Pizza bread (with MEASUREMENTS?!)
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***RECIPE, MAKES TWO LOAVES***
2 cups (473mL) lukewarm water
2g (1/2 teaspoon) granulated sugar
7g (1 packet) dry yeast (I like 'instant' yeast)
10g salt for the dough (if using Morton kosher, that's 2 teaspoons)
700g (about 5 3/4 cups) bread flour (I like '00' pizza flour, and you can use less flour but the dough will be more delicate)
1-2g (1/4-1/2 teaspoons) coarse salt for the top
1-2g (about 1/2 teaspoon) black pepper
2-3g (about 1 teaspoon) garlic powder
olive oil
Mix the sugar and yeast into the water and let bloom about five minutes. Add in the salt, then stir/knead in the flour. Cover and rise at room temperature until doubled, an hour or two. Punch the dough down and knead it a little bit, then repeat. I let it rise and punch it down again 3-4 times at room temperature, if I have the time, and I use a wooden spoon instead of my hands, because this dough is very sticky.
Divide the dough in two, put them each in their own bowl with some olive oil and make sure the dough balls and the bowl interiors are greased up. Cover and let rise again in the refrigerator for at least a day, but I think it gets better as it ages up to a week or so.
My bread comes out better with my pizza steel positioned on a medium-high rack, but every oven is different. Heat a pizza stone or steel at 500ºF/260ºC (convection, if you have it) and leave it there a bit to accumulate heat — I let my oven come to temperature and then let the steel heat an additional 10-20 minutes.
Spread a thin layer of olive oil over a dinner plate so the dough won't stick. Take one of the doughs out of the refrigerator and remove it from the bowl, taking care not to smash or flatten the honeycomb pattern on the underside. Put the dough on the plate with the underside facing up, and stretch the dough so that it more or less fills the whole plate.
Smear another layer of olive oil onto the dough, taking care again not to flatten the honeycomb. Season thoroughly with salt, pepper and garlic powder — the measurements are approximate, you can use more or less, or play with other seasonings.
Here's how I put the dough in the oven, but you do you. I open the oven door, rest the plate on the door, carefully lift the dough off with my hands, stick one end of it to one corner of the steel and then stretch it to the other corner to make a long, narrow bread.
Bake until golden brown. If you see any of the garlic powder starting to turn black and burn, the bread needs to come out. Mine usually take about 8 minutes. I use a spatula (or two) to get the bread out and let it steam out on a rack until I can handle it. Cut it once down the middle lengthwise, then cut it across into strips — I do about an inch or a couple centimeters wide on each.
It's possible to bake both doughs at the same time if you have a big stone/steel, but you might not be able to stretch them as thin. They come out better if you bake them one after the other, with a few minutes in between to let the baking surface recharge some heat.
If you find the outside is burning before the inside is baked, try moving the stone/steel to a different rack level. If you still can't fix the problem, you can try laying a piece of aluminum foil over the top of the bread for some of the baking process to shield the seasonings, but make sure you remove it for the last couple minutes of baking to let the top crisp.
