10 Pizza Rules for Pros — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:03] place because I have been studying and obsessing over the craft of pizza for the last decade. And in this video, I've condensed down what I think are the 10 most important rules you need to know if you want your pizzas at home to taste

[00:16] just as good as the best pizza shops in the world. Now, every good pizza you've ever had starts with an incredible dough. Considering it makes up 80% of the pizza. I was just interviewing Anthony at Pizza Una. Why was his pizza

[00:30] ranked number one in the world multiple years in a row? It's the uniqueness and mastery of his dough preparation that takes his pizzas into a whole different all about dough and number one is you have to understand hydration levels.

[00:44] the channel and different baking related videos because the last thing I want you to be is reliant on a certain recipe. And by understanding hydration levels of freedom in your pizza making, which will

[00:58] results. So, your dough hydration is simply the amount of water to flour ratio. The lower the hydration, the more dense your crumb structure will be, but your dough will also be easier to work. Whereas, if you increase the hydration,

[01:13] you're going to get a fluffier, lighter crumb structure, but it will be slightly harder to work. And if you look at the actual AVPN rules for Neapolitan pizza, they state the dough hydration percentage should be between 56 and

[01:26] 62.5%, which is a fairly low hydration. When you see more modern Neapolitan pizza made today, the hydration levels are much higher. Now, what I have found over just years of dough experimentation is

[01:39] just years of dough experimentation is the perfect range is between 60 and 75% hydration. Lower on this scale, of course, better for beginners. higher in this scale, slightly more advanced. This range is very allpurpose. I just did an

[01:51] entire video on this showing how you can use this scale to make multiple different styles of pizza. But today, we're really focused on making perfect Neapolitan pizza. Now, there is another key variable that needs to be accounted

[02:03] for when understanding dough hydration, which is that different flowers are best way to show you that is with a real life test. So, I have three different flowers I'm going to weigh out at 100 g each. One is whole wheat flour from the

[02:16] that I mil myself. And then finally, a white bread flour. To every flour, I'm then going to add 100 g of water, which means they all have a 100% hydration level. Now, I'll mix each of them up

[02:29] evenly with a chopstick to make sure all of that flour is fully hydrated with the 15 minutes. Now, look how the whole wheat flour just soaks up that water and creates almost more of a dense dough even at 100% hydrated. Then moving over

[02:43] to the homemilled flour. Still pretty dense because it's whole wheat, but not quite as dense as the store-bought whole wheat. And finally, this bread flour, since it's not whole wheat, hydrates much thinner, almost more of a paste.

[02:55] show you that just picking a certain hydration level isn't always going to Depending on the flowers you use, your dense or a little bit more loose. So, at the end of the day, hydration levels and

[03:09] percentages are a great place to start, but you also want to use your senses. You want to feel how that dough is hydrating because different flowers will I'm going to be using today is my overnight pizza dough recipe, which is

[03:22] very standardized. It's very easy to follow. It's very easy to shift around on the flowers you're using. And it starts with 900 g of allpurpose organic

[03:34] bread flour and 100 g of whole wheat, which I mainly add in for just a little bit of flavor, which gives me a grand total of 1,000 g of flour. Making that hydration calculation very easy. For this Neapolitan pizza, I'm making a

[03:47] this Neapolitan pizza, I'm making a dough at 70% hydration, which to me with these flowers is the perfect level. So, I'm going to add 700 g of water. And then to flavor the dough, I go anywhere from 1.5 to 2% salt. So I'm adding in

[04:01] just around 15 g of salt, which takes me right into rule number two, which is longer fermentation times. Now, when I first started making pizza about 15 years ago, I knew very little. So what did I do? Take that square yeast packet,

[04:13] dump the whole thing into that dough, knead everything together, and basically an hour later, that thing was a balloon and had doubled in size. This is a great way to create a dough that lacks any bit of character. Now, if you're using a

[04:28] sourdough starter, if you're naturally fermenting your pizza dough, which I'll do from time to time, you don't have to worry about slowing down fermentation because natural yeast ferments at a much slower pace than a commercial dryactive

[04:42] or instant yeast. This stuff is very powerful. So, what I do for 1,000 g of flour is add one to two teaspoon of instant yeast. In this case, I'm adding just 1 teaspoon of instant yeast, which will give me the ability to create a

