From acclaimed baker Tara Jensen: The definitive primer on baking pizza dough, with brilliant colour photos, illustrations, and easy-to-follow recipe layouts.

“Complete with detailed explanations of techniques, thorough instructions, and helpful tips, this comprehensive volume is perfect for bakers of all levels who are serious about pizza making.”―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Pizza dough is a gateway for many home bread bakers, allowing them to experiment with different tools, toppings, ingredients, timings, and shapes. This companion guides you step by step from the simplest doughs to artisanal bakes. Here are 89 recipes any baker can perfect, with simple cook-along layouts and ways to explore different ingredients, techniques, flours, and heat sources for perfecting pizza, pita, and focaccia.

Bright and visually rich, with more than 60 colour photographs, this baking book provides expert guidance on how to:

• Set up your baking space with the right ingredients and tools
• Cook over fire or with an outdoor oven, or trick out the oven that came with your apartment to bake an impressive pie
• Learn the perfect ratios of toppings to crust
• Build classics such as Margherita, Clam, and Pepperoni pizzas, as well as a collection of fancifully delicious takes, including Breakfast pizza; Delicata Squash, Shallot, and Gruyère; and a particularly luscious Pancetta and Brown Butter Pineapple pie
• Craft a foolproof focaccia
• Discover all you need to know to make pita with kids
• And much more!

No book on pizza is complete without simple sauces, dips, and drizzles, such as Lemony Roasted Garlic Cream, Hot Honey, and a simple, fresh Uncooked Tomato Sauce. For after your pizza, Jensen offers dessert: homemade ice cream, cobblers, brownies, simple chocolate chip cookies, and a classic yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting.

The first pizza bible written by a woman and one of the preeminent bread bakers in the US, Pizza Practice offers a new approach and everything you need to bake your best pizzas.

ACCESSIBLE RECIPES FOR ALL SKILL LEVELS: These are baking recipes that meet you where you are, with the equipment in your kitchen. Step-by-step instructions, timelines, and photography for all the phases of the dough-making process, as well as folding, shaping, stretching, and baking, make this pizza cookbook indispensable for all home cooks.

TO YEAST OR NOT TO YEAST: Many baking books are emphatic in their approach to sourdough, resisting the addition of commercial yeast. Jensen’s dough uses both commercial and instant yeast―each alone or in combination―so bakers can experiment and know what makes the dough of their dreams.

EXPERT AUTHOR: Tara Jensen is one of the country’s most acclaimed bread bakers, instructors, and trusted bread baking cookbook authors. Flour Power was named one of the Washington Post’s top 10 cookbooks of 2022. Her breads, pizzas, pies, and pastry have been featured in Bon Appétit and Food & Wine, and she was named one of Southern Living’s chefs of the year in 2021. She runs her first pizzeria, Dough Baby, in Loudon County, Virginia, and posts daily musings on life and baking to her eager followers on Instagram @bakerhands.

Perfect for:

• Pizza and bread lovers
• Home cooks of all levels eager to make their own pizza, pita, or focaccia
• New and experienced bread bakers looking to hone their craft
• Gift-giving for birthday, holiday, or housewarming
• Fans and followers of Tara Jensen

Pizza Practice: Doughs, Techniques + Toppings by Tara Jensen is available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Indigo.ca.  

---

Supreme Delight Pizza 

A supreme pizza must have two meats, typically pepperoni and sausage, plus mushrooms, bell peppers, and onions. You’ll also find it with olives, banana peppers, and seasoned beef, depending on where you live. Popularized by chain pizza restaurants in the 1960s, the real credit goes to Italian Americans who created pizzas with whatever was on hand. The flavour of the bell peppers and sausage is nostalgic and delicious when done well.

