust.
Of course, you shouldn't bake the shell completely for the first time, so you don't get a crust burnt pizza after the last baking stage.
Mix pizza dough ingredients: put at least one into a bowl first
A tenth of the warm water specified in your homemade pizza recipe.
Gradually add yeast to the water, stir, let it sit for a few minutes.
At the same time, in a separate bowl, put in the remaining warm water, add sugar and salt (if you need these ingredients for your recipe) and other dry ingredients other than flour, add the water and yeast mixture, stir the batch, and then add the rest immediately.
Knead the pizza mixture: Knead will allow the air to mix with the pizza dough mixture.
You should knead the pizza dough only when it reaches the proper consistency: the dough does not stick to the container and the individual parts can be stretched without breaking. Over-
Kneading will make the pizza dough crispy.
When kneading the face, use flour to prevent the mixture from sticking to the hands and bowls, but use as little flour as possible.
Before using the pizza dough, let it rise: After kneading the pizza dough, you have to give it enough time to reach the thickness you want.
Generally speaking, the longer the fermentation time, the better the taste of the pizza crust.
However, please be careful not to use too much yeast if you want the dough to rise for a few hours (like you have prepared the dough in the morning, then let it relax for the rest of the day to prepare for the end of the day baking ).
If speed is critical: If you need pizza dough as soon as possible, you can make it rise faster by adding more yeast to the mixture or by increasing the temperature of the dough.
To do the latter, you can heat the oven for a few minutes, turn it off, cool the oven by having the oven door open for a few seconds, place the dough in a covered bowl, place the bowl in the oven, close the door.
Let the mixture stay in the warm oven for at least 30 minutes, take it out, press the dough gently, and repeat the "rise" exercise for 30 minutes.
Another technique you can apply for a faster fermentation cycle is to use warm water.
The higher the water temperature, the faster the yeast works.
However, one thing to note is that pizza dough that has been fermented for a longer period of time using the least amount of yeast usually produces better results
Taste the pizza crust, so it's better to mix and knead the dough a few hours before you really need it.
Frozen homemade pizza dough preparation: If you prepare the pizza dough the night before and put it in the fridge for baking the next day, take it out in the morning, before you use it, let it rise for at least a few hours.
Similarly, the less yeast is used, the longer it takes to rise.
Make thin crust pizza: If your goal is thin crust pizza, you will want to use less dough per pan.
You can also stretch your pizza dough in a pan.
This will naturally reduce the thickness of the crust.
To get a thick pizza crust: for a thick pizza crust, you need to use a pizza pan with a smaller circumference, use more pizza dough per Pan, or stretch the dough less.
The result is an increase in crust thickness.
To get crispy pizza crust: For crispy pizza crust, it would be the best if you reduce the amount of water.
Dry pizza dough usually means more crispy pizza crust.
The harder pizza dough also means a more crispy crust, so if you want a crispy crust, it's better to use flour with high gluten content.
For soft and sticky shells: in order to get a soft and chewy shell, you need to add more water to the dough mixture or use less flour.
A wetter pizza dough means a softer crust.
Use low gluten flour for better results.
You can make gluten.
Free pizza dough with gluten
If you live in a high
Altitude location: pay attention to the effect of high altitude on pizza dough.
Higher altitude means less air pressure, so the dough will rise faster, which means it will evaporate faster, so the dough will dry faster.
So if you're in a high
Altitude position, it is usually recommended to use more water and less yeast in the pizza dough mixture
Altitude.
Simply put, the pizza ingredients you should use depend on the type of pizza you want.
Fresh Mozzarella cheese is necessary if you want to make New York pizza.
Typical New York style pizza is minimalist;
That is, they use as few toppings as possible.
On the other hand, Chicago deep pizza usually adds meat-flavored ingredients: sausage, beef sausage, pork sausage, ground beef, bacon, ham, etc.
You can also see peppers, mushrooms and different types of cheese on typical Chicago pizzas.
On the other hand, herbs such as tomatoes, cheese, anchovies, garlic and basil and cattle Zhi are typical of Italian pizza.
On the other hand, California Pizza is characterized by seasonal vegetable ingredients, fruit ingredients, chicken pizza ingredients, smoked salmon ingredients and other unusual ingredients.
To save money: Use the pizza ingredients you already have on hand.
For example, the bacon, ham and sausage left for breakfast would be great ingredients.
Innovate according to the ingredients you have.
Of course, the cooked ingredients will take less time in the oven, so be sure to take this into account when baking pizza.
Fresh ingredients: it is recommended that you use fresh ingredients in pizza ingredients.
Use fresh mozzarella cheese if possible.
Finger crushing herbs: in order to release the taste of dry herbs, it is best to crush them with your fingers before adding them to pizza.
Drain and dry ingredients: to avoid eating wet pizzas, especially if you use a large amount of canned and damp ingredients, before you place the ingredients on the base of the pizza, you should drain excess water.
Your pizza sauce will bring a unique taste to your pizza.
You can find a lot of simple pizza sauce recipes online.
You can even try making your own signature pizza sauce.
Simple recipe for pizza sauce: there should be cans, pre-
Mixed pizza sauces are available in local supermarkets.
On the other hand, you can make pizza sauce with pasta sauce.
Another easy option is to fry some onions and garlic in extra virgin olive oil and add ketchup (the chunky tomato sauce is good, or the ketchup/mud diluted with some water ), add salt (add crushed pepper if you want), let the sauce simmer slowly, then add basil and oregano.
You can even add some balsamic vinegar if you like.
If you wish, you can also add some cooked minced meat to the sauce.
The thicker the sauce, the better: use thick pizza sauce on the pizza.
Pizza with too much water means wet pizza.
If you're using canned pizza sauce, evaluate the thickness.
If it is too thin, let the sauce simmer slowly before using it on the pizza.
Pizza sauce: when you cook a pizza, it's better to put the sauce on it.
This prevents burning of cheese and other ingredients.