Before you begin, I have one thought for you to remember as you stretch your pizza – pizza dough is extremely forgiving. Do not let it scare you. Handle it with confidence and assertiveness. You will not hurt it. If you stretch it and it tears, simply patch it by taking one edge of the hole and pull it across (closing the hole) and press it onto the other side of the hole.

PREP

Stretch the Dough

• Using your fingertips, flatten each ball all over until it is 8” in diameter.

• Lift the dough off the counter and slip your fingers under it on opposite sides of the round. Think of your hands as points on a compass. Hold the dough between your fingers and thumb on the east and west points and stretch slightly. Lay the dough down on the counter and turn the dough a quarter turn. Lift the dough off the counter, hold it between your fingers and thumb on the new east and west points and stretch slightly. You’ve now stretched north, south, east and west. Lay the dough down on the counter. Turn it an eighth of a turn. Lift the dough off the counter and stretch again. Once again, lay the dough down on the counter and make another quarter turn. Then lift the dough off the counter and make one final stretch. With this last stretch, you will have completed stretching the dough round at each of the 8 principle points on a compass. Lay the dough back down on the floured surface. The dough round will now measure about 10” in diameter.

• Using the fingertips of your first two fingers and your thumbs, and placing them about ¾ inches from the edge of the dough, lift a section of the dough from the surface of the countertop. [Gently stretch the dough by pulling your hands apart. Continue stretching the outer edge of the dough, section by section, until you have made your way around the full circumference. Watch your finger placement as you make your way around the dough. You want the outer edge to remain thicker than the center so that it can form a nice cornona (or crown) of crust for the finished pizza. The dough should now be a well formed round shape measuring 12” in diameter. If your dough is slightly misshapen simply reshape it by pushing (or pulling) the edge until you achieve the desired round pizza shape.

Move Your Dough to a Pizza Peel

• Prepare the peel by scattering cornmeal on your peel. The cornmeal will help prevent the dough from sticking to the peel. If you prefer, you can use flour or semolina in place of the cornmeal. If you don’t have a peel use the backside of a cookie sheet pan.

• Using your fingertips of one hand, lift the edge of the dough that is furthest away from you. Then, slide your other hand, with your palm up, underneath the dough keeping your thumb on the top of the round of dough. Let go of the edge of the dough and slide that hand, again palm up, under the dough so that the fingertips of both hands point towards each other.

• Keeping your hands flat and parallel to the countertop, lift your hands straight up until you are a few inches off the counter. The dough will come off the counter and hang down off the edge of your hands.

• Move your hands (and the dough) over to your prepared peel and lower your hands until they are just above the center of the peel.

• Slide your hands out from the underside of the dough. The dough round will drop into place over your peel.

Top Your Pizza

Once you have your pizza dough on your pizza peel, you want to get your pizza into the oven as quickly as possible. Three key points: don’t press down when spreading the sauce, don’t press the toppings into the dough, and put the pizza in the oven as soon as you finish adding the toppings.

TRANSFER

Put your Pizza into the Oven

• With the pizza now in place on the peel, grasp the handle of the peel with your thumb on top of the handle and your fingers on the underside of the handle. Then, with a quick, confident movement that begins at your shoulder, without moving your wrist and elbow, pull the peel towards you about 2 inches. Next, push the peel away by about 2 inches taking it back to its original spot. You want to see the pizza move slightly and with ease. You may need to repeat the movement a few times to get the pizza moving and in order to ensure that the pizza moves easily. If it does, move on to the oven.

• If, even with all your planning, you pizza does not move on the peel (or sheet pan) when you shake the peel, lift a piece of the edge of the dough off of the peel and scatter a little more cornmeal onto the peel. Give a shake again. If necessary, add more cornmeal under another section of the pizza. With a bit of coaxing, and a good deal of patience, you’ll get any pizza moving about on the peel so that one swift shake and it will glide easily onto your stone.

• Once you have the pizza freely moving about the peel, open the oven door and pull the rack out slightly. Place the tip of the peel at the far end of the pizza stone so that the peel rests at a 20 degree angle to the stone and the pizza itself (still on the peel) sits directly above the stone. With one swift motion, pull the peel out from under the pizza. The pizza will drop directly onto the stone. Quickly push in the rack and close the oven door.

