Jim Leahy no knead pizza dough

[BakerAunt]

I'm also a :put the dough down and stretch it" person. I put mine on a piece of parchment paper and work from the center to get it to 12 inches. Once it is topped, I transfer the finished pizza on the parchment to the baking stone in the oven.

It's good to see you posting again Rottiedogs.

[aaronatthedoublef]

RottieDog, that is exactly what Jim Leahy recommends in "My Bread". I tried that a couple weeks ago with no success. It was thick (Mr. Leahy says his is cracker thin) and chewy but tasted good. I kept tearing holes in it and repairing the holes.

Some of this may have been because it needed to rest more after I cut the dough.

This week I took the second half of the dough and used my rolling pin and rolled it out and put it on a half sheet. It was thin. Perhaps it was because the dough was rested or maybe it was just the rolling pin or maybe both.

I can turn pizza on my hands, toss it, or roll it but not stretch it by hand. Maybe I just need to practice more.

My primary purpose is to give people a dough they do not need to knead in a machine or by hand.

[Mike Nolan]

Letting the dough age for 12-24 hours seems to make it a lot easier to roll out. I'm told sourdough pizza dough also rolls out easier, but I've never made a true sourdough pizza dough. The longer you let it age, the more it is going to start to behave more like a sourdough. (I learned that testing the baguette recipe in Peter Reinhart's 'artisan' book.)

The type of flour you use also affects it, a flour high in glutenin is going to be very elastic and will bounce back, so you need to let it relax frequently. A flour high in gliadin is going to be more plastic and will roll out quicker.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks.

The first time I make something I try to follow the recipe exactly. For his pizza dough in "My Bread" Leahy says to use 300 grams of bread flour and let it rise for two hours so I did that. I used a little extra water because the dough was too dry and was not coming together.

I then divided it in half per his instructions and tried to stretch it by hand to fit a half sheet. That was where I ran into trouble.

I took the second half and froze it. Then I let it thaw out for about 24 hours in the refrigerator and rolled it with a rolling pin. If I'd really wanted to test this I probably should have tried to hand stretch this but I didn't.

Now I'll try some variations on the flour. I know you suggest semolina to lower the gluten but I'll use cake flour. My family does not like semolina (at least when I use it).

Also, looking up Leahy recipes on the web Mr. Leahy and his acolytes are letting his pizza dough rest for 18-24 hours. I really like longer so I may try that too. But I like to only change one or two things at a time. All this takes time and I only make pizza once a week so it will take a while to sort all this out. I would bet some of this is covered in "My Pizza" but I do not want to shell out another $20+ for it.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't made pizza in over a year now, mostly because it's a hassle with just 2 of us, and with my wife's low-carb diet she hasn't been eating much bread, so I've cut way back on my baking in general.

Even when I was making it, I seldom decided on pizza far enough ahead to make the dough more than a few hours in advance.

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