How to Make Wolfgang Puck's Pizza Dough

How to Make Wolfgang Puck's Pizza Dough Hello, this is Chef John from Foodwishes.com with Wolfgang Puck’s Pizza Dough recipe. This famous California pizza dough and you know Wolfgang Puck, he’s a chef and he’s always doing the Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. Wolfgang recently let me publish this on my American food site on About.com, so I’m going to show you how to make it, really, really easy and really nice dough. I was impressed. So you’re going to start with one package of dry active yeast, a teaspoon of honey, I’m using siege honey, use any honey you want. A quarter cup of warm water, like really warm like 105 degrees, very important it’s warm. Give it a stir but it dissolve for 10 minutes then we’re going to add our salt, olive oil, three quarters of a cup of equally warm water, 105 degrees and a cup of flour. You’re going to stir that up. It’s going to become butter. We’re going to add another cup of flour, stir that in and then we’re going to add even more flour. So this is going to get about three cups total, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to add two and a half cups at this point. It’s going to get too thick to stir and then you’re going to move to the board and maybe knead in the rest of the flour. So when it gets too annoying to stir, so right there you like—God this is so annoying. Then you’re going to turn it out onto the board. You’re going to sprinkle maybe a quarter cup of flour down and then you’re going to knead this with traditional kneading. Smash it with your palm method for about five minutes until you have smooth, fairly firm but nice and smooth, very slightly sticky dough. So this took just about all three cups. I use two and a half cups went in to the actual dough in the bowl and then I kept kneading it and you see that it actually picked up all the flour on the board, so with just about of three cups of flour. You’re going to play by air, but there we go nice, smooth, fairly firm dough. A little bit of olive oil in a bowl. Just rinse out the bowl you mixed it in, coat it with olive oil just a little bit. Put a damp towel over it and let it set in a warm place. I turned the oven on for about five minutes. I turned it on so it’s nice and warm. It’s going to go a half hour to 40 minutes and it’s going to basically almost double in size. Alright, now it looks pretty good. Turn it out onto your floured cutting board. Pat it down with your hand that deflates it. And we’re going to make four small pizzas with this. So I’m going to cut it in four pieces. Now the last step here, I’m going to do this twice for you. Take one of those quarters and just keep folding the outside’s down and under and the top can stretches out so you’re just kind of like go in around, you’re folding up underneath. You do that for about six or seven times and that’s ready. Hey, one more time. Take a piece okay. You’re kind of like turning it. You can use your fingertips or your palms. You’re just kind of stretching it down and under and then tucking it up underneath, anyway just watch it a few times. It’s not that hard. We’re going to put those on a tray. Alright, I want to cover that with a towel and let that set in a warm place for 20 minutes to a half hour, and then you’re ready to make pizza. Now, what do you want to do here, put it down on a lightly floured board, start in the center with your fingertips and just kind of keep pressing out. This is only going to get about eight or 10 inches wide but that will make a nice kind of rim around the edge. You do that kind of like signature California pizza look. So I just keep stretching and pulling. You can roll it if you want, there’s not a big difference if you roll it. Pizza makers will get upset if you roll it. So stretch it out and would go around the edge of my fingertip to kind of like make that crust shape. Now, it goes on a cornmealed pan or pan with a good amount of cornmeal, brush it with some extra virgin olive oil, that kind of like seals the pizza from the sauce. We’re going to put sauce but not too much just a couple of tablespoons. Spread it around, a very light shaking of red pepper flakes for me, and then here’s where you have to adjust, control yourself. A very light cheesing, a little bit of mozzarella, a little bit of Fontina and I just really like sprinkling a Parmesan and then you put it with whatever toppings you want here. I didn’t have any other toppings. So I’m just making a cheese pizza. It’s going to go on the bottom of 450degree oven for five minutes. Alright after five minutes, move it to the middle rack of your oven for another four or five minutes until it looks like that. I should have a pizza stone but I don’t, but it actually works nice on the bottom of the over. The bottom gets really crispy and then I tried this. Wolfgang, I’ve got to hand to you buddy, that’s a good pizza dough. So it’s kind of chewy, very tender. This works if you roll it out really thin. It works if you like a thicker pizza crust. It’s up to you. So anyway, that’s Wolfgang Puck’s California pizza dough, the extra pizza dough just put in zip lock bags. You can keep it two or three days in the fridge. I hope you give it a try. All the amounts are on the site, and as always, enjoy.