Your pizza dough is ready to go when the dough is pushing at the lid! If you’re not ready to bake with it, press it down in its oiled container to knock the gas out and keep refrigerated. When you do want to use it (within the next 1-4 days), remove from the fridge and wait until dough is pushing at the lid of the container before topping and baking.
You’ll want to find the thickest slab of stone, metal, or whatever possible to make good pizza. This can be a pizza stone, cast iron griddle, or food-safe firebrick. Alternatively, you can skip the transfer/peel process below and just oil a baking sheet and spread the dough out on that to make a pan pizza instead.
Put your piece a’ stone on the bottom rack of your oven and preheat to the highest it will go. Hopefully this is at least 500F, but ideally 550F.
Set up your pizza peel (using the term ‘peel’ loosely here--it can be a flat cutting board, the back of a cookie sheet etc.) and dust it lightly with coarse flour like cornmeal, semolina, or wheat bran so that it’s ready to go once you’ve stretched your dough out.
Remove dough from the fridge. Turn out onto a well floured surface, flip over and firmly pat from the center out, leaving a puffy rim about 1/2 inch wide. Keeping the dough floured on both sides, pat from the middle out to the puffy rim to widen your pizza.
***RESIST THE URGE TO TOSS THE DOUGH IN THE AIR LIKE A MANIAC***
Pick up the dough round and lay it across the backs of your hands, letting it hang off the flat surface between your first and second knuckles. It should still be well floured so it doesn’t stick to you! Begin rotating the dough on the backs of your hands, tugging outwards gently with each turn. Don’t let the dough hang too long without moving it, or you risk ripping the dough. It should look like you are trying to steer a car with your wrists.The ideal thickness for your pie is up to you, but we prefer to go thin, and remember to keep that puffy rim!
Gently lay the dough onto your “pizza peel” and spread sauce on the dough, but be careful not to get any sauce on the peel. Now you can use all the beautiful ingredients you got from the farmers market, or whatever’s in your fridge you need to use up (no shame, sometimes the best pizzas are spontaneous!).
Before putting into the oven, give the peel a quick shake to be sure the pizza isn’t sticking anywhere***. If it is, gently lift up the dough and dust some flour under it.
Carefully slide the dough onto the stone. Depending on the temp of your oven, bake for 8-14 minutes (resist the urge to open the oven to check on it too often). When you lift the crust, it shouldn’t flop, but should be a bit stiff. Finish the pizza with a minute or two under the broiler (be careful not to burn!!). Brush excess flour off the stone and let it reabsorb heat for at least 5 minutes before you load the next ‘za. The only way we know how to eat pizza is immediately out of the oven so that you burn off the entire roof of your mouth, but you can find your own way :)
*** If there are rips in the dough, or it is sticking to your peel badly, you can still save the day by pivoting from pizza to calzone. Fold the topped dough in half, and scrape the whole thing onto an oiled sheet tray. Bake for 20-30min.