Jim Lahey's No-Knead Pizza Dough

Ever since the NYTimes published Jim Lahey's (owner of Sullivan Street Bakery located in Hell's Kitchen) no-knead bread recipe almost five years ago, there has been a quiet revolution in the dough making world. And then over two years ago, after opening Co. (pronounced Company and located in Chelsea), Lahey shared his recipe for no-knead pizza dough with the good people at TastingTable.com. The beauty of Lahey's no-knead recipes is their ease - time does all the work. For those interested, the bakers at King Arthur Flour have created a high fiber version of Lahey's pizza dough recipe. I won't repeat the recipe here because it isn't mine - just follow any of the links provided above.

Start by combining all the ingredients until just incorporated. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 12-24 hours. The dough in the picture below has rested for 16 hours. There should be a lot of air bubbles and the dough should be quite sticky.

Heavily flour your work surface and the scrape the dough out. Sprinkle the top with flour and turn the dough over on itself a few times. Form a large ball, cover with a well floured kitchen towel and let rest at room temperature for two hours.

This is the result after two hours of resting. Divide the dough in half, form two balls and let proof (covered) for 15 minutes.

The picture below shows the two dough balls after their 15 minute proof. Preheat your oven to 450F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper (or use a pizza stone).

Deflate the dough and form two medium round pizzas by stretching from the middle outward, using your fists - kind of like in the movies. Don't worry about how they look - Lahey himself boasts about how his pizzas are not always round. 

All toppings should be precooked when they go on the pizza dough. The pizzas are only in the oven for 20 minutes, which is unlikely to give most toppings the time they need to cook fully. I decided to make the first pizza with barbeque sauce, left over roasted chicken and Greek peperoncini (inspired by Pizza Luce's Wrangler pizza) and the second with red bell peppers, candy onions and garlic scapes sauteed until caramelized. Both pizzas were topped with a mix of whole-milk mozzarella and parmigiano-regiano. I brushed the veggie pizza with a little olive oil before I put the veggies and cheese on.

Bake the pizzas for 20 minutes at 450F.

The barbeque chicken pizza was under-topped, which lead to the toppings sliding into the middle of the pizza. Lesson learned: do not under top your pizzas. The pepper, onion and scape pizza was perfect. It was the best pizza I have ever had - seriously.

 Bon appetit!