The first thing I need to tell you about this pizza dough recipe is that it is not an exact replica of the pizza dough we use at Pizzeria Mozza. What I can promise you, however, is that when you make this dough at home, your pizza will be just as delicious as the one we serve. Dough reacts differently in different ovens, and when our restaurant dough is baked in a home oven the result is a thick and doughy crust—not at all like those that come out of our extremely hot wood-fired ovens. My challenge for this book was to come up with a recipe for a pizza dough that, when baked in a home oven, resulted in a crust that was as close to what we get out of our pizza ovens as possible. And with the invaluable help and relentless persistence of Jon Davis, a breadbaker whom I’ve worked with since I hired him at La Brea Bakery more than twenty years ago, we came up with this recipe. The dough is made with a sponge, which means that half of the flour is fermented, or aged, for a period of time—in this case, for an hour and a half—before being mixed with the remaining ingredients. This is a breadbakers’ trick to coax the subtle flavor characteristics from the flour in a relatively short period of time. I have also made this dough without the sponge, adding all of the flour and water at once and saving that hour and a half of fermenting time. If you are pressed for time, you can do this, and though you might lose a bit of flavor, it will still be better than most pizzas I’ve been served in the States. You will need a scale to make this recipe. Bread making, or in this case pizza dough making, is so specific, there is no way around it. When making the dough, it’s important to time it so that it’s ready when you want to make your pizzas.
This flexible recipe is all you need to bring this iconic Provençal seafood stew to your table.
A savory-hot salsa made with mixed nuts (like the kind dubbed cocktail nuts meant for snacking) gives roast salmon a kaleidoscope of textures and flavors.
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
Make this versatile caramel at home with our slow-simmered method using milk and sugar—or take one of two sweetened condensed milk shortcuts.
Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.
Round out these autumn greens with tart pomegranate seeds, crunchy pepitas, and a shower of Parmesan.
This classic 15-minute sauce is your secret weapon for homemade mac and cheese, chowder, lasagna, and more.
This one-pot dinner cooks chicken thighs directly on top of a bed of flavorful cilantro rice studded with black beans for a complete dinner.