Last fall on an overnight stop in Kamloops, B.C., while taking a stroll on the main street, I came across a used book store. I dropped in for a quick tour among the bookshelves and shortly thereafter a cookbook section attracted my attention. I perused the collection a while, and then a slim paperbacked book entitled All the Best Pizzas caught my eye.
One recipe, in particular, in the book intrigued me. It was a recipe for a thin and crispy dough that included an egg, something I had never heard of before. I bought the book and last December I tried the dough with the egg and I liked it, so here it is.
Now, let’s get cooking!
Thin and Crispy Pizza Dough
Ingredients:
1 tsp dry yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
2/3 cup lukewarm water
2 1/2 cups bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 large egg
Olive oil
Method:
In a 1-cup measure or bowl, stir yeast and sugar into water. Set aside for 10 minutes or until foamy. Combine flour and salt in a large bowl. Lightly beat egg into yeast mixture after it foams. Add yeast mixture to flour and salt and knead until combined.
Turn dough out on a very lightly floured surface. Pick up dough and throw it down hard eight or nine times, using dough scraper to scrape up dough sticking to surface. Knead several times. Throw dough down again eight or nine times and continue throwing and kneading until dough is smooth and no longer sticky, about two to three minutes. Only add flour at this point, if absolutely necessary, if dough is still too sticky to handle after kneading.
Lightly oil the dough and place in a large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for at least four hours (preferably six to eight), or until tripled in volume. You may also refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Do not punch dough down.
When ready to use, gently pull dough down from the sides of the bowl, remove and slice into sections with sharp knife. The recipe says you can make four 10-inch pizzas with this amount of dough. I made two 12-inch pizzas and had a small bit of dough left over.
I used this dough very successfully to make something I call a salsa pizza. Roll dough out as thin as possible, place on a lightly oiled pizza pan, and top with salsa, yellow cheddar cheese, strips of thinly sliced prosciutto cotto (cooked ham), sliced black olives, and mozzarella stuffed jalapeno peppers sliced crosswise. Cook in oven pre-heated to 450-475 degrees until golden on top. Enjoy.
