Pizza dough

A certain kind of laziness has come to an end: in California, I always bought the pizza dough at Trader Joe's because it was good (and cheap too) and so never bothered to make the dough myself. This option was gone after leaving the US. In the stores in Switzerland, I could only get pizza doughs that weren't as good as those sold by Trader Joe's (and more expensive too) - but at least they were fairly convenient as they came pre-rolled and I didn't have to roll the dough.

Here in Sweden, I bought what looked to be a similar product exactly once - that dough was such a disappointment, that I decided to finally start making my own pizza dough. Thus, dug out my copy of Tyler Florence's Eat This Book and found his recipe. Below follows my description of how I converted the recipe to the use of fresh yeast (which I prefer, although here in Sweden one can buy both fresh and dry yeast).

Ingredients:
- 2.5 dL (1 cup) lukewarm water ^[1]
- 25 g (ca. 1 oz) fresh yeast
- 500 g (ca. 1 lb) flour
- 2 + 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp salt
- durum flour (for rolling)

UPDATE:
Scaling everything up by a factor of 2 is more convenient - that way I use one pack of fresh yeast and get dough for 4 pizzas.


The fresh yeast was crumbled in the lukewarm water and stirred before adding 2 tbsp olive oil, and then the flour in portions. The first half of the flour was simply stirred in using a spoon, then 1 tbsp salt was added and the rest of the flour was kneaded in by hand - when all the flour was added the dough was kneaded some more. The resulting dough should be smooth and elastic, and when pinched neither crumbly nor sticky. The ball of dough was transferred to another bowl with 1 tbsp olive oil, coated with the oil, covered with film and left standing in a warm place for about 1 hour to rise.

The dough rose to about the double volume (or perhaps a little more) and was parted in two equally large portions, which were rolled using durum flour and placed on baking paper on baking sheets. This portion made nicely for two 25 cm x 35 cm (10" x 14") pizzas. Today I topped them with tomato-garlic sauce, dried ham, artichoke hearts, fresh basil, and mozzarella. After some 15-20 minuted in the oven at 200 C (400 F) they were delicious - I'm never going back to other doughs after this...


^[1] made from 1 dL boiling water and 1.5 dL cold tap water