The Best Pizza You'll Ever Make

I'm Frank Proto,

professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today, we're gonna make pizza.

[air whooshing] Frank style.

We're talking everything you need to know

about how to make the perfect pizza at home.

This is how to make pizza 101.

I think that making pizza at home

is an essential cooking skill to have.

It is not as hard as you think.

And that's what I'm gonna show you how to do today.

[bright folk music]

Today, we are making a simple margarita pie.

I always judge a pizzeria by its crust.

Is it crunchy? Does it hold up?

Is it golden brown? Does it have some air bubbles?

That's what you want in a good pizza crust.

For my pizza today, I'm using store-bought dough.

There's no shame in this.

Did you know if you go to your local pizzeria,

you can buy dough from them too?

So find your favorite pizzeria and buy dough from them.

I preheated my oven to about 500 degrees,

basically as high as it's gonna go.

And what I'm gonna do is make a makeshift pizza stone.

The reason we have the sheet tray turned over like this

is that it's easy to transport

and slide the pizza off onto it.

So I'm gonna put it in upside down,

put it in my pre-heated oven and get it nice and hot.

Putting our pan in the oven

and pre-heating it does a couple of things.

It starts our crust getting crisped right away,

and we get a little bit of oven spring from that yeast.

As it dies, it's giving a last breath of CO2 and flavor,

and we get some nice bubbles.

While it's getting hot, let's get to work.

My store-bought dough is chilled,

and what I want to do is kind of cut it

into the portion size I want

and then rework the dough slightly to redistribute the yeast

and kind of wake this dough up.

So I'm just going to kind of roll this under,

give it a light rounding so that when we roll this out,

we have a nice round pie.

If you have bubbles, leave them alone.

We don't want to crush them out,

and we redistribute that yeast.

So we're gonna work the dough lightly,

not knead it, but just bring it together.

And what we do is we want it to get a little tight

so when I press down on it, it kind of bounces back.

It's got some spring to it, right?

We don't wanna work it so it's a tough dough.

We just wanna work it a little, keep the bubbles in

and give us a little spring back.

I'm gonna put it on my sheet tray, give it a little room.

I'm gonna put a towel on this

and let it sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

The gluten can relax a little 'cause we reworked it.

We also want to get some more bubbling in there.

We want the yeast to wake up.

So while the dough rests, we can make our sauce.

[bright folk music]

For everyone that buys sauce in a jar, stop.

This is so easy, so simple.

It really takes no skill at all.

I tend not to use fresh tomatoes on my pizza.

Canned tomatoes have less water than fresh tomatoes,

他们have a ton of flavor as well.

I'm using crushed peeled tomatoes.

You can use whole peeled or diced tomatoes.

Whatever one makes you happy, just use it.

Next thing I wanna do is put a little bit of garlic in here.

Just one nice clove of garlic,

and I'm gonna put this in just like this.

I'm not gonna chop it.

That's why I have the stick blender, right?

I just want to throw my garlic in there.

If you like more garlic, put more garlic in.

If you like less, put less in.

But please, use fresh, not the stuff in the jar.

So next I'm gonna add some basil leaves,

and I like to puree a few leaves in there, right?

I just break them up. I'm gonna do about six or seven.

Basil's gonna give some sweetness to the sauce.

It's gonna give some brightness to the finished pizza.

Some people use oregano. I like oregano.

I like basil a lot more.

I like a little bit of chili flakes in there.

Not necessarily for a lot of heat

but just a little bit of kick.

I'm also gonna add some extra-virgin olive oil.

This is really floral and green.

It's gonna give our basil a little boost.

It also just kind of brings everything together

with a little bit of fat.

Some salt, fresh cracked black pepper.

Has better flavor than something you'd buy in a jar.

If you don't have one of these fancy stick blenders

or immersion blenders, you can put it in a blender,

you can put it in a food processor,

or you can just break it up with your hands.

It's totally up to you.

I just like for that garlic to be buzzed into my sauce

so I get a good dispersion.

The finished texture I'm looking for

is that all of the ingredients are blended,

but it's not super smooth.

I wanna see some chunks in there if possible.

The point of this is just

to bring all of the flavors together.

Some people like to cook their tomato sauce,

but for this recipe we don't.

Saves you a lot of time and still gives you a ton of flavor.

[bright folk music]

Alright, so our dough has been sitting

for about a half hour.

