no knead to apologise

where i grew up, pizza was something you bought from the supermarket in miniature, personalised portions, kept in the chest freezer in the garage, and broke out on a saturday night when your kids had been REALLY good.  it came in two flavours, and each smelled disturbingly of stale cardboard.  then, with my teen years, came delivery from one of the two chain-pizzerias in town, but now the essence of cardboard had been joined by a nasty chemical aftertaste that appeared to ooze disturbingly from the rubbery cheese.  it's like drinking a glass of franzia; it might tick all the definition boxes, technically “wine,” but do you really want to go to there?  no, tina fey, i do not.  and then, suddenly, before our very eyes, pizza underwent a revolution of sorts.  she slowly removed her oversized, buddy holly style glasses,  shook loose her tight bun of hair in slow motion until it cascaded over her shoulders, and wouldn't you know it, pizza even took the popular guy from school home and had her wicked way with him.  you GO, pizza!  now THIS is the dish i can blow a thousand calories over and not feel like i've wasted my time (or my waistline).

jim lahey apparently owns a bakery and a restaurant in new york city, has a number of cookbooks under his belt, but i had never heard of him until last week.  in the wonder that is bon appetit magazine, i read the recipe for his no-knead pizza dough and realised that, for better or for worse, jim lahey and i have had a date with destiny for a long, long time.  THIS is the kind of pizza that i dreamed about in my youth; with a crust of taught, crisp edges and chewy interior, perfect in its imperfections, charred yet moist, slapping all other pizza crusts across the cheek with a white silk glove and challenging them to a duel.  (spoiler alert: jim lahey's no-knead pizza dough wins.)

the best thing about homemade pizza, of course, is that you can make it to fulfill your every desire (or, at least most of them).  the sauce was a can of fire-roasted tomatoes and garlic whizzed up in the food processor.  there was fresh mozzarella torn up into rough little ribbons.  there was bacon imported from wisconsin, cut into perfect wee lardons. (more on this in a later column.  this bacon refuses to be content with a mere paragraph; a bridesmaid of ingredients.  no, no.  this bacon is a bridezilla of foods, demanding its time in the spotlight and its own reality show on E!  and, frankly, justly so.)  and finally there was thinly-sliced red onion and red chile flakes (as apparently I can eat no foodstuff without adding red chile flakes).  it was, for lack of a better word, redonkulous.

okay, so there’s the good.  now for the bad.  there’s a british adjective: faffy.  it means fiddly, tricky, sometimes annoyingly time-consuming.  well, full disclosure here, this was one faffy recipe.  first of all, you have to start it at least a day in advance, so it’s definitely not a good option for all the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-apron cooks out there.  then there were a few dough malfunctions…  i think part of the problem was that my dough was too wet.  the image i had of whipping the dough around my knuckles, twirling it in the air with perfect harmonious elasticity didn’t quite come to be.  it was more like a british chick with tacky, flour-covered hands battling ferociously against gravity as the dough sagged faster than keith richard’s face and heroically tried to reach the floor as i grabbed at it, desperately trying to stop it from ripping.  so, yes.  there was that.  then there was the fact that my pizza stone broke.  and that the remaining pizzas stuck to the substitute baking sheets.  BUT, for a titch less water in the dough and a few less degrees in the oven, this would be a perfect recipe.  and, for me, at least, the perfect pizza is worth a little faff.  in fact, i think i owe it to that little bespectacled girl of my youth.

no-knead pizza dough (adapted from jim lahey’s “my pizza”)

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for shaping the dough
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 1/2 cups water

in a medium bowl, thoroughly blend the flour, yeast and salt.  add the water and, with a wooden spoon or your hands, mix thoroughly.

cover the bowl with plastic wrap and/or a damp kitchen towel and allow it to rise at room temperature for 18 hours or until it has more than doubled.

flour a work surface and scrape out the dough onto it.  divide it into 4 equal parts and shape them into a rough square.  with each portion, fold the four corners toward the center,  flip it over so the seam side’s down, and shape into a round.  dust with more flour and let it rest for an hour.

(at this point, if you don't intend to use the dough right away, wrap the balls individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 3 days.  return to room temperature by leaving them out on the counter, covered with a damp cloth, for 2 to 3 hours before baking.)

during the last hour of dough's resting, prepare oven. arrange a rack in upper third of oven and place pizza stone on rack and heat oven to its hottest setting, 500 to 550 degrees, for 1 hour.  (my new oven heats to a blistering 550 and this is when my pizza stone decided to commit culinary suicide.  i shall be trying 500 degrees next time...)

working with 1 dough ball at a time, dust dough generously with flour and place on a floured work surface.  carefully shape dough into a 10- to 12-inch disk by spreading gently from the inside towards the edges.  (or wrestle with it in mid-air, attempting to stretch it with your knuckles.  fun, but faffy.)

when ready to bake, switch oven heat to broil.  sprinkle a pizza peel or rimless baking sheet lightly with flour. place dough disk on prepared peel and top with desired toppings.

slide pizza from peel onto hot pizza stone.  broil pizza, rotating halfway, until bottom of crust is crisp and top is blistered, 5-7 minutes.