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Want to master the art of pizza making? Anooska Tucker-Evans asks world pizza champion Johnny Di Francesco and author of New Pizza Stefano Manfredi their tips and tricks
We ask world pizza champion Johnny D Francesco and author of New Pizza Stefano Manfredi their tips and tricks on making the Italian specialty.
WHAT IS THE PERFECT PIZZA?
For owner of Melbourne’s 400 Gradi restaurant and 2014 winner of Italy’s World Pizza Championships Johnny Di Francesco, it’s all about the dough.
“The perfect pizza is something where the dough is soft, pliable, very easy to fold,” he says. “It should have a beautiful crust around the rim, which is full of air – nice and puffed. “What I’m describing is the Neapolitan pizza.” However, Stefano Manfredi, of Restaurant Manfredi and Pizzaperta Manfredi in Sydney and author of cookbook and pizza how-to guide New Pizza, believes in a slightly crisper crust, cooked for longer at a lower temperature.
But both experts agree, regardless of whether you want your base firm or soft, the basics of making a great pizza remain the same.
THE FLOUR
“You have to start with the flour,” Manfredi says. “Start with a good, preferably stoneground, whole wheat flour – not wholemeal, that’s different. Otherwise you buy yourself a good, strong, whole wheat bread flour.”
Flours have a W strength guide referring to how much water they can absorb. Flours with a rating of W280-370 are classified as strong flours, ideal for pizza, as they can hold up to about 75 per cent of their weight in water. The higher the W rating the longer your dough will take to rise.
00 flours are traditionally used for Naples-style pizzas, with the flour ground incredibly finely. However, many chefs and pizzaiolos are now looking to different styles of flour such as rye and spelt for extra flavour. Di Francesco has just created his own flour blend in Italy, but recommends home cooks use Le 5 Stagioni flour, available at specialty grocers.
THE YEAST
Di Francesco is a fan of fresh yeast, but says both can be used, it’s just a matter of altering the proportion.
“We only use one gram (of fresh yeast) per kilo of flour – very, very little yeast,” he says. “If you’re going to use dried yeast, you cut the amount by a third because it’s three times the strength of fresh yeast. So if you’re going to use dry yeast it will be 0.3 grams.”
Dried yeast is more stable than fresh yeast and easier to work with, so Manfredi recommends it for beginners.
THE WATER
This is one of the most important but also most overlooked ingredients in a great pizza dough.
Di Francesco finds water with a pH of 7 to be ideal and imports his from Naples, but says filtered water is great and bottled water is fine, but it’s important the water doesn’t have chlorine or too many mineral salts as it will inhibit leavening. Water testing kits are available from hardware and pool stores.
The pizza champ and author of cookbooks Food of Naples and World’s Best Pizza uses about 600ml of water to 1kg of flour, and says the water’s temperature is also crucial.
“I never recommend using lukewarm water,” he says. “It pushes the yeast to work faster and we don’t want to do that. We want the yeast to work as slow as possible.”
The perfect water temperature depends on the ambient temperature, the temperature of the flour and the heat your mixer transfers.
Di Francesco uses “Rule 56” to find the ideal temp, starting with the number 56, he then subtracts the temperature of the flour measured using a probe (e.g. 56-20C = 36), then takes away the ambient temperature (36-18C = 18), then subtracts 8 as this is usually the amount of heat generated in the mixing process. The result is water that is 10C.
“If it’s in Queensland and it’s hot, you would want to use that formula,” he says.
THE DOUGH
Manfredi and Di Francesco say there is no such thing as a quick-rise pizza dough. Dough should be left to ferment for at least 24 hours and if it’s not, Di Francesco says that’s when it can lead to the diner feeling bloated or sick.
“If you allow your dough to only rest for two hours or 10 hours, the yeast activates and it makes the dough rise, but what happens is you’re missing out on one of the most important parts of the dough-rising process, which is called the maturing of the dough,” he says.
“If you don’t allow your dough to mature and only rise, what happens when you do eat the pizza is the dough then begins to mature in your stomach, and that is when you start getting all that bloating and during the night you feel like you need to drink a lot of water because that maturing process is feeding off liquid (in your stomach).”
Di Francesco recommends letting dough ferment at 18C or below for 24-30 hours, but says that if the ambient temperature is too warm or you want to ferment the dough for longer, it should be done in the fridge.
“You can’t just make your dough and put it straight in the fridge because when you put dough in the fridge the yeast becomes dormant, but what doesn’t become dormant is the maturing and you can’t have the dough maturing without rising (and vice versa),” he says.
“You need to allow your dough to sit out in an ambient temperature at least until you see your dough nearly doubling in size or just reacting so you know that the yeast has now started to work.
“Once you see it reacting then you can put it in the fridge.”
The expert says the dough can then stay in the fridge for up to three days, which is a great way of making dough in advance, but it needs to be left to come to ambient temperature for at least four hours before cooking. And never freeze your dough. “What happens when you put dough in the freezer it takes hours before the internal core freezes. While it’s going through that process, crystallisation occurs and once you defrost a frozen dough ball and it has crystals in the centre, it’s actually not very healthy for human consumption,” Di Francesco says.
THE TOPPINGS
No matter what toppings you add, both experts insist it’s important to get the best quality you can buy.
As for the signature tomato sauce, Manfredi says it’s actually not a sauce at all.
“It’s just really good San Marzano tomatoes – they’re the peeled tomatoes in the can,” he says.
Manfredi insists there’s no need to cook the tomatoes, simply squash them being careful not to destroy the seed membrane as this is what can create bitterness.
Cow’s milk fior di latte cheese is most popular for pizzas, but other cheeses like buffalo mozzarella, taleggio, gorgonzola and scamorza can also be used.
If using Italian sausage, get it from your butcher without the casings and always add a slug of olive oil to the pizza before it goes in the oven, Manfredi says. And whatever you use, keep it simple. “Keep the flavours really minimal and I think you’ll get a much better result,” Manfredi says.
THE COOKING
This is where personal preferences come in. For those who like the traditional Neapolitan soft base, pizza is generally cooked in a 400C-470C wood-fired oven for about 90 seconds, while cooking at a lower temperature for slightly longer develops a crispier base.
But home cooks don’t need a wood-fired oven for great results.
“If you’re going to use a domestic, electric oven at home, I would recommend just buying a really cheap pizza stone,” Di Francesco says.
“You put the stone in the oven, preheat it and make it as hot as possible and then you transfer the pizza from your chopping board or small paddle on to the stone without a tray or anything so you’re cooking directly on the stone, so you have the same cooking technique as though you were cooking in a wood-fired oven.
“The only difference you’ll get is the temperature, (which will be around 230-250C), but you’re still going to get a really good pizza.”