Let's take a look at it.

Ooh, look at that.

We got some nice bubbles.

We want bubbles and a little less bounciness.

We also reactivated some of the yeast in there

to kind of get those bubbles rolling again.

Bubbles usually equal flavor, right?

Bubbles mean that the yeast is doing its work.

So let's get this one piece of dough off.

Put it out onto the board.

If it's sticky, you wanna make sure

that you put some flour on 'em.

We can always shake the flour off later.

I'm just gonna start going around the outside,

and I want to use my fingers for this.

A rolling pin's gonna knock out all the bubbles

that we tried to get in there.

What I'm gonna do is just go around the sides

leaving a crust and then start stretching our dough.

If the dough's not stretching easily, be patient.

That means it just needs to rest a little longer.

And what you can also do is pull on it if you want,

but we really just want to stretch out that center.

If I put it over my hands, my hands are curled under.

I'm using my knuckles.

We can use our hands to kind of stretch

wherever there's heavy parts.

Don't necessarily need to throw it in the air,

you just really want to stretch it out.

I want it as thin as I can make it

without it tearing, right?

If I get a little tear like that, all I do is take my dough,

stretch it over the top, cover up my hole,

give it a pinch, and we're good to go.

But you definitely want it to be

as thin as humanly possible without tearing through.

Our pizza dough is stretched out,

and what I'm gonna do is get another half sheet tray.

It's not hot,

and I'm gonna use this as a makeshift peel for my pizza.

So we get our dough on here.

Put enough flour on the bottom so that it doesn't stick.

See how it moves around really well?

And now we're ready to top it.

So my dough is moving freely,

and I'm gonna put some sauce on here,

and we're gonna take the ladle, put some in the center,

and then we're just gonna swirl it around

all the way up to the edge.

We don't want this to be wet, right?

So we don't wanna put too much sauce in.

Just a nice light coating of sauce.

Every time, let's make sure that we're still moving.

If you see that it sticks,

we can always add like a pinch of flour underneath.

As far as cheese goes,

I try and stay away from fresh mozzarella

because it has a lot of moisture,

and it makes our dough soggy.

I like to use a low-moisture mozzarella.

It does not make my pizza soggy.

So when it comes to grating my mozzarella cheese,

and I go right on top, right?

If it just drops in the center, that's fine.

I give a nice hefty dash of that low-moisture mozzarella,

and then I can kind of spread it out to the edges.

You want to have just enough cheese to cover our pizza.

The other cheeses that I use are grating cheeses.

Whenever I use grated cheese for pizza,

I like to use parmesan and pecorino.

Parmesan gives us a nice nuttiness.

Pecorino is sharp, kind of kick in the face.

I like to kind of the mix of those on my pizza.

I'm gonna hit it

with a little bit of extra-virgin olive oil,

always a little salt and some black pepper.

You can put whatever toppings you want on this pizza,

but just keep in mind

how much moisture is in those ingredients.

If it's like a mushroom, and it has a lot of moisture,

cook them first before you put 'em on top.

[bright folk music]

So I wanna make sure this is flowered

so our pizza moves easily

and slides into the oven without any problems.

The pizza's been in the oven for about 20 minutes.

It's time to take it out.

Isn't she pretty?

Look, we got some nice browning on the crust.

We got some beautiful bubbles. Let's get that out.

Alright, let's slide it off onto the cutting board.

Look at her, she's beautiful!

Make sure you put the fresh basil on

right before you're ready to serve it

so that it doesn't go black.

Right, we want a little bit of freshness from every bite.

You can smell, we have a great crust.

We have a lot of bubbles.

You can smell the cheese.

The basil is kind of hitting you really hard.

All in all, it looks like a great pie.

Time to cut.

I'm just gonna use your regular chef knife,

and I'm gonna cut it into like six nice slices.

Mm, delicious.

It's got a great balance of flavors.

You can taste the dough, which is nice,

'cause it has some nice bubbles in it.

Look at those nice crackly bubbles.

You can taste all the cheeses,

and that mozzarella's got a little bit

of stretchiness to it.

The basil just kinda like sets everything off,

makes it fresh, cut some of the cheese flavor,

gives you some nice brightness.

It's totally worth the time to make your own pizza.

This is a super easy process.

All you gotta do is have a little bit of patience.

[playful jazzy music]

It keeps on like [laughs].

Pizza, [laughs] Frank style.