Patrick Ryan's No Fuss Sourdough Pizza

Today we're actually going to make a very very simple pizza dough. Let's be honest, who doesn't love pizza? It's an absolute great recipe to make with friends, with family, with kids and so so simple. So I'm going to show you a couple of little tricks here which takes all the effort out of it but also great ways in which we can bake it at home and particularly kind of use it domestically but without the kind of need to buy expensive pizza stones, expensive equipment. So the big thing about this recipe is it does take a little bit of planning because the dough is actually going to take about 24 hours to ferment. So for example, Friday night's pizza night. Just make this on a Thursday. I know it seems a lot of effort but you're going to see it's so so quick and so so easy. So what's a little bit different about this recipe is we're actually going to be using a little bit of our sourdough culture. So this is a rye starter but you can actually you could use a white starter culture, no problem at all, whatever you have at home. Great thing about using the sourdough, it just adds a great depth of flavour into your dough. But what's probably a little bit different here is we're actually going to spike the dough with a tiny bit of yeast. It just helps to give it an extra little kick and also helps to keep our dough lovely and soft. So very simply we're going to start off with 500 grams of strong flour or bread flour. We're using a good quality white flour here. So we've got 500 grams and we're simply going to add a teaspoon of salt. Mix that straight in and then to our dough we're actually going to add 50 grams of semolina. So it just helps to give a lovely crust to our pizza bases later on. So again just mix that straight in. So to our 500 grams of flour we're simply going to add 200 grams of sourdough starter. So this was fed and you can see it's bubbling away. Fed last night, bubbling away, perfectly ready to go this morning. So then to our dough we're adding 325 mils of water. So it's quite a soft wet dough and then just for a little bit of richness we're going to add about 50 grams of olive oil. We're literally going to add about one gram of fresh yeast. Just give a tiny little spike, add a little flavour, it's going to help keep our dough lovely and soft as well. Now the great thing about this recipe is it's so so easy, virtually no need. It's going to bring the whole dough together. So again if you don't have fresh yeast, dry yeast will work perfectly the same. You look at a bare little pinch, again just about a gram. So just roughly work the dough together just to help kind of incorporate all that kind of loose flour. You don't even have to get your hands in and that is it. That is our dough kneaded, done, ready to go. The idea basically what we're going to do is we're going to pop it into the fridge and we're going to let it ferment for 24 hours. As the dough is proving you're going to find that the dough helps to develop. So so so easy. It's just a case of a little bit of planning, two seconds to put your dough together, pop it in the fridge, cover it over and we let it ferment for 24 hours. So here is the exact same dough which has been sitting in the fridge fermenting nice and gently, nice and slowly for the last 24 hours. So you can see as it's proving up it's grown within the basket. So what we want to do is we again we need to knock our dough back because it's a bit of softer dough. And you can see all the beautiful gluten has been fermenting, knocking the air from it. So you'll find just with some very simple shaping once you bring your dough back together again you actually find a beautiful, smooth, perfectly developed dough which virtually took absolutely no effort to make. Bring your dough together, let it ferment and let the dough do all the magic. So now we're just going to shape our dough just for what's going to be used for each of our little pizza bases. So I generally find about 200 grams is a really nice portion for home. So I'm just using a little portion of dough to make sure it's nice and consistent. You can do it by eye if you wish, although if you're not going to use the portion of dough you'll probably find that one is this size, one is this size. And then you'll have some people giving out to some people that have one pizza bigger than the others. Very gently bring our dough together, roll into a nice little ball. So again when you're rolling we're kind of using this part of our hand, pushing the dough into the table, make a large circle. Your hand becomes a bit like a claw. If you find the dough a little bit soft or a little bit sticky don't be afraid to use a little bit of flour. Again we don't need not too much, just enough so you can handle and manipulate the dough. Sometimes it's easier just to put a little bit of flour on your hands. And now again we're going to let these prove for a little while longer, probably at least an hour to an hour and a half, because what you'll find at the dough at the moment is a little bit tight because it's been worked, it's been kneaded, it's been knocked back. So we want the dough to be lovely relaxed so when it comes to shaping later, very very simple, very very easy to do. So if you think about it, you've made the dough the night before, you come home in the evening, very quickly portion your dough, roll them round and we let them prove and ferment. So at this time, great time