I've discovered that the original no-knead recipe featured on this blog some time ago is also great for pizza dough.
The pie pictured here started as a lump of no-knead dough that I spread out into a crust shape after 10 or 11 hours of fermentation. I did all the spreading right on the pizza peel pictured above. I used liberal amounts of flour - stretching the dough into a disc shape, sprinkling flour across the top, flipping it over, repeating this process until the crust was roughly the same size as my work surface.
The reapplications of flour were necessary because as the dough is spread out, the non-floured inner dough is brought to the surface and tends to stick to the peel.
I wasn't sure how this was going to work out as it was my first time making pizza this way. My traditional method has been to use a dough with a much lower hydration that is spread out on a cold greased pan - that also works well, but it's a totally different method. When I had the crust fully formed, I jostled the peel a little bit to make sure the dough was sliding freely. It was. So I proceeded to layer on the toppings.
Unfortunately, I didn't count on the fact that the added weight (and possibly moisture) of the toppings would increase the coefficient of friction between peel and dough. When it came time to slide it onto the baking stone in the oven, it wouldn't budge.
In a somewhat clumsy rescue effort, Jenn helped me slide some parchment paper under the dough. That process tended to dishevel the dough and the toppings a bit, but ultimately, we made it work. And the result as fantastic!
We tried this again last night, this time putting the parchment paper over the peel first - thank the gods for parchment paper! It worked like a charm, and the crust was first rate.
So that's one more use for the versatile no-knead dough recipe. Enjoy!
