The Best Pizza You'll Ever Make Epicurious 101

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That's what you want
in a good pizza crust.For my pizza today, I'm
using store-bought dough.There's no shame in this.Did you know if you go
to your local pizzeria,you can buy dough from them too?So find your favorite pizzeria
and buy dough from them.I preheated my oven to about 500 degrees,basically as high as it's gonna go.And what I'm gonna do is
make a makeshift pizza stone.The reason we have the sheet
tray turned over like thisis that it's easy to transportand slide the pizza off onto it.So I'm gonna put it in upside down,put it in my pre-heated oven
and get it nice and hot.

Putting our pan in the ovenand pre-heating it does
a couple of things.It starts our crust
getting crisped right away,and we get a little bit of
oven spring from that yeast.As it dies, it's giving a
last breath of CO2 and flavor,and we get some nice bubbles.While it's getting hot, let's get to work.My store-bought dough is chilled,and what I want to do is kind of cut itinto the portion size I wantand then rework the dough
slightly to redistribute the yeastand kind of wake this dough up.So I'm just going to
kind of roll this under,

give it a light rounding so
that when we roll this out,we have a nice round pie.If you have bubbles, leave them alone.We don't want to crush them out,and we redistribute that yeast.So we're gonna work the dough lightly,not knead it, but just bring it together.And what we do is we want
it to get a little tightso when I press down on it,
it kind of bounces back.It's got some spring to it, right?We don't wanna work it
so it's a tough dough.We just wanna work it a
little, keep the bubbles inand give us a little spring back.I'm gonna put it on my sheet
tray, give it a little room.I'm gonna put a towel on this

and let it sit out at room
temperature for about 30 minutes.The gluten can relax a
little 'cause we reworked it.We also want to get some
more bubbling in there.We want the yeast to wake up.So while the dough rests,
we can make our sauce.[bright folk music]For everyone that buys
sauce in a jar, stop.This is so easy, so simple.It really takes no skill at all.I tend not to use fresh
tomatoes on my pizza.Canned tomatoes have less
water than fresh tomatoes,and they have a ton of flavor as well.I'm using crushed peeled tomatoes.

You can use whole peeled
or diced tomatoes.Whatever one makes you happy, just use it.Next thing I wanna do is put a
little bit of garlic in here.Just one nice clove of garlic,and I'm gonna put this in just like this.I'm not gonna chop it.That's why I have the
stick blender, right?I just want to throw my garlic in there.If you like more garlic,
put more garlic in.If you like less, put less in.But please, use fresh,
not the stuff in the jar.So next I'm gonna add some basil leaves,and I like to puree a few
leaves in there, right?I just break them up. I'm
gonna do about six or seven.Basil's gonna give some
sweetness to the sauce.It's gonna give some brightness
to the finished pizza.

Some people use oregano. I like oregano.I like basil a lot more.I like a little bit of
chili flakes in there.Not necessarily for a lot of heatbut just a little bit of kick.I'm also gonna add some
extra-virgin olive oil.This is really floral and green.It's gonna give our basil a little boost.It also just kind of
brings everything togetherwith a little bit of fat.Some salt, fresh cracked black pepper.Has better flavor than
something you'd buy in a jar.If you don't have one of
these fancy stick blendersor immersion blenders, you
can put it in a blender,you can put it in a food processor,

or you can just break
it up with your hands.It's totally up to you.I just like for that garlic
to be buzzed into my sauceso I get a good dispersion.The finished texture I'm looking foris that all of the
ingredients are blended,but it's not super smooth.I wanna see some chunks
in there if possible.The point of this is justto bring all of the flavors together.Some people like to
cook their tomato sauce,but for this recipe we don't.Saves you a lot of time and
still gives you a ton of flavor.[bright folk music]Alright, so our dough has been sittingfor about a half hour.Let's take a look at it.

