Semolina Pizza Dough

Hello, everyone!  Happy Tuesday!  I adore making pizza at home, who wouldn't?  It's WAY more affordable than ordering pizza in, not that much more effort, and once the dough is made and risen, a lot quicker than waiting for delivery.  How is that not a win-win-win?
Even better, is that when you make your own pizza at home, you know exactly what is going into your meal.  The quality of the dough ingredients, the toppings, the sauce...everything.  And, I mean, common.  Look at that.  That looks like gooey heaven, doesn't it?
I sometimes make my pizza dough with just straight flour, but this time around, I figured I'd use some semolina flour, and I have to say, it makes a huge difference!  The semolina flour really gives the pizza crust a nice chewy texture, that is just lovely in a pizza crust.  Let's get started!

Here's your grocery list for this one:

1 1/4 C warm water (100-115*)*

1 tsp honey

2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast (or one packet of yeast)

1 3/4 C semolina flour

1 1/2 C all purpose flour

3/4 tsp Kosher salt

Olive oil

*As I have mentioned in some of my previous bread dough posts, it may seem like you need to break out a thermometer to get the correct temperature of the water.  You don't really need it; since your body temperature (should be!) 98*, you just want it to be slightly warmer than your body temperature.  I usually just run the water until it feels warm to my finger in the running water.  

So, you have your water warmed and ready for you, put your yeast, honey and warm water into a medium sized mixing bowl; set this aside and let the yeast bloom until it is nice and foamy.  You'll see I had three dollops of honey in my yeast....I just had a 1/3 tsp measuring spoon, so I just dolloped it out.  You do what you gotta do.

While you're waiting on the yeast to bloom, mix together the flours, and salt.  

The yeast mixture probably would have been good here, but I let it go for a few minutes more, and it did not disappoint.  

Once your yeast mixture is ready, slowly add in the flour mixture until a sticky dough forms.  This will come together pretty quickly!

Once the dough just comes together, switch out the paddle attachment with the dough hook, and let this knead for about 4-5 minutes on low speed.  After the kneading is finished, pull the dough out (it will be sticky!!  So go on and have the lid off of your oil!), and put about 1 Tbs of olive oil in the bowl.  Turn the dough over in the oil, so that it is completely coated.  

Cover this with plastic wrap, and let it sit in a warm environment until it has doubled in size, about 1 hour.  If you let it go longer, that's fine, don't worry about that.  

Once your dough has doubled, your semolina dough is ready for baking.  I went an extra step with mine, and here's what I did.  I like to essentially fry my pizza dough, but my husband likes to make his pizzas on our pizza stone, so we end up with two different pizza styles with one dough recipe.
For my pizza, I like to pull out a cast iron skillet, and add about 2-3 Tbs of vegetable oil (olive oil would probably burn).  Cut the dough in half, and roll it out to about a 10" circle, lay the dough into the skillet.  

Now, I like a defined crust on my pizza.  I like the lip of the crust.  So, I give my dough a quick spritz with some nonstick spray, and lay a small saucer onto my dough.  I put it back into the warm environment for another 30 minutes.  The dough will rise again around the saucer, and give it a perfect crust.  Who knew it was that easy?  I did, and now you do!

Peel the saucer out of the dough, lay whatever sauce you want down, put your toppings and cheese on until you have your perfect pizza!  At this point, I also get my oven preheating to 500*, I think that's the hottest that my oven will get, unless it's doing a self-cleaning cycle.  Then it reaches temperatures only seen on the surface of the sun, but that's a story for another day....

I like to do a light layer of sauce, a layer of cheese, some pepperoni, and um....extra cheese, because, why not?

I also like to put about 1/4 C of olive oil into a small bowl, with some garlic powder and Italian seasonings.  I take a pastry brush, and just brush it all around the edges of the crust.  Oh yeah, baby!  I bake my pizza for about 13 minutes at 500*; I like my cheese to be lovely browned and bubbly.  I pull it out of the skillet, and let the pie rest for about 5 minutes before slicing into it.  This is some seriously cheesy gooey goodness.