Pizza

I got given a pizza stone for Christmas which is as-yet unused - post away!

Did your technique make the shaping / rolling etc easier? That's where I think I may struggle.

The whole home-made pizza process seems quite labour intensive, but I guess if you've got loads of people over and have a few beers it would be pretty good fun

It isn't really labour intensive, at least if you have the dough prepared in advance (maybe even the sauce).
The 'cold method' dough descibed below can sit in the fridge for 5-6 days before going off, use it whenever you feel like it.
Since I made way too much dough I've been eating pizza the last four days, all I have to do is roll some dough out,
put some sauce (sometimes readymade pasta sauce I admit) and some veggies and cheese on it and bingo.

The shaping / rolling is better with that dough, though I still have to master it.
Fresh out the fridge it's still contracting a bit, held over warm airflow (like the back of the gas oven) it gets reeeally 'stretchy' within seconds.
Guess one should let it warm up to room temperature, huh!

Ok, so here's what I did -
(the base of this recipe, which I modified a bit, is from here: http://tinyurl.com/cgckdzx ..you might want to check this out for the pictures, even though it's a german site)

• big bowl (plastic is good) or a big pot
  

• big fork

• 1kg flour

• 1/4 cube of fresh yeast (baker's yeast)

• 1 tablespoon salt

• about 1/2 litre lukewarm water

I hear you don't have standardized flour types in GB, so you'll have to check the protein content, specified in the standard nutrition label on the package.
What you want is a fine, white flour, with a protein content of about 9%.
In Germany it's "type 405", in France "45", in Italy it's "Tipo 00". It's the kind of flour you'd use for fine pastry stuff.

Put half of the flour in the bowl, add crumbled yeast, salt, and water.
Mix with fork until you have a runny mix, like a dough for pancakes.
Cover bowl with a clean kitchen towel, and let rest for 20 minutes.

Stir the mix for 3-4 minutes using the fork.
This is very boring, as it's not really a 'dough' yet, it's more like stirring soup, for minutes.
But it's an important step, as your distributing the gluten of the wheat while stirring.
This, later, will help to trap the CO2 produced by the yeast in the dough, making it 'fluffy'.
Cover and set aside for 20 minutes again.

Mix in the rest of the flour, peu-a-peu, with your fork.
In the end, this will become strenuous, but keep going for 3-4 minutes.

Let rest for 20 minutes again.

This dough should now keep it's form, more or less, while still looking a bit like it would need more flour. Don't worry.
Turn around the bowl and let the dough flow on big wooden board / worktop dusted with flour.
Dredge the outside of the dough with flour, and kned a bit until you have a nice lump.
Divide in 5 equal pieces, again dredging those with flour and kneading them into nice little lumps.
Put those in Tupperware / airtight plastic containers, dust with flour, and put in the fridge for 24 hours to 5 days.

Roll out on wooden board / worktop dusted with flour, or do these wild wild tricks italians do, throwing the stuff around.
Remember warmth helps the dough to become more easy and elastic.

That's basically it!
I'll work on it and update this in the future, but for now this is the best pizza dough I've made yet.

Bon appetit!

: ]

Ps: I bake in maxed out gas oven at the bottom, in a cast-iron pan, as I do not have a pizza-stone. Works very well.