Pizza Dough

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 tsp Dried Yeast
• 2 ¾ cups Caputo Flour
• 1 ¼ Cups All-Purpose Flour or Bread Flour
• 1 ½ tsp Salt
• Olive Oil for bowl
• Preferred Pizza Sauce and Toppings

INSTRUCTIONS:

Dough:

Pour ½ cup of the water into a large bowl and stir in the yeast. Allow it to stand for 10 minutes, then stir in remaining water.

Combine all the Caputo flour with 1 cup of the all-purpose flour and mix into the yeast mixture; when it is still rough and soupy looking, stir in the salt.

Add the remaining flour only if the dough is super soft. You do not want a solid ball of dough but something that is slightly tacky.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow it to rise at room temperature overnight until it doubles in size and lots of little holes appear in the dough.

Pizza:

Tap down the dough with your hands in the bowl, but try not to manipulate it too much so that lots of air is expelled. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide it in half.

Have two sheets of lightly oiled parchment paper ready and place 1 sheet on each of two baking sheets. Lift the dough halves with a bench knife and drop in the center of each sheet of parchment paper. Lightly brush the tops of each half with olive oil.

Let the dough sit for 10 minutes, then gently push and stretch the dough from the center outward with your hands; don’t exert too much pressure as you do this; you want to preserve as many air bubbles as possible.

When the dough is about 10 inches in diameter, the rim or edges should be higher than the center by 1 inch.

Add pizza toppings and let rise again for 20 minutes.

Bake at 450 degrees until the edges are deep brown. The center will be softer than the edges. Cut the pizza and serve.