A couple of weeks ago I saw a YouTube video by America’s Test Kitchen about homemade pizza made from start to finish in one hour. My normal pizza recipe is an overnight dough, so I was intrigued to see what this pizza would be like!
In order to give the dough more flavour to compete with a dough that rested overnight, they added two things: beer and vinegar. They also used a mix of bread flour, which has high protein content and semolina flour, which has a lower protein content, which would make it easier to roll stretch out without much resting time. Best of all, this dough is no-knead! It only requires 60 seconds of mixing in the food processor along with a 10 minute resting time, which strengthens the gluten.
Trying out the recipe
I tried this recipe three times before posting it. In the video they recommend a cook time that is much longer than I like to cook my pizza (longer cooking make for drier pizza), so the first time I cooked it and then broiled it, as I would normally do with my regular pizza recipe. Unfortunately this dough did not take to this method and got much too dark. The second time, I did just a short cook at a higher temperature, with no broiling and the result was much better. But, the pizza still didn’t have a much of an oven rise as I would usually get. I wondered if it was the yeast I was using. They used a quick rise yeast, whereas I prefer to use a traditional, slower rise yeast.
I decided to try one more time, this time with using a quick rise yeast, like they did. Somehow, this was the worst one! The dough barely rose even though I did it exactly as they did and ended up cracker-like when cooked, rather than crisp on the outside and soft in the middle, how I like it!
The Verdict
I definitely prefer my original recipe. BUT if I was deciding to make pizza last minute and hadn’t planned ahead to start the day before, I would make this recipe. It’s definitely better than frozen pizza and takes very little work to make.
One Hour No-Knead Homemade Pizza
This tasty no-knead homemade pizza and no-cook sauce recipe can be made in one hour from start to finish! There will be extra sauce, which will keep in the fridge for one week to make a second batch of pizza! This recipe makes two 12-inch pizzas. Recipe Credit: America’s Test Kitchen.
Ingredients
-
For the Dough
- For the Sauce
- For assembly
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 550 F with a pizza stone set on the top rack.
- In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together water, sugar and yeast. Let stand 5 minutes to activate the yeast, then whisk in beer, vinegar and olive oil.
- In the bowl of a food processor combine flours.
- With food processor running, slowly pour in yeast mixture until combine, about 20 seconds. Let sit for 10 minutes.
- Pour salt over dough and process for 60 seconds.
- Turn dough out onto counter and divide in two (a wet bench scraper helps to do this).
- Spray a 12-inch circle of cooking spray on one square of parchment paper and place one piece of dough in the centre. Spray the top of the dough lightly with cooking spray. Using your fingers and a rolling pin, gently push and stretch to a 11 1/2 inch circle. Cover with second square of parchment paper. Repeat with second piece of dough. Let rounds rest in the parchment paper for 30-40 minutes until dough starts to puff slightly and look bubbly.
- Meanwhile, make your sauce. Combine sauce ingredients in a blender and blend to combine.
- Turn oven to broil. Working with one pizza at a time, move pizza to a round pizza pan. Spread with 1/2 cup sauce over pizza, leaving a 1/2 inch border. then sprinkle 1/2 cup Parmesan, 3/4 cup mozzarella and finally top with desired toppings. Trim parchment paper so that no extra paper is sticking out from pizza.
- Turn oven back to bake at 500F and slide pizza on parchment onto the pizza stone. Bake for 5-6 minutes until crust starts to brown and cheese bubbles. Remove from oven and drizzle with one tsp of olive oil and sprinkle with fresh chopped basil, if desired. Repeat with remaining pizza.
