Now Tossing: Pizza Dough

Today is the new milestone of my pizza chef career. This evening, I made several successful pizza dough toss for the first time. It flew up in the air, circles, and landed on my palm. This Youtube Video gave the inspiration on how to learn to toss pizza. And to avoid waste pizza landing on the floor, I practice by tossing a small bath towel :D.

While it is pretty easy to learn the technique of pizza tossing from the video, and using towel as a safe learning tool, making a good pizza dough that is toss-able will test your patience. It is a matter of making the right dough, that elastic enough, thus would not tear when it lands on your hands. Experience will tell you the right mix of water and flour. And if you have to error, error on the wetter side, because the mix will dry up during the kneading process.

This is the dough that marks my new milestone. It was only 1/3 of its size when I finish kneading it last night. The tile under the plastic container is 30x30cm.


The tossed pizza dough soon become 3 nice pan of pizza: The Quattro Formaggi, Sweet Corn, and Cocktail sausage pizza.

This is the recipe I follow for the dough, thanks to Rosa for allowing me to repost her recipe. A little bit modified based on my experience.

~ BASIC PIZZA DOUGH ~
Original recipe taken from “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart.

Makes 6 pizza crusts (about 9-12 inches/23-30 cm in diameter).

Ingredients:
4 1/2 Cups (20 1/4 ounces/607.5 g) Unbleached high-gluten (%14) bread flour or all purpose flour, chilled
1 3/4 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Instant yeast
1/4 Cup (2 ounces/60g) Olive oil or vegetable oil (both optional, but it’s better with)
1 3/4 Cups (14 ounces/420g or 420ml) Water, ice cold (40° F/4.5° C)
1 Tb sugar - FOR GF use agave syrup
Semolina/durum flour or cornmeal for dusting

1. Mix together the flour, salt and instant yeast in a big bowl
   
2. Add the oil, sugar and cold water slowly and mix well (with hand) in order to form a sticky ball of dough. On a clean surface, knead for about 5-7 minutes, until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are homogeneously distributed. If it is too wet, add a little flour (not too much, though) and if it is too dry add 1 or 2 teaspoons extra water. If you are in doubt, error to the wetter side.
   
3. Once it is well mixed, start kneading. Pull the dough and fold, repeat until the dough springy, elastic, and less sticky
   
4. Flour a work surface or counter. Line a jelly pan with baking paper/parchment. Lightly oil the paper.
5. Split the dough into 6 pieces. Gently round each piece into a ball.
6. Transfer the dough balls to the lined jelly pan and mist them generously with spray oil. Slip the pan into plastic bag or enclose in plastic food wrap.
7. Put the pan into the refrigerator and let the dough rest overnight or for up to thee days. Take it out from freezer the morning you want to make the pizza, and let it rest for couple of hours before start tossing it
   
8. NOTE: You can store the dough balls in a zippered freezer bag if you want to save some of the dough for any future baking. In that case, pour some oil (a few tablespooons only) in a medium bowl and dip each dough ball into the oil, so that it is completely covered in oil. Then put each ball into a separate bag. Store the bags in the freezer for no longer than 3 months. The day before you plan to make pizza, remember to transfer the dough balls from the freezer to the refrigerator.