How To Make A Pizza

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How To Make A Pizza

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Ruth Gresser

Pizzeria Paradiso Georgetown

www.eatyourpizza.com

info@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.

How To Make A Pizza

Chef Ruth Gresser demonstrates how to make dough for pizza and discusses how to top it.

This expert: 1,476,439 views
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Tags:

Pizza

Dough

Crust

Sauce

Pepperoni

Pizza recipes

Pizza toppings

Homemade pizza

Make pizza

How To Make A Pizza

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

1 tsp Honey (optional)

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.

Transcripts

Ruth Gresser: Hi! I am Ruth Gresser from Pizzeria Paradiso and we are making pizza today. Right now I'm going to show you how to make pizza dough by hand. So, the first thing I'm going to do, is just dump the flour on the counter and then you create a well in the center, and you pour in ten ounces of water. You want water that is just over 100 degrees. Then next sprinkle the yeast on top, and then mix the yeast. So you just let that sit for a couple of minutes and let the yeast start to grow and now put in a tablespoon of oil and a tablespoon of salt and then we are just going to mix that in a little bit. So now we're going to start to make the dough itself by working in the flour. At this point the mixture is not going to go anywhere so you can start bringing in the whole wall of flour. We are kneading the dough for about 10 minutes, it's come together into a nice very soft dough and then you just want to put the dough to rise, cover it with plastic, it will take about 2 to 3 hours to rise. So I have got some flour on the counter, I am going to put some more flour on the dough itself. The first thing you want to do is you flatten the dough, when it gets to be about this size, you actually take it off the counter and pull the dough with the tips of your fingers and your thumb and you want to do this consistently around the pizza so that you maintain it's round shape. We think of pizza as tomato and mozzarella cheese but that's just the beginning. Remember, it's bread with food on top. So whatever you want for a meal, you can make it into a pizza if you like. First of all, to stimulate the wood burning oven, what I would suggest you do is turn your oven and make it as hot as you can get it. If it goes to 450, put it at 450; if it goes to 550, put it at 550. I would take a flat baking pan and put it in your oven and preheat the oven with the pan in it. If you have a pizza stone, you can use a pizza stone as well. I have the tip of the pizza peel on the floor of the oven, and I am going to make sure my pizza is loose, and then I am just going to pull the peel out. So there you have several different pizzas. Have fun in the kitchen and eat your pizza.

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How To Make A Pizza