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Sicilian sheet pizza

NOTE: start making this recipe at least 12 (ideally, 48+) hours before you intend to eat.

Dough ingredients

Other ingredients (mostly approximated)

Directions

Dough: phase 1

  1. Mix the flours, salt, honey, yeast and water in a large bowl, and mix until just combined. Set a timer for 30 minutes.
  2. 30 minutes later, add the 35g of olive oil. Mix thoroughly by hand until gluten begins to form and the dough starts to come together – though it will be extremely loose and wet.
  3. Turn the dough in the bowl, giving it coil folds, every thirty minutes or so, until it can hold tension.
  4. Add a little more oil to surround the dough ball, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 12 (but ideally more like 36-48) hours. This works particularly well if you start the dough on Friday night, then cook the pizza Sunday afternoon.

Dough: phase 2

  1. At least two hours before you cook, grease a large sheet pan with olive oil and line it with parchment paper, then grease that, too.
  2. Carefully move the dough from the bowl onto the greased parchment paper, and begin to gently spread it. Be particularly careful not to degas the pizza too much, or you’ll get too dense and even a crumb. You won’t be able to spread the dough all in one go, so gently spread it as far as it will go, then lightly oil it and cover with plastic wrap. Set a timer for 30 minutes.
  3. Check in on the dough every 30 minutes or so, gently coaxing it to the edges and corners of the pan. This may take three or four tries.

Sauce

  1. Open the can of San Marzanos. Drizzle in some olive oil and sprinkle in a little dried oregano.
  2. Using an immersion blender, first on low then on high, blend the contents of the can into a uniform emulsion. It will be lighter in color and thicker than just the tomatoes alone would be.
  3. If you’re going to put some basil on the pizza, now would be a good time to wash and dry it.

Dough: prebake

Pre-baking the dough helps it achieve its maximum potential by removing any weighty or soggy toppings that would hold it down.

  1. When the dough is spread all the way to the corners and edges of the pan, preheat the oven to 500ºF (260ºC).
  2. When the oven is preheated, ladle a small amount of sauce on top of the dough and gently (gently!) spread it in a thin layer with greased fingers.
  3. Bake the dough in this state for 5 minutes, then rotate the pan 180 degrees and bake for another 5 minutes.
  4. Remove from the oven and either top the pizza, or cool to finish cooking another time.

Final bake

  1. If the oven isn’t still on, preheat to 500ºF (260ºC).
  2. Slice the mozzarella ball as thinly as you can. This usually means about 1cm thick.
  3. Add whatever toppings you like to the pizza, then cover as evenly as you can with torn up slices of mozzarella. Be careful in particular to get some cheese as close as you can to the edge of the pan.
  4. Add sauce to the pizza with a ladle.
  5. Bake the pizza for around 6-7 minutes, then rotate it 180 degrees and bake for another 6-7 minutes. Check if the cheese is melted and browned to your liking; if not, it can tolerate another few minutes.
  6. Remove the pizza from the oven when you feel it’s ready, then tear up the basil and drop it fairly evenly across the pizza.
  7. Let the pizza cool on the stovetop for 5-10 minutes before cutting.

Cutting

  1. First, use a thin metal spatula to loosen any stuck cheese around the edges of the pizza. The parchment paper should mean that things are easily loosened on the bottom.
  2. A pizza the size of a full sheet pan is too big for most cutting boards, so the first thing to do after loosening the edges is to cut the pizza in half the short way, so you can slide half the pizza onto a wooden cutting board.
  3. Cut the half pizza into 8 even pieces.

Reference