Delucas Pizza Recipes

PIZZA WITH ARUGULA AND MOZZARELLA

Steps:

• Pre-heat oven with pizza stone in it to 525 degrees. Shape a pizza, and let it rise a second time. When ready to cook, sprinkle a pizza peel with cornmeal. Carefully place the pizza on the paddle. Inside the rim, arrange the mozzarella slices evenly. Sprinkle with 1/8 teaspoon of the coarse salt. Sprinkle cornmeal on pizza stone in oven. Slide pizza onto pizza stone. Bake 6 minutes. (If a softer crust is desired, dab rim with moistened brush after 3 minutes, and then cook 3 minutes more.) Remove, and immediately scatter the arugula on the cheese. Sprinkle on the remaining 1/8 teaspoon of coarse salt. Drizzle oil over all and serve immediately.
• In a small bowl or coffee cup mix together the milk and water. Sprinkle in the dry yeast, or crumble the fresh yeast in your hand and mix it into the liquid. Stir once, and let sit in a warm place until there is considerable foam on the top, about 10 to 20 minutes. (If your mixture doesn't foam up at least a little, the yeast wasn't fresh. Buy more and start over.) In a large bowl combine the sifted flours with the salt. Mix well. Spill the foaming yeast mixture into the bowl and, working with a wooden spoon, mix together rapidly. Smooth out as many yeast clumps as possible during this stage. Your dough at this point will be very wet. Dust a work surface with flour. Add a little flour, about 1/4 cup, to the dough in the mixing bowl. This should enable you to scrape the dough together and place it on the floured surface. Add more flour if necessary. Begin kneading the dough on the work surface with your hands and adding Tipo 00 flour or cake flour, 1/4 cup at first, less and less as you proceed. While you are kneading, at first the dough will probably stick to the work surface and your hands. Don't worry. Keep kneading and adding more flour. But don't lose patience and add too much. Add slowly. The goal is to create dough that is just past sticky; in fact, when it is finished, it should be threatening to stick to the work surface. You may even want to work with a spatula to remove the dough from the surface if it sticks slightly. All-together, kneading time should be about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth, silky, and just past stickiness. Do not end up with very dry, very stable dough. Lightly oil the bottom of a large bowl with the olive oil. Form the dough into a ball. Place the dough in the bowl, and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Place the bowl in a spot that's room temperature, neither warm nor cool. In 2 hours or so, the dough should double in size. Cut the dough into 4 quarters. Place 1 quarter on a floured surface, pulling it gently into a round as you place it on the surface. Your goal is a round pizza that is 6 to 7 inches in diameter, approximately 1/4-inch thick, except at the rim where it should be about 3/8 inch thick. Use one of the following means to achieve this: * Pull it from the outer edges until the desired shape is reached. * Working it with your fingertips, push toward the rim, until the center is 1/4 inch thick and the rim is 3/8 inch thick. * Do it pizzeria style by placing the dough on your 2 fists, and revolving it on your fists until it has widened to the desired shape (be careful not to tear the dough at the center). * Use these techniques in combination.
• Do not roll your dough out. Don't worry if your pizza isn't perfectly round; there's much to be said for rusticity. If your pizza doesn't have much of a rim, use your fingertips to crimp the dough and build a small one around the circumference; this is called the cornicione. If your pizza dough has a tear in it, transplant a small piece of dough, smoothing it in. Run a wide spatula under the pizza to make sure you'll be able to move it easily off the surface later; add extra flour underneath if it's sticking. Repeat this process until all 4 pizzas are shaped. Place towels loosely over the pizzas as soon as they're shaped. Let each pizza rest for at least 10 minutes and up to 60 minutes before cooking. The pizzas should puff very slightly.