BAKING

Bake Your Pizza

• The best pizza cooks at a high temperature. Pizzerias use special pizza ovens, whether coal, gas or wood-fired, that reach 650ºF or more. To make pizza at home, I have developed a technique that will replicate pizzeria-style pizza in a home oven. This method starts with baking the pizza on a pizza stone preheated with the oven on the broil setting. You will also begin cooking the pizza with the oven still set to broil. This is very important because the pizza needs to start cooking at an intense heat that most home ovens can produce most efficiently on the broil setting.

• Mastering this high temperature method of baking depends on knowing your oven and the best way to reach, and maintain, the highest temperature possible. Many ovens today have automatic shut off features that turn the oven off after a specific amount of time or once the oven reaches a pre-seat temperature.

• Other ovens have broilers that cycle on and off when they reach certain temperatures. If your broiler cycles off at a lower temperature than the highest bake setting for your oven, then regardless of my instruction, preheat your oven and pizza stone at the highest bake setting rather than the broiler setting.

• No matter how you preheat your oven and stone, you will begin the baking process under the heat of the broiler. If you preheat your oven and stone at the highest bake setting, switch your oven to broil before sliding the pizza into the oven. Also, check that the broiler element turns on before you put in your pizza. In the first minute or two of baking, the pizza gets the intense burst of heat possible only through direct exposure to the heat of the broiler.

• When you want to bake more than one pizza in succession, always allow the oven and pizza stone to come back up to temperature before making the next pie. Also, after removing one pizza from the oven, you will want to scrap off and discard any cornmeal that remains on the stone. If you leave the cornmeal, it might burn before, or during, the next pizza’s baking which could leave the pizza with a bitter taste. Gather the cornmeal on the stone and push it into a bowl with the aid of your dough scraper.

How to Use Your Pizza Stone

• The first step in most of the pizza recipes of this book instruct you to “place a pizza stone on the top rack of a cool oven”. Please take care to ensure that your oven is cool. Also, after washing your stone, let it dry completely before using it. Your stone must be completely dry before you use it. Not paying attention to these two conditions could cause your stone to crack. If you do not have a pizza stone, substitute an edgeless (or the backside) of a metal cookie sheet.

• Finally, place the pizza stone on the oven rack about 4 inches from the heat source. Again each oven is different. If your broiler has a less intense heat source, you may need to bake your pizza closer to the heat source. You want your oven to brown the pizza and puff the corona (the outer ring of crust) while the pizza bakes on the broiler setting.

How to Bake Your Pizza in an Oven with No Broiler or Without Using a Pizza Stone

• Ovens without broilers represent the biggest challenge to baking pizzeria style pizza. If your oven does not have a broiler, preheat the oven at its highest bake setting for up to an hour (making sure that your oven does not have an automatic time or temperature shut off), then bake the pizza. You will most likely need to bake your pizza for 15 to 20 minutes rather than the 10 minutes in the instructions.

• If you do not have a pizza stone and do not want to attempt transferring the pizza into the oven, build your pizza on a sheet pan and place it in the preheated oven on the broiler setting. Follow the instructions for cooking under the broiler. Then turn your oven down to 400 degrees and continue cooking for about 12 to 15 minutes.

Turn Your Pizza

Cook your pizza for 1 minute under the broiler. Then turn the oven to the highest bake setting and cook your pizza for 5 minutes. This should be about the halfway point of the cooking process. At this point, you will rotate the pizza, not the stone, a half turn. Simply grasp the edge of the pizza with tongs, or the tips of your fingers, at about 3 o’clock (imagining the pizza as the face of a clock) and turn that spot to 6 o’clock, then repeat. This too will become second nature to you. This may sound daunting, but fear not, by this point in the cooking process, the pizza will have become firm and easy to manipulate. Cook for 2 to 5 minutes more until the pizza is cooked to your satisfaction.

FINAL STEPS

How to Know Your Pizza is Done

Ideally, if your pizza stone received a lengthy preheating and your oven maintained its high temperature, your pizzas will emerge with a crisp gently browned bottom crust, a slightly charred upper crust, and thoroughly cooked, melted, and slightly browned toppings. If at the end of the prescribed length of cooking the pizza has not reached this stage, leave it in the oven for another couple of minutes.

Remove Your Pizza from the Oven

Use a pair of tongs and your peel to remove your pizza from the oven. With the tongs, pick up the closest edge of the pizza and simply slide your peel under it. Push the peel until it slides fully under the entire pizza. Next lift the peel from the stone and remove it, and the pizza it carries, from the oven.