to get your sauce ready, your toppings, carry on with your life and it'll perfectly be good to go. So from 500 grams of flour, we're going to have six great pizza bases. Our dough has been has been proving nicely for the last hour and a half, it's lovely and relaxed. So when it comes to cooking your pizza dough, particularly at home, make sure you turn your oven up literally to the highest possible setting, crank it up full, we need that really high intense heat. And again you'll often get a lot of places kind of get a pizza stone, which are great if you have it, but if you don't you can always improvise. I'm just taking a very simple roasting tray and you're going to flip it upside down. And the idea now, I've got a kind of a lovely flat base which has been beautifully preheated and I'm going to slide my pizza base directly onto it, so then once it hits it, it's cooking. What we're going to do here is we're going to use our board here, it's going to kind of act a bit like a peel. So we can shape our pizza base on this and then slide it from here onto our preheated roasting tray. So basically it's hitting a hot surface, it's cooking instantly. Because if you're going to shape it round just onto a tray, basically what's going to happen is you're going to put onto a cold tray, you're going to pop it into the oven, then you're waiting for the tray to heat up and all the time your dough is drying out. So the idea is we want it to be cooking instantly. So we're just going to use a little bit of a mix between semolina and some flour. When it comes to moving your dough again, don't just kind of grab it as a ball, squash it all together, try to retain the natural shape that it's got. Just use our little dough scraper again, don't knock the air from it just yet. So it actually takes very little work or very little shaping, just be gentle with the dough. It's already in its natural shape, use my fingers, working the dough out, already you can see it kind of stretching. If you kind of like that pizza base to have that lovely uneven crust, that's only going to come if you shape it by hand. It does take a little bit of more practice because if you're using a rolling pin, basically you knock all the air from the dough, it's going to be very flat. So if you can, try and work it by hand. If you're not comfortable with it, don't worry, a rolling pin is absolutely fine. All I'm doing when I come to shape it by hand, my hand's in underneath, I'm simply transferring the dough from one side to the other. I'm knocking it very gently because I don't want to put my fingers through it. I'm using the natural weight of the dough to stretch and work it out. Like with very, very little work, the dough, because we're working with a much softer, wetter dough, it stretches and works out very, very easily. So I'm simply just going to take my chopping board here. Again, I'm using some semolina. Semolina is great, it doesn't burn as easily as flour. It's a little bit coarser also. It's lovely and easy for your dough to move. Transfer to your dough. And if you ever find that your dough is torn ever so slightly, don't be afraid to waste it. Just cut a little piece off. You can always patch it up, no one's ever going to know. And then before I go, just make sure it's moving. At least you know none of the dough is sticking. So when it comes to slide that off, it's going to come off nice and easily. Now when it comes to topping your pizza, it really is a case of less is more. You need very, very little toppings and you don't want to overload it with different ingredients because again, it adds too much weight to the dough. A little pizza sauce. Working it from the centre all the way out. Again, just when you're saucing the pizza, just be conscious, don't let it kind of drip onto the sides of the trays because it can again cause the dough to stick a little bit. So we're just going to go for a little bit of salami here. And when it comes to you, it's all about personal preference. Whatever you have, whatever you're into. A little bit of green peppers. A tiny bit of shallot. A few little green olives. Certainly a love or hate thing. I kind of love them. Again, we're just going to use a little bit of buffalo mozzarella. You can use grated, no problem whatsoever. Blue cheese is great. A little bit of parmesan, goat's cheese. You can really kind of, I'm very blessed here in Ireland to have some of the best cheese in the world. And that is kind of it. A little crack of pepper. A pinch of salt. So basically, we're just simply using a wooden chopping board. It's going to act as our peel. You can see it's moving. You're in full control. Just work towards the back of the roasting tray. Once the dough starts moving, just pull it straight back. And you're looking at about four to five minutes of full heat. That is all. So that's it. Five minutes and that's all it takes. Just a normal domestic oven. Looks absolutely great. You can see that beautiful kind of uneven, lovely bubbly crust. That's exactly what we want. So you can see a lovely kind of puffy, light, beautiful crust. So at the bakery, with our wood-fired oven, we would generally be doing our pizzas up to 350 degrees. So yeah, you really need that really high, intense heat. But to be honest, you can do a really great job at home. You can see there's nice little char marks starting to form. That's exactly what we want on this one. We're family. We're kids. Absolutely perfect.