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How to Make Pizza

Pizza - How to Shape Dough into a Pizza by Hand

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Ruth Gresser
Pizzeria Paradiso Georgetown
www.eatyourpizza.com  
 

Owner and chef Ruth Gresser grew up cooking with her mother, who owned a catering business in Baltimore, Md. Ms. Gresser cooked her way through Grinnell College in Iowa before moving to San Francisco, where she cooked for several years at Friends a Cafe and at Le Trou Robert. In 1987, she graduated summa cum laude from Madeleine Kamman's Classical and Modern French Cooking School in Glen, NH. She then moved to Washington, DC, where she has helped open four popular restaurants: Pizzeria Paradiso Dupont Circle, Pizzeria Paradiso Georgetown, Blue Plate and Obelisk. Ms. Gresser has been the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including the Women's Chefs and Restaurateurs Madeleine Kamman Scholarship and a guest chef appearance at Alice Waters' renowned Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA. She has also been profiled in The Washington Post Magazine, The Washington Business Journal and by Georgetown University Television. Ms. Gresser has been a chef demonstrator, contributor and panelist for The Smithsonian Institution and for FreshFarm Markets in Washington, DC. She is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and Women Chefs and Restaurateurs.

Pizza - How to Shape Dough into a Pizza by Hand

This video will show how to shape dough into pizza by hand.

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Pizza - How to Shape Dough into a Pizza by Hand

Ingredients

1 lb Flour
10 oz Water
1 tsp Yeast
1 tbsp Salt
1 tbsp Oil
3 tbsp Olive Oil
1 tbsp Garlic
1/2 tsp Oregano
5 Tomatoes
1 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Parsley

Instructions

1. Dump the flour on the counter and create a well in the center. Pour in water that is 100 degrees F.


2. Sprinkle the yeast on top and mix the yeast into the water. Let it sit for a few minutes.


3. Add the oil and salt and mix them into the water and the yeast.


4. Gently mix the flour into the yeast mixture.


5. Start kneading the dough. Take a portion of the dough that's farthest away, and fold it over the front portion and then push away with the heel of your hand. Knead for about 10 minutes or until you have a nice smooth dough.


6. Put the dough to rise in a bowl, cover it with a little plastic or a tea towel and leave it out to rise. It will take about two to three hours or you can refrigerate the dough and let it go overnight.


7. When the dough has finished rising, put some flour down on the counter and take the dough out of the bowl. Knead the dough and then cut pieces of the pizza dough into even size pieces and shape it into balls.


8. Put the dough balls onto a floured flat surface, like a plate, and then cover it and let it rise for another hour or so.


9.  Flatten the dough and press all of the air out of the pizza and then take a rolling pin and roll it and turn it and roll it again until the dough is flattened.


10. For the tomato sauce, cook the oregano and the garlic for a minute. Dice five medium size peeled and seeded tomatoes. Add them to the pan and let the sauce cook for 5 minutes. Add the salt and parsley to finish the sauce.


11. Put the tomato sauce onto the pizza dough as well as any additional toppings.


12. Turn your oven to its highest setting and place the pizza on a pizza stone or preheated pan to simulate a wood-burning oven.
 

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Transcripts

Hi, I am Ruth Gresser from Pizzeria Paradiso, we are making pizza today. Right now we're going to take the pizza dough and shape it into the pizza. So, as you will see the dough after it's second rise, it's very soft, very moist, and light, and it's in this nice round shape, which is great because you're making a round pizza. So, I have got some flour on the counter. I'm going to put some more flour on the pizza dough itself. The first way I'm going to show you to make the dough, or shape the pizza is to do it all by hand. In order to do that, the first thing you want to do is you want to flatten the dough and press all of the air out of the pizza. So, you're just going to take your fingertips and flatten the dough, just like this. As you can see with this pizza dough, it's very airy, it has got a lot of yeast activity, which is a great thing. So, when it gets to be about this size, and I am making individual size pizzas with this dough, so when it gets to be about this size, you actually take it off the counter, pick it up, put it between your hands. You hold your hands in this manner, put the dough on your fingers, and pull the dough with the tips of your fingers and your thumb, and then turn it, and pull, and turn and pull. You want to do this consistently around the pizza so that you maintain it's round shape. The next thing that you can do, once you get to a certain size, is you want to just stretch it a little bit more in the center without stretching it all, while leaving some thickness towards the outside. So, if you take the pizza dough and basically hold it between your thumb and fingers, and pull as you move the dough around, and you're just stretching it slightly. You can see I'm not doing big movements, but I'm just stretching it slightly as I'm turning the dough through my hands. Again, you come out with basically a round shape. Now, this pizza dough is pretty much done. It's about a nine inch pizza, which is what you want, and it was fairly fast, fairly simple. So, I'm just going to put this pizza dough aside, and we will move on to another one.

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