[04:56] longer, slower fermentation. So, now I have all my ingredients in my bowl, and I'll send it through my mixer for 10 minutes to get things started. minutes to get things started. [Music]

[05:14] transfer the dough to my work surface. I'll give it a few stretch and folds and Then I'll do one final folding. And you strong. It's looking nice and smooth. So I'll pop it in my fourcourt camro

[05:26] container so I can track exactly when this dough has doubled in volume. Now with just one teaspoon of yeast, this will generally take around 3 to 4 hours at room temperature. Or you can slow things down even more and put it in the

[05:38] fridge, which will take around 12 to 24 hours. And by slowing down the fermentation, that gluten network is actually going to build on its own only do we get some more interesting flavors, but we're also going to get a

[05:51] stronger dough. And you can see after a cool bulk rise in the fridge for about 16 hours, that volume has doubled. So, it's time to form our dough balls, which brings me into rule three. Now, most beginner pizza makers who don't have a

[06:03] lot of experience with dough, especially doughs that are slightly more hydrated like this one at 70%, they get a little bit nervous because the dough is sticky and they start adding a ton of flour at this stage. But guess what? Your dough

[06:16] going to soak it up. It's going to absorb it, which will then alter change hard to tune into. Now, there's two different options that I recommend. You can use just a little bowl of water and a bench scraper, which will help you

[06:31] work that dough without it sticking. Or, in this case, I'm just going to use a light dusting of flour and my bench scraper, which will do the same thing. I personally like using a mix of fine semolina and allpurpose flour for this

[06:43] dusting. trying to create a non-stick workability of this dough. And I'll be forming 250 gram dough balls here, which is pretty standard for Neapolitan pizza. is pretty standard for Neapolitan pizza. [Music]

[07:00] Now, once those dough balls are formed, I'm going to place them in my proofing bin. Again, either a little bit of oil on the bottom or just a light dusting of flour. And now we have another decision. We can pop those dough balls in the

[07:12] fridge, let them cold proof for another 12 to 24 hours. I usually don't like going too far past that where your dough becomes overproofed and much harder to work. Or if you're ready to make pizza, you can just let them sit at room

[07:24] temperature for about an hour or two until they are fully proofed. So be anywhere from a full day of fermentation to up to three days. All moving into what I think is the next most important element of pizza making,

[07:40] the sauce. Which brings me right into rule number four. Keep your sauce pizza, the term pizza sauce kind of confused me. Because it was its own term, I felt like it was something different, like it needed to be more

[07:55] complicated. Now, as I started trying the best pizza in New York and talking to the professionals, one thing they all had in common was that their sauce was extremely simple. Generally, just the best canned Roma or San Marzano tomatoes

[08:09] they could find plus salt. That was it. It's all about finding the highest quality, best tomato product and just letting it speak for itself. Which is why every year I grow a ton of tomatoes and I can them and most of them are used

[08:21] for making pizza all year long. Now, I grow a ton of different heirloom varieties, but I always make sure to grow some Roma and San Marzano varieties, which have a lower water level, which makes them ideal for

[08:33] crushing and throwing on a pizza. Now, I find peeling the skin first is not necessary for great sauce, but to go the extra mile for perfect sauce. I first blanch the tomatoes and the skin peels off real easy. Then, they get funneled

[08:46] right into a clean jar with just a few basil leaves. And then I pop the jars properly seal for shelf storage. So then the top. You can see these still had a good bit of water. So I'll scoop out

[08:59] water behind. I'll hit them with a little bit of salt and just crush them with my hand. As simple as it gets, just the highest quality tomato product, so you can really taste that tomato when you bite into it. Now, just tomato and

[09:12] salt is more traditional for Neapolitan pizza, but of course it's not a law of pizza making. You can add aromatics. You can add spices. You can customize if you want. For instance, with these cans, this is just a mix of my heirloom

[09:25] slightly more watery. So, what I'll do is I'll get a pan on a medium heat, throw in some olive oil, and I just showed you my garlic preservation short garlic cubes. I'll throw one of those in the oil. Get some color on that. And

[09:39] then dump in the canned tomatoes. And really, what I'm doing is just cooking this sauce down until I think it hits a good consistency to sauce a pizza.

