Whenever my college roommate Rachel, who lives in Chicago, and I get together, we always plan to cook a “complicated meal” together. Obviously we both love to cook and to provide food for friends and family, but honestly, at its core, these evenings are thinly veiled excuses to drink boxed wine and chat for hours. Once we made osso buco, but started braising so late we had to wake up everybody at midnight to eat it. A trio of Middle Eastern dips (baba ghanoush, hummus, m’hummera) and homemade pitas ended up being dinner for a pregnant friend, since the lamb tagine didn’t appear until an hour after she went to bed. We’ve made tacos from scratch, a southern spread (pulled pork, beans, slaw, greens etc.), lasagnas with hand-rolled pasta and traditional Bolognese, and countless other multi-coursed, entirely homemade meals.
So while these evenings were all tremendous fun, and quite delicious, our guests have become a bit wary of when dinner will actually appear. There are also Rachel’s two small children to now consider, who we blatantly exclude when it comes to the grown-ups’ dinner (they get “super special quesadillas”), but whose care during these extended cooking sessions requires some negotiation. Rachel is the queen of winning arguments on fairness, using an dubiously fair argument herself—I believe the phrase “just trying to make a nice dinner for everyone” has been used in our favor—but if it gets us a few hours of fun behind the closed kitchen door, I’m all for it.
Either way, we did need to make some concessions for the people we served. Instead of throwing in the towel and making a vegetarian pasta (I love them and all, but they are a sad-sounding party food), we recently instituted a new “no doughs” rule to our cooking nights. In truth, this proclamation has no impact on the complexity of the dinners or the time taken to cook them. I’m being honest here. But it’s a small gesture that all involved can use as a touchstone, when hunger strikes late at night, when we need “just a little more time.” We all know nothing can throw off the timing of dinner like the inclusion of a yeasted bread, amirite?
Wrong. (Rachel, stop reading here.) Yeasted things are actually not nearly as time consuming and involved as I think they are. I say this as I have recently made homemade pizza dough, and it really was easy, and quite forgiving. Even with a list of constraints. I didn’t want to weigh ingredients.* I wanted it to be at least partially whole wheat. I didn’t want to be bossed around by the timing of it, babysitting it and punching it down and all that. The solution? “Cold fermenting” the dough. I know it sounds intense, which is exactly why the no-dough rule brings people comfort. But what cold fermenting means practically is the ability to make the dough ahead of time (about 15 minutes of work), keep it in the fridge, then use it whenever you like, within a pretty wide time period—2 to 4 days say. And the kicker: it gets better with age.
I usually buy whole wheat pizza dough at Trader Joe’s—one of the few prepared items I love. But homemade was, not surprisingly, better. I used a recipe based on Cook’s Illustrated whole wheat pizza dough, but since my online login wasn’t working, I had to rely on a unfamiliar blogger who had published a version online—which meant either it was copyright infringed, or had been altered slightly. It called for a food processor, but I wanted to try out the never-before-used dough hook on my stand mixer—so I used a method for another dough from Serious Eats.
To make matters even more shaky, I had none of the flours that the recipe called for (whole wheat and bread flour). Flours are not things to be swapped willy-nilly. Not only are they milled differently—finer or coarser, which can affect the rate at which they absorb liquids, which then could change the amount of liquid you need in a recipe—but they also have varying protein levels, which can affect the way it ferments, the ease of stretching it, and the ultimate rise. Unfortunately, I was not even really sure what types of flour I had—I had put them into canisters without labels. But I had already determined I was making pizza dough, and I am just not the type to go to the grocery store to get the “right” ingredients when I could just make do. I knew that as long as I used at least half white flour, my chances were still good. Worst thing the whole thing flops. I like a challenge.
But it worked fine. Perhaps it’s a testament to the flexibility of pizza dough. I believe I used AP and whole wheat pastry flour and I did add a couple extra tablespoons of water while it was kneading as it seemed too dry. I put half in a ziplock in the fridge, and half in the freezer for another time. Later that night, it had grown—a good sign. As an extra (not deliberate) challenge, I then took it on a road trip where the car started making terrible noises with 3 more hours of driving to go. The time spent in a cooler in the backseat while we crept along under the speed limit through coastal Connecticut didn’t seem to do it any harm. A night later, we topped it with cooked down tomatoes (just enough to evaporate the extra liquid), pesto, mozzarella, and raw butterflied scallops and shrimp, dusted in Old Bay to please the Marylander I married. Ten minutes in a 550 degree oven and it was glorious. I wonder now if two ziplocks of live dough and an ice pack are TSA approved. If so, I would make another batch, and bring it next time I go to Chicago.
Whole Wheat Pizza
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, add 2 1/4 cups AP flour, 2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour, 1 envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons) instant/rapid-rise yeast, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Mix to distribute everything, then, with the mixer running on low, add about 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 1/2 cups warm water. Mix just until the dough comes together and there are no dry ingredients in the bottom of the bowl, adding additional water as necessary so that all is incorporated (I needed another couple tablespoons). Let it rest 10 minutes, then knead with the dough hook on low for 10 minutes. Divide into 2 zipper bags and refrigerate at least overnight. Use within 5 days or freeze.
To cook, let the dough come to room temperature and preheat the oven as high as it goes (450 degrees or more). Stretch onto a baking sheet or pizza pan, top with whatever you like, and cook about 10 to 12 minutes, until the crust is browned and cooked through.
* I know I’m a cookbook editor and all, and I have insisted in my very recent past that authors add ingredient weights to their books. But here’s my terrible secret. I don’t do metrics. I don’t even own a scale. Why? Because I hate measuring anything at all. Philosophically, I don’t believe in it, that there is only one exact way to do something—this is dinner, not pharmaceutical research. Plus it’s so fussy. It uses up extra dishes that you have to wash. It’s a bit like being bossed around, and I hate being told what to do. And I’m super exacting, so measuring means additional time spent obsessively double checking the recipe. No thanks. For baking, like this, I do measure using cups and spoons, but I don’t enjoy it.