Mushroom and Bell Pepper Toppings
42 g (3 tbsp) olive oil (EVOO)
113 g (4 oz) button mushrooms, sliced
3 g (½ tsp) salt
90 g (½ cup) green bell pepper, sliced
62 g (½ cup) red onion, sliced

Assembly
1 dough round (any of the doughs in Chapter 2)
56 g (¼ cup) roasted heirloom tomato sauce (page 178)
55 g (2 oz) low moisture mozzarella, shredded
113 g (4 oz) Italian sausage, casing removed and pinched into dime size pieces
30 g (2 oz) pepperoni, thinly sliced
2 g (¼ tsp) salt
White rice flour, for stretching the dough and dusting the peel

TO MAKE THE MUSHROOM AND BELL PEPPER TOPPINGS: Line a plate with a paper towel and set it near the stove. In a medium skillet, heat 28 g [2 Tbsp] of the olive oil over medium-low heat until it glistens. Add the mushrooms, turning them in the oil with a heat-safe flexible spatula until coated, then let cook undisturbed for 1 minute. Stir gently, season with a pinch of the salt, saving the rest for seasoning the bell pepper and onion later, and continue cooking over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until golden and browned on the edges, 4 to 5 minutes. Transfer to the towel-lined plate and let cool.

Add the remaining 14 g [1 Tbsp] olive oil to the skillet over medium-low heat. Add the bell pepper and onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly softened, 2 to 3 minutes. Dust with the remaining salt, then transfer to the plate with the mushrooms and let cool. The mushrooms, pepper, and onion can be cooked up to 48 hours in advance and stored in an airtight container in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before adding to the pizza.

TO ASSEMBLE THE PIZZA: If the pizza dough is refrigerated, remove it from the fridge 2 to 3 hours before you plan to bake. Proof the dough on the counter until it’s slightly puffy and room temperature. By the end of proofing, it should feel soft and full of gas. While you wait, set up where you’ll be stretching and building the pizza (see Designing Workflow, page 101) and position a cooling rack, cutting board, and pizza wheel or rocker cutter near the oven. Ready a 9 or 10 in [23 or 25 cm] cake pan half full of white rice flour and set it aside.

An hour before baking, position an oven rack 6 to 8 in [15 to 20 cm] from the top of the oven and set a baking steel or stone on it. Preheat the oven to 550°F [290°C] or as hot as the oven will allow.

Sprinkle a wooden peel with a little white rice flour and set it aside. Slide a dough scraper under the dough round and flip it over into the cake pan of white rice flour. Turn it over two or three times, then transfer it to the peel, handling it gently.

Use your fingertips to indent a ring ¼ in [6 mm] deep all the way around the rim of the dough. Flip the dough over and repeat, pressing an indent around the outer edge. Next, use the pads of your fingers to lightly press down on the inner circle of the dough, going from 12 o’clock at the top to 6 o’clock at the bottom. Flip the dough over and repeat. Return the dough to the original side up. You’ll now use gravity to stretch it into its final shape.

Slide clean, dry hands under the dough and make two fists in the center. Lift your hands and the pizza into the air parallel to your chin. Slowly move your fists in opposite directions to stretch the center of the pizza. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and carefully pull it in opposite directions again. Now arc your hands and let the dough slide down and hang off the back of your knuckles. Guide the dough in a circular motion, keeping it moving over the back of your hands and letting gravity do the final pulling. If the dough is resisting, give it a short rest on the peel and try again.

Lay the dough back on the peel and spoon the tomato sauce onto the middle. Use the back of the spoon to spread the sauce evenly over the dough, stopping at the indented rim. Top the sauce with the mozzarella and scatter the mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, sausage, and pepperoni evenly over the top. Shimmy the peel a few times to make sure the pizza moves freely and can easily slide off the peel. If the dough is stuck, quickly lift it with the dough scraper and toss a little white rice flour underneath.

Open the oven door and slide the pizza onto the steel by holding the peel at a slight angle and sliding it out from under the pizza in one fluid motion. It can help to match the edge of the peel with the far edge of the steel. Avoid shuffling the peel under the pizza.

Close the oven door and bake the pizza for 5 to 6 minutes. Open the door and check on the pizza. Chances are it will need to be rotated. Spin it 180 degrees with a metal peel or use a pair of long metal tongs to adjust the direction. Close the door and bake for an additional 4 to 5 minutes. The pizza is done when the crust is a burnished red, golden in spots, and the bubbles are slightly charred. The cheese should be melted and browned, the sausage cooked, and the pepperoni slightly curled.

Slide the metal peel under the pizza and transfer it to the wire rack. Dust with the salt. Let cool for 5 to 6 minutes, then move the pizza to the cutting board and cut into eight wedges with the pizza wheel or rocker cutter. Serve immediately.

Recipe published with permission from Chronicle Books.