My Friday Pizza Dough Recipe, and the Fridays It's Frozen
Tuesday night after practice, Caleb stood at the sink in his socks with his cleats on the mat behind him and asked if Friday was pizza. I had Ben on my hip and a pot of noodles going soft on the stove. He has asked me this every Tuesday since he was about six, and I have said yes every time, and he nods like I've read him a score.
That nod is most of what I want to write about. The dough is good and I'll give you the whole thing, weights and all, but the reason I've kept Friday pizza going for years has less to do with the crust than with what happens to the week when one dinner is already decided.
How do I make pizza dough the same morning I bake it?
I mix it at breakfast, usually while the oatmeal is still on the stove. Here's the amount for three pizzas, which is what feeds the five of us at home with a little left over for whoever is up at nine.
- 750 grams bread flour, about 6 cups
- 490 grams warm water, a little over 2 cups
- 15 grams fine salt, about 2 and a half teaspoons
- 3 grams instant yeast, a scant teaspoon
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
Stir everything in a big bowl with a wooden spoon until there's no dry flour left. It will look like a mistake. Ten minutes later wet your hand, pull one edge of the dough up and fold it over the middle, turn the bowl and do that four times around. Cover it and leave it on the counter for an hour.
After that, cut it in three, shape each piece into a ball about the size of a softball (they come out near 430 grams each) and put them in oiled containers or bowls with plates on top. They go in the refrigerator until about a quarter to five.
At a quarter to five they come out so they can lose their chill, which takes an hour or a bit more. At five I turn the oven to 500 with two baking sheets upside down on the middle rack. Cold dough fights you the whole way, but dough that has sat out for an hour will stretch over your knuckles without tearing, and I stretch it by hand because a rolling pin pushes out the bubbles you spent the day growing.
The sauce is half a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, one grated clove of garlic, a pinch of salt and a spoonful of oil. I don't cook it. A pound of low-moisture mozzarella from a block, grated by someone at the counter on a stool, covers all three pizzas. A child of eight can handle a box grater, and I wrote about the small kitchen jobs that actually stick in real jobs for a two-year-old, an eight and an eleven.
Stretch, top lightly, slide onto the hot sheet and bake eight to ten minutes. Pull it when the edges have gone past golden into a few dark spots.
Those spots are the good part.
A same-day dough like this is not as flavorful as one that sat in the refrigerator for two or three days. That's just true. Bakers get that bready, slightly sour depth from a long cold rise, and if you're the kind of person who mixes dough on Wednesday night, please do. I am not that person, and the Friday-morning version is still a lot better than anything that comes in a box.
What do I do on the Fridays it's frozen?
I'd rather say plainly that some Fridays it's frozen pizza than let you think a woman with a blog has a perfect dough ball waiting every week.
My rule is simple and I made it so I wouldn't have to decide in a bad mood. If the dough isn't mixed by nine in the morning it's a frozen Friday and I don't feel anything about it, no negotiating and no guilt at four in the afternoon. A sick kid, a dentist appointment that runs over, a day when the Odyssey makes a noise I don't like. Any of those and it's frozen.
I buy a thin one, bake it straight on the oven rack the way the box says, and put a handful of my own mozzarella on top before it goes in. That's all the improving I do. Nobody has ever pushed a frozen Friday away, and Caleb has said it's "fine, actually" more than once, which from an eleven-year-old is high praise.
What matters is that Friday still looks like Friday. The movie still goes on after dinner and everybody still sits on the same couch cushions. The pizza was never really what we were keeping.
Why does one fixed dinner hold the whole week together?
It's one question I never have to answer, which matters more than it sounds like it should. Planning dinner for a family of five (Emma lives in Provo now and eats with us when she can) means making a few dozen small decisions a week, and each one is cheap until you're tired. Fix one night and the whole pile gets a little lighter.
It also does something for the people eating, and I think this is the bigger part. Monday is family home evening, Tuesday is practice, Wednesday afternoon I'm testing recipes with two friends, Thursday David works from home, Saturday is a game. It's the middle of a school year and a ball season, and each of those has its own pull. Friday sits in the middle of all of it and doesn't move. Everyone knows where they'll be at six o'clock and what's on the table. It's a nail to hang the rest of the week on.
If you want to know how I figure out which nights in our week are really free, that's what I was working through in count your dinners before you sign anyone up for fall. A fixed night is the first thing I'd put on that page, before anything else gets a pencil mark.
A fixed meal also gets looked forward to.
Children don't have much say over their days, and a dinner they can count on is one of the few things on the calendar that belongs to them.
What about all those studies on family dinners?
You've probably seen the studies, the ones saying that children who eat with their families on a regular basis do better in school, have fewer troubles as teenagers and report better moods. I believe the findings. I just don't think they say what we want them to say, because a study like that can't tell whether the dinner did the work or whether families with the margin to eat together were already managing other things well. A weekly dinner won't fix a household by itself, and one skipped Friday won't harm one.
What I will say is that scripture gives us a short list of places where teaching happens naturally.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 6:7
Four settings, and a table isn't named, though "sittest in thine house" takes in a kitchen chair and a slice of pizza without much strain. I don't read it as an assignment to turn dinner into a lesson. Dinner is where everyone is already sitting down and nobody has to be talked into it, so the talking can be about anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I really make good pizza dough in one day?
Mix it in the morning, give it an hour on the counter and then put it in the refrigerator until late afternoon. It won't have the depth of a two-day dough, but it will be chewy and it will brown. Don't skip taking it out an hour before you bake, or it'll snap back at you when you stretch it.
I don't have a baking steel. Will it still work?
Mine has never seen a steel, so I turn two heavy baking sheets upside down on the middle rack and give them a full forty-five minutes at 500. Build the pizza on parchment so you can slide it onto the hot sheet without losing the toppings.
Is frozen pizza cheating?
The dinner is the point, and a family sitting down together at six does the same job whether the crust came from a bag of flour or a freezer case. I'd keep it as a rule you decided ahead of time and not as something you apologize for at the table.
What if Friday doesn't work for us?
Pick a different night, because I don't think the day of the week matters nearly as much as picking one and not reopening the question every week. If your Fridays belong to games or shifts or a long drive, find the night that stays quiet and put the dinner there.
What's the one meal at your house that never moves? And if you don't have one, which night of the week keeps getting eaten by something else?
with love, Melissa