[09:53] level of pizza, of course, you have to have a pizza oven capable of doing that. And unfortunately, that really was not accessible when I started making pizza about 15 years ago. I was stuck with the classic pizza stone in my oven that

[10:05] maxed out around 500°. And you can get decent results that way. I would suggest a pizza steel if you're going to go the home oven route and just crank your oven to max. But there's just no way to make a Neapolitan style pizza without a

[10:18] got my first Ooni, which is the sponsor of today's video, that my whole pizza just a few hundred bucks I was making pizza that actually tasted like it came finally hit those higher temps necessary. And I actually had a flame

[10:34] pizza, which give it that distinctive appearance and flavor. And both of the past Unis that I had were woodf fired which were great but this is the new Uni Kota 2 Pro which is gas powered. And although I lose a little bit of flavor

[10:47] from the smoky wood fire I gain so much ease of use and control by having this gas powered oven. And it has a range from 320° F all the way up to 950° F which gives me a ton of flexibility in what I can actually make in this oven.

[11:02] around, plus a baby, having a gas-powered oven has been essential for my lifestyle to continue making pizza on a weekly basis, which we're about to do up. It's preheating. The dough balls are ready to go. So, I'm going to start

[11:17] slinging some pizza. I actually put the proofing bin in my new greenhouse because they just needed a little extra heat. Let's see. That's what I'm talking about. Perfect. They've gained about 30% volume. You can see here they just

[11:32] indent. >> So they're ready to go. All right. So I could probably do an entire video just on techniques for

[11:44] forming shaping pizza. I'm not going to do that. I've tried to condense it into what I think are the three most important rules for great pizza. But I might throw in some additional tips here and there like this thing. Any type of

[11:56] dough spatula will work, but this is specifically formed for scooping out your dough. Boom. This is really looking perfectly proof. And rule number six is now we can introduce heavy flour. Again, this is my semolina flour mixture. Boom.

[12:11] Plop it in. If you go to any pizza shop, what do you see? These perfect dough they're always then getting hit with a ton of flour. I was a stickler before so we could preserve our hydration level. But at this point, the dough isn't

[12:25] necessarily going to absorb that flour since we're about to bake it. But what beautiful non-stick coating. Look at that. It's not sticking at all. You can go really as heavy as you want. The last thing you want to do is make this

[12:39] beautiful pizza and you go to pop it in the oven and it gets stuck to the peel or half of it flips off. I've been there many times. It's not worth it. Excess flour at this point isn't necessarily going to burn on the pizza, will burn on

[12:53] the actual pizza stone, which you can just brush off. So, always go heavy at number seven. When we start rolling this out, this is a classic veto tip that

[13:05] really changed the game for me. >> Get the air to the crust. You see there? >> We need to lock in that crust first, just like I'm doing right there. See that air is being locked in? And what I'll do is I'll just go around and I'll

[13:18] first thing you're going to do when out the middle. You don't care about preserving the air there, but we want that nice fluffy crust. You can see we already have an air pocket there. That

[13:30] is gas. We've built in fermentation and a strong gluten network that has trapped it and it gives us that lovely crust. Then once the crust is locked in, that's when you can use any type of technique to expand your pizza. I generally just

[13:42] use gravity being very gentle with my knuckles. Oops. Even like that. If it coating, it's not going to stick together. We get that inside nice and thin. Now, to make things easier for me, I prefer to just go on the peel first

[13:58] before I top it. And again, going in with a good amount of that dusting of semolina and flour. Oh, just screwed up my crust with the peel. Sorry. It's I've got all my ingredients. We have to top the pizza, which brings me into rule

[14:14] number eight, balancing flavors. The more pizza Ias I talk to, the more incredible pizza I taste. There's one thing in common, which is none of them finding that perfect balance where every single element of the pizza can be

[14:28] So, we can appreciate the dough, we can appreciate the sauce, and of course, the differently than I used to make pizzas where I would just throw the whole kitchen sink on them. There's a time and a place for that, but real like

[14:41] authentic delicious pizza is so simple. So, these are just my crushed Roma and Samarzano tomatoes. Smell incredible. And I'm not going super heavy. I can still see some of those pale spots, which I like. I personally like going on

[14:55] with a layer of Parmesan cheese. It melts into the sauce, creates a really nice salty, umami flavor. And then I have the freshest, best tasting mozzarella that I can find. And I just cubed it up. And I sprinkle that around.

