Jon was over the other night and we made pizza with artichoke hearts, asparagus, and this spicy red pepper sauce I got from a Turkish shop.

The dough is as follows, from “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”:

You need to start around noon. Not because there’s 6 hours of work to do, but because you’ll need to give the dough 3-4 hours to relax in the fridge, at minimum.

For six 6-oz crusts, you’ll need a standing mixer, a scale to weigh everything (“real bakers don’t use measuring cups”— a scale is more accurate), and preferably a pizza stone:

20.25 oz flour (bread flour, preferably cold)
0.5 oz salt
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil (optional)
14 oz ice cold water (40° F)

Mix everything together in the mixer bowl. Mix on medium for 5-7 mins with the dough hook. The dough should stick to the bottom of the mixer bowl, but not the sides. If it’s too sticky, add flour; if it’s too dry and doesn’t stick to anything, add water. Easy does it.

Don’t go way over 7 minutes, because you don’t want to raise the temp too much.

Scrape the dough out of the mixer bowl and onto a floured counter. Flour the top of the dough and your hands, and divide the dough into 6 pieces of equal size. Now you can freeze them by putting them into airtight bags (make sure they’re coated in olive oil so they come out easily), or put them in the fridge on a sheet pan (cover the pan with plastic wrap, or put it in a bag, so the dough doesn’t form a skin).

2 hours before they go in the oven, what as many as you need out of the fridge (the rest will keep up to 3 days). Put them onto a floured counter. Press them out into disks of 5 inches in diameter, cover them with plastic wrap (oh, and oil to keep it from sticking), and just let them sit. You will shape the pizza at the very end, right before it goes into the oven.

45 minutes ahead, crank your oven to the highest temperature possible. Put the rack on the lowest position, with pizza stone on top if you have one.

When you’re ready to bake, shape the dough on a peel or on the back of a sheet pan, covered with a little cornmeal to keep things moving smoothly. The shaping is something I still haven’t fully worked out, but you just have to do it anyway. You can push it out, or try picking it up and flinging it around like Mario. Have fun, but watch out because it will tear pretty easily; don’t make your pizza super thin. Leave a bit of thickness around the edges if you want a nice crust.

Now slide the pizza into the oven. This is the tricky part. Hopefully your cornmeal will make it easy to slide the pizza around, so you can just slip it in. The pizza is done when the cheese is melted and the crust is golden—about 5-8 minutes (but check it sooner!).

On top, add whatever you want. You can get pizza sauce in a can, and then just add all kinds of cheese and good stuff. I know you’ll use your imagination. One of my favorite pizzas at Emma’s has roasted potatoes, cranberries, cilantro, and smoked bacon. I’ve noticed that toppings are almost always better if you cook them in advance: slowly sautee or roast them, then add them to your pizza dough. Emma’s seems to use roasted tomatoes generously.

Baking the final pizza is mostly about cooking the crust and heating up the ingredients so the cheese melts.