Ingredients
Method
Mix, rest, stretch, fold
- Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with your hands until no traces of flour remain. Set aside for ten to thirty minutes, then do a series of stretch and folds. Leave for a few more minutes, then do another series of stretch and folds. For best results, repeat this resting, stretching, and folding two more times, or simply rest the dough for 40-60 minutes at room temperature instead.
Ferment
- Leave to ferment until it has increased in size and feels puffy and airy when poked. This will take around six hours at 22ºC (72ºF), or longer if it’s colder. You can also ferment this overnight between 8ºC and 12ºC (46ºF and 54ºF), or you can ferment it at room temperature for two hours before moving it to a covered bowl in the fridge for up to two days.
Divide, shape, and rest
- Divide the dough into as many pizzas as you wish to make. Shape each piece as if you were shaping a boule, cover completely with flour, then return to the bowl to rest for at least half an hour. At this stage, you can also move the dough balls to a covered container in the fridge to cold proof for up to a couple of days.If you're short on time and want pizza sooner, you can just stretch the dough into shape without bothering with shaping it into balls, as discussed earlier.
Bake
- Preheat the oven to as hot as it will go. If you are using a pizza stone, put it in the oven to preheat. Dust flour over some cookie sheets or a pizza peel. Prepare your toppings. Once the oven is hot enough, take each ball of dough and gently stretch it evenly on all sides, turning the dough around in your hands and letting the weight of the dough do the stretching for you as much as possible. Stretch it as thinly as you like, being careful not to tear the dough (if it does tear, you can patch it up later). Place on the floured cookie sheet or pizza peel and repeat for the rest of the dough. Cover with your favourite pizza toppings, then place the whole pan on a pizza stone or other source of thermal mass, or just put it on an oven shelf if you don’t mind a less-crispy pizza. Allow to bake until everything is cooked through – this will depend on the oven temperature, how many trays you are baking, whether you used a pizza stone, whether you are baking directly on a pizza stone or on the cookie sheet itself, how much you’ve loaded up the base with toppings, and whether you have to rotate your pans around in the oven so that they each get a turn on the pizza stone. For 3 trays at 220ºC (430ºF) to 250ºC (483ºF) I allow around 20 minutes in total, if I were baking just one pan, it would probably take around 10 minutes, or even less time if I were baking directly on a pizza stone.