If you're willing to plan ahead and wait patiently for the yeast to do its thing, this New York style pizza pays off big time for relatively little physical effort.
What you'll need
Ingredients
For the levain:
- 50 grams starter
- 100 grams bread flour
- 100 grams water, room temperature
For the dough:
- 300 grams bread flour
- 200 grams all purpose flour
- 6 grams table salt
- 320 grams water
- All of the prepared levain
- Olive oil (to prevent sticking)
Equipment
- Large mixing bowl
- 3 Quart-sized containers or plastic bags
- 10" cast-iron skillet for baking
Prepare the dough
- At least 36 hours before you plan to eat the pizza, mix the levain ingredients together in a small bowl or glass container. The container should be large enough to allow the levain to double in size, at least 2 cups in volume. If you're using a glass jar, you can mark the starting height with a rubber band to more easily estimate what double looks like. Otherwise, you'll know the levain is ready when a small piece can easily float in water. This will take up to 8 hours, depending on how active your starter is and how warm your kitchen is.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix the active starter, bread flour, all purpose flour, and water with a spatula until no dry flour remains. Cover the bowl and let the dough autolyse for about 1 hour.
- Sprinkle the salt over the top of the dough. Work the salt into the dough with your hands until you no longer feel the salt grains in the dough. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 45 minutes.
- Take one edge of the dough and pull it to the other side of the dough. Turn the bowl 90 degrees, and repeat with another edge of the dough, for a total of 4 turns. Cover the dough and let it rest for another 45 minutes, and then perform the folds one more time.
- Cover the dough and let it bulk rise until about doubled in size, which will take about 2+ hours, depending on the warmth of your kitchen.
- Drizzle olive oil into the bottom of 3 quart-sized containers or plastic bags. Punch the dough down and divide it into 3 equal portions (about 350 grams each), placing each portion into an oiled container. Seal the containers and place them into the refrigerator to bulk ferment for at least 8 hours, or overnight.
This is how the starter looks after I let it sit overnight.
The salt should cause the dough to tighten so that it starts to smooth out a little bit.
It is possible to overproof the dough, which will prevent the pizza from developing a poofy crust.
Making the pizza
- An hour prior to baking, take the dough out of the fridge to warm back up to room temperature.
- After 30 minutes, lightly dust a working surface with flour, and gently shape each pizza dough into a ball. Cover with a kitchen towel and let the dough rest for the remaining 30 minutes.
- While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 475ºF and prepare any toppings that you'd like to have on the pizza.
- Lightly dust the cast iron skillet with some flour. Heat the skillet on low while you shape the dough in the next step.
- Lightly dust the top of a dough ball with flour and gently stretch the dough until it is about 10 inches in diameter. I usually do this by holding my fists in the center of the dough, and using the knuckles of one hand to move from the center towards the edge.
- Place the pizza dough onto the heated skillet. While the bottom starts to cook, add your toppings. When using tomato sauce, I usually like to add the tomato sauce first, drizzle some olive oil on top, sprinkle sea salt, and then add the remaining toppings that need to be cooked.
- Once the bottom of the pizza firms up and has started to develop the slightest bit of color, place the skillet in the oven. Bake the pizza until the crust turns golden brown in color and any cheese has melted to the desired level (5-10 minutes).
- Take the pizza out of the skillet and let it rest for 5 minutes before cutting and serving. Enjoy!
As the bottom cooks, the crust will start to puff up.