Ooh, look at that.We got some nice bubbles.We want bubbles and a
little less bounciness.We also reactivated some
of the yeast in thereto kind of get those
bubbles rolling again.Bubbles usually equal flavor, right?Bubbles mean that the
yeast is doing its work.So let's get this one piece of dough off.Put it out onto the board.If it's sticky, you wanna make surethat you put some flour on 'em.We can always shake the flour off later.I'm just gonna start
going around the outside,and I want to use my fingers for this.A rolling pin's gonna
knock out all the bubbles

that we tried to get in there.What I'm gonna do is
just go around the sidesleaving a crust and then
start stretching our dough.If the dough's not stretching
easily, be patient.That means it just needs
to rest a little longer.And what you can also do
is pull on it if you want,but we really just want to
stretch out that center.If I put it over my hands,
my hands are curled under.I'm using my knuckles.We can use our hands to kind of stretchwherever there's heavy parts.Don't necessarily need
to throw it in the air,you just really want to stretch it out.

I want it as thin as I can make itwithout it tearing, right?If I get a little tear like
that, all I do is take my dough,stretch it over the top, cover up my hole,give it a pinch, and we're good to go.But you definitely want it to beas thin as humanly possible
without tearing through.Our pizza dough is stretched out,and what I'm gonna do is
get another half sheet tray.It's not hot,and I'm gonna use this as a
makeshift peel for my pizza.So we get our dough on here.Put enough flour on the bottom
so that it doesn't stick.See how it moves around really well?

And now we're ready to top it.So my dough is moving freely,and I'm gonna put some sauce on here,and we're gonna take the
ladle, put some in the center,and then we're just gonna swirl it aroundall the way up to the edge.We don't want this to be wet, right?So we don't wanna put too much sauce in.Just a nice light coating of sauce.Every time, let's make sure
that we're still moving.If you see that it sticks,we can always add like a
pinch of flour underneath.As far as cheese goes,I try and stay away from fresh mozzarellabecause it has a lot of moisture,and it makes our dough soggy.I like to use a low-moisture mozzarella.

It does not make my pizza soggy.So when it comes to grating
my mozzarella cheese,and I go right on top, right?If it just drops in the
center, that's fine.I give a nice hefty dash of
that low-moisture mozzarella,and then I can kind of
spread it out to the edges.You want to have just enough
cheese to cover our pizza.The other cheeses that I
use are grating cheeses.Whenever I use grated cheese for pizza,I like to use parmesan and pecorino.Parmesan gives us a nice nuttiness.Pecorino is sharp, kind
of kick in the face.I like to kind of the
mix of those on my pizza.

I'm gonna hit itwith a little bit of
extra-virgin olive oil,always a little salt
and some black pepper.You can put whatever toppings
you want on this pizza,but just keep in mindhow much moisture is in those ingredients.If it's like a mushroom, and
it has a lot of moisture,cook them first before you put 'em on top.[bright folk music]So I wanna make sure this is floweredso our pizza moves easilyand slides into the oven
without any problems.The pizza's been in the
oven for about 20 minutes.It's time to take it out.Isn't she pretty?Look, we got some nice
browning on the crust.

We got some beautiful
bubbles. Let's get that out.Alright, let's slide it
off onto the cutting board.Look at her, she's beautiful!Make sure you put the fresh basil onright before you're ready to serve itso that it doesn't go black.Right, we want a little bit
of freshness from every bite.You can smell, we have a great crust.We have a lot of bubbles.You can smell the cheese.The basil is kind of
hitting you really hard.All in all, it looks like a great pie.Time to cut.I'm just gonna use your
regular chef knife,and I'm gonna cut it into
like six nice slices.Mm, delicious.

It's got a great balance of flavors.You can taste the dough, which is nice,'cause it has some nice bubbles in it.Look at those nice crackly bubbles.You can taste all the cheeses,and that mozzarella's got a little bitof stretchiness to it.The basil just kinda
like sets everything off,makes it fresh, cut some
of the cheese flavor,gives you some nice brightness.It's totally worth the time
to make your own pizza.This is a super easy process.All you gotta do is have
a little bit of patience.[playful jazzy music]It keeps on like [laughs].Pizza, [laughs] Frank style.