[15:08] cheese. You don't want the cheese to overpower the other ingredients. Put one for the chef. And then I just went into my garden and I picked some fresh basil, pizza. So I'll just kind of sprinkle that around. Good bit of that. And then

[15:23] another great veto trick, hit the basil with olive oil so it doesn't burn. Finally, you can do this after before. Just a little hit of salt. Take that baby out to the oven. All right. So, the oven is preheated, but

[15:39] rule number nine is understanding this piece of technology. A lot of people works, and it holds them back from making perfect pizza. So, right here we is our ambient temperature. That gives us the overall temperature inside the

[15:55] another temperature, which is the temp of the stone, and it's why I have one of these heat guns, which I suggest every pizza maker should have, because we are going to measure the temperature of our pizza stone. So, you can see we're about

[16:09] pizza stone. So, you can see we're about 750° inside. Our stone is reading about 750°. So, these are pretty spot-on together. And one reason I love this oven is this tapered flame technology. It tapers off towards the back where

[16:23] temperature all the way through, eliminating hot spots. Now, you're also allowed to control the temperature while you cook pizza. So, I've preheated to just going to lower that flame a little bit

[16:37] and off. So, you can see it's puffing up right away. Proper AVPN temps want you to cook Neapolitan at like 900°, which will cook your pizza in like 90 seconds, but it's very difficult to cook at that high of a

[16:51] temperature. So, I'm going just a little bit lower. We'll still cook in probably 3 minutes or so. Just going to give it a little turn. And again, if it's starting to brown too fast, what can I do? Lower that flame. Now, we're starting to broil

[17:05] in there. You can give it a little look see under since this is a pretty big stone. If it's not dark enough, you can move it to a hotter spot. And let's see what we have here. Not too bad for a first

[17:18] pizza. I'm going to turn the oven back up high to make sure the stone is hot for the next pizza. And that first pizza of the day, it's never going to be your pancakes. You got to feel things out. Feel how your oven is cooking, how the

[17:31] variables. So, I'm going to take this inside. We'll investigate and I'll roll inside. We'll investigate and I'll roll out another pizza. Slide this on. Let's see that crust. Oh yeah. Very happy with that under crust. Pretty even

[17:44] get a thicker and fluffier crust. Really depends on what you like. I'm happy with the broiling of the toppings though. Most importantly, let's see how the taste is. You can see that nice gluten structure

[17:58] You can see that nice gluten structure in there. style. This is the garlic tomato sauce that I made. That's a lot of garlic and

[18:12] I like it. It actually makes a great bread dipper. Whereas I really like the pure tomato on the pizza. >> And that brings me into my final rule of pizza making which is you can always improve your pizza skills. I mean I just

[18:24] interviewed Anthony who's got the best pizzeria in the world. He's been making days where I'm here and people see us and I'm just like, I just want to be done with this and go home and pretend tonight never happened and tomorrow will

[18:38] be better. Still isn't always confident. Still always seeking perfection. And that's what pizza brings out of me and why I think I love it so much. And I'm later. It really just brings out this quest to improve and to get that perfect

[18:54] the flavors are perfect. I think I can improve a little bit on the forming of to give it another go. [Music]

[19:06] I'm going to try higher temps, closer to 800. Lower that flame. This one final habadoo. And quicker release. Oh yeah. Look at that pop. Oh my god. [Music]

[19:22] Oh yeah. Look at that thing. Now that's what I'm talking about. So there you go. I definitely improved what I wasn't happy with. Probably because I wasn't focused on filming so much.

[19:36] Oh yeah, the crispiness is insane. I just got a much better crust. I actually like the cheese slightly less broiled on this one. I mean, that's what I'm this one. I mean, that's what I'm talking about with the crumb.

[19:49] We've improved. Rule number 10 accomplished. Keep getting better. Keep the next one. [Music]