Pizza Dough - May

Ingredients
7 cups strong white bread flour or Tipo "00" flour or 5 cups strong white bread flour or Tipo "00" flour, plus 2 cups finely ground semolina flour
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
2 (1/4-ounce) packets active dried yeast
1 tablespoon raw sugar
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

Sift the flours and salt onto a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a large measuring cup, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.

Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands - this is called punching down the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straightaway, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas - this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas.

Timing-wise, it's a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 to 20 minutes before you want to cook them. Don't roll them out and leave them hanging around for a few hours, though - if you are working in advance like this it's better to leave your dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there's 1 less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into rough circles, about 1/4-inch thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted aluminum foil. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with plastic wrap, and pop them into the refrigerator.

     For the month of May, I decided to make pizza dough so I could make a pizza for my family to eat for dinner. To create pizza dough, you have to use the straight dough mixing method, which is where you combine all the ingredients in one bowl and mix to combine. This is used mainly when making bread dough.
     So to start off, I gathered all the ingredients and placed the yeast, sugar, olive oil into the water. This would create fermentation, which would allow gas bubbles to be made, leading to a rising baked good. Then I combined all the ingredients to form a dough ball. With this ball, I kneaded it for a while, then I let it rest on the counter. After an hour, I took the dough and punched it down, then I let it sit for another hour. Now the dough was complete. So I rolled out the dough into a circle, and put the sauce and cheese on it and baked it.
     When it came out of the oven, the smell was salivating. I got so hungry right then and there, because the cheese was perfectly golden and gooey on top of the pizza, and the smell reminded me of a pizzeria like Punch Pizza. I cut everybody a piece, and when I tasted it, I instantly loved it. The crust was nice and tender, and wasn't chewy or bland. The sauce added to the overall incredible taste of the pizza. All in all, I think I did a good job making the pizza dough, and the final product, the pizza, turned out into a great meal that night.