Doughm00se Pizza Crust

The best thin crust pizza!

Ingredients

• 275g lukewarm water
• 6g yeast
• 7g sugar
• 12g salt
• 15g olive oil
• 410g King Arthur Baking Pizza Flour (+5-10g for hand kneading)

Toppings

• 6½-7 ounces grated cheeses (we use a variety in our mix, including mozzarella, Cooper CV Sharp, Monterey Jack, fontina, Bongard American, and gruyere)
• Heavy half-cup pizza sauce (our favorite at this time is a half and half mix of DeLallo pizzeria style and DeLallo margherita style, plus about ¼ teaspoon of Italian seasoning)

Instructions

1. Combine yeast, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer, add water, and whisk to combine.
2. Add olive oil and whisk.
3. Add 410g flour and knead with stand mixer 8-10 minutes. Dough will be quite wet and sticky. Remove from mixer, divide in two, and hand-knead each half for a few turns, using some of the extra flour, until dough loses some of its stickiness.
4. Place each half in a bowl or container, cover, and let rise at room temperature for 1-2 hours. Refrigerate until ready to make pizza.
5. About 30 minutes prior to baking, place the pizza stone in the oven and begin preheating the oven to 550°F. About 25 minutes after turning on the oven, remove one of the dough balls and place on floured parchment. Roll out to 13”-14” circle, resting as needed for the dough to cooperate. Top and slide onto pizza stone, immediately reduce temperature to 400°F, and bake for 10 minutes. Wetter toppings such as shrimp or spinach may require another 1-2 minutes of baking time.

Notes

20 February 2022: Today we made a white pizza with shrimps. We topped the crust with extra-virgin olive oil; a mix of mozzarella, Monterey Jack, gruyere, and American cheeses; Italian seasoning and black pepper; and 12 21/25-count shrimp (cut into thirds).

16 July 2022: Today we made this pizza with an unusual mixture of cheeses, which I liked but Rich didn’t care for (Colby-Jack, yellow Cooper, and Clearfield white American). When using a cheese mix that is all or predominantly American-style processed cheese, we have been heating the oven and stone to 450°F, rather than 550°F. Sometimes we turn the oven off when we put the pizza in, and sometimes we leave it on. Bake time is similar, close to 10 minutes. Just watch carefully because some American cheeses brown suddenly and can quickly overbrown.

29 October 2022: We made this pizza today with half a jar of DeLallo Margherita style pizza sauce, and a cheese mix of 4 ounces mozzarella and 2 ounces Clearfield American. We added a couple shakes of garlic powder, coarse-ground black pepper, and a bit of plain table salt for seasoning. We also tried rotating the pizza stone after it had preheated for a while, but before placing the pizza in the oven. This seemed to even out the hot spot a bit. This pizza also cooked more quicky than normal (in 7 minutes), for some reason.

18 December 2022: We made a white version of this pizza today. We used 8 ounces of fresh mozzarella. We used one medium cooking onion, chopped fine, sauteed in 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter until slightly browned (and added another tablespoon of butter at the end), sprinkled in some finely ground rosemary, crushed rosemary, garlic powder, coarsely ground black pepper. We spread the onion mixture on the dough and topped with the mozzarella cheese, then sprinkled some Italian seasoning and grated Pecorino cheese on top. I heated the oven and stone to 450°F, rotated stone before putting pizza in, and then turned down the temperature to 400°F. We baked the pizza for about 11 minutes on rack 3.

26 January 2024: Three days ago, I made the dough with half pizza flour blend, half bread flour. Rolled it out to 13.5” round. Preheated the stone on rack 2 to 500°F (for at least 45 minutes). Placed approximately 10 slice of American cheese on dough, breaking it up into pieces to fit the round shape of the dough. Added homemade sauce on top of the American cheese, then sprinkled Romano on top, on half of the pizza, and Parmesan on the other half. We put the pizza onto the preheated stone, set the timer for 10 minutes, and then turned the temperature down to 450°F. Baked 11 minutes.

27 January 2024: used second half of dough from yesterday. This time we placed Cooper cheese (rather than regular American) directly on the dough. We used the same homemade sauce as yesterday, although we added some plain crushed tomatoes and pulsed it a bit to smooth it out. We added grated Parmesan on top of the sauce because we preferred it to the Romano. (It turns out that we could have used even more Parmesan than we did.) We baked it liked yesterday, but let it go for 11½ minutes. The Cooper cheese doesn’t seem to brown as quickly as the regular American cheese. Crust was very nice and crispy.

16-17 February 2024: We made the dough just like last time, with half bread flour and half pizza blend, which works very well. Covered the crust with Cooper cheese, then homemade oniony sauce, and then about 2.5 ounces of shredded mozzarella. Baked 11-11½ minutes on rack 2 at 450°F, after heating the oven and stone to 500°F for about 45 minutes. These were our favorite pizzas yet!