Pizza Dough

Trader Joe's pizza dough is the best you can get for quality and price.

Making your own at home can be fun. Buy 00 flour.

I like doing pesto pizza and I will spend a few extra $$$ for good premade pesto. I've done that with whole milk mozzarella. I'm not a fan of most red sauces but you'll probably get suggestions in here. Ideally I'd make my own pesto but I've never gone though the process of doing so. It's fairly easy otherwise.

There is so much information on youtube and other locations. If you really want to delve into it, Vito Iacopeeli has a lot of info for Neapolitan pizza dough. I also got the Pizza Bible and really like it. I find that I really like the new york style dough best.

You can also look at pizza joints, besides the ones suggested already, that sell their dough. I use one when I am in need of a quick solution and then make my own sauce.


quick sauce: A can or two of san marzano style (my preference) depending on number of pizzas you are doing.

salt,

you can add fresh basil and/or oregano

I have one that I developed that has a few more ingredients and requires some cook time, but holding on sharing because I may decide to sell one day. lol

However you can find good sauces to make all over the interwebs.

make at home for cheap and easy.

1. use Ooni app for pizza calculator (grams of flour, salt, water, type of yeast, temperature of house, hours you have for it to proof, etc...)
2. Let big ball of dough proof for at least an hour with instant yeast, and then ball into individual pizza doughs and let sit for as much time as you said in the pizza calculator (i do a 3 hour total proof, 1 hour big ball, 2 hour as individual ball).

Sauce:
1. Raos makes a pretty damn good jarred sauce.
2. making your own is easy. 1 can of peeled whole tomatoes, handcrush them and then add salt and oregano. THATS IT

If you want a book for homemade pizza doughs, I suggest The Elements of Pizza by Ken Forkish.

48 hour fermentation in the fridge is the sweet spot in my opinion to build a great flavor and a nice dough to work with.

I have a friend who bakes pizzas in the oven and in the big green egg on a regular basis. We have gotten dough from Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Reginelli’s. They are all good but the consensus is that Reginelli’s is the best.

Trader Joe’s. I use their garlic and herb dough. There’s also a plain. I also see Fat Boys sells dough balls if you are near one.

I recently started making my own dough. It was much easier than I thought it would be. There’s yeasts and recipes that allow you to make it in 30 minutes, and not have to wait a day or 2. Before I started doing this, I would get slapped out dough from Rotolo’s ($2-4 each, depending on who was working). Stretched their 12” to 14” and it was easy and good.

500grams OO flour
2-3 grams instant or dry active yeast
10 grams salt
500grams room temperature water

Mix with a whisk until smooth like pancake batter.

Add to that:

600 grams high gluten bread flour (King Arthur bread flour works well)

Mix well until no dry spots remain then knead for a few minutes until it’s a smooth ball.

Cover and let proof 6 hours on counter.

Cut in 2 balls for 16” pizzas or 4 for 12” pizzas.

Roll into a nice ball, cover and let proof for 90 minutes (or put in refrigerator for overnight)

Stretch add toppings and bake. Good easy recipe. I like it.

And I also like Raos Marinara sauce as pizza sauce.

Aldi sells pretty good pizza dough balls as well. Also Commodore's Pizza in Hammond.

Costs about $1 to make enough for a couple pizzas.

LINK