The best Pizza Baking books: crowd reviews

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The age of flour and relative humidity will impact how much liquid is necessary to hydrate dough which is why recipes for breads are more like guidelines than directions. Doughs need to be judged by texture, not by the math. Take a baseline of liquid and add in flour until the dough comes together. Depending on the desired outcome, its then worked by kneading, folding, etc. to reach the correct texture.

Flour hydrates over time so doughs are often left to rest so that the liquid can be fully incorporated and allow the gluten to relax.

Mixing all of the dry ingredients at the outset means things like salt or leavening agents are evenly distributed throughout the product before liquid is introduced.

While I've seen street vendors turn out roti by the hundred thru sheer muscle memory, its not exactly a beginner's dough.

Get yourself a copy of Flour Water Salt Yeast for all of the science behind how breads work.

You don't need a bread machine you have an oven. Bread has 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. The variety of breads you can make by varying the ratios of these ingredients, the length of the ferment, and cook time is staggering.

Highly recoomend: Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza [A Cookbook] https://www.amazon.com/dp/160774273X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_YlgXDbTMY87DP

I love this book! All recipes are hand-mixed and the author gives great, detailed explanations of techniques.

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza [A Cookbook] https://www.amazon.com/dp/160774273X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_0LN.Fb01363KN

Edit: typo

Depends on the bread. The bare minimum ingredients are FWSY. Check out this book if you’re interested. This is what I learned to bake bread from before branching out into enriched doughs (which include eggs, milk, butter, etc.) https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

It looks awesome, not sure why you say it needs work. It looks like the cover of Flour, Water, Yeast, Salt.

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole...

Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

Six day fermentation on the dough

Dough: Roberta’s

Sauce: Basil cream from Pizza Camp

Cheese: Polly-o mozzarella, mozzarella di bufala and parmesan to finish

Topped with proscuitto, finished with Alpeppo + black peppers and drizzle of balsamic (not pictured)

Baked in a Roccbox with preheat on high, dropped down to low to bake.

I use this book, dude has a pizza shop in Portland.

He also has a pizza book

I have starter I use. And just use King Arthurs bread flour. I used to do '00' flour but its difference was marginal. Im not hard core on measuring, I just know the how wet i like my dough.

I just feed my yeast the morning before, then set the dough the night before, and its ready for the night I want it. I usually keep my starter low on the sour flavor and more at Italian-French Levels than the San Francisco levels.

I used to do active yeast with a BIGA/Poolish preferments which are a lot easier.

Both “poolish” and “biga” are different forms of pre-ferments used, rather than pure starter/levain recipes.

Poolish is a mixture of water and flour with a small amount of yeast. Biga is similar but more of a stiff dough.

Lol honestly I’m still learning but that’s what I’ve gathered thus far from the book, Flour Water Salt Yeast

Hahaha. I guess I could have clarified better. This is the book

I read the book Flour Water Salt Yeast and worked through the recipes in it. It teaches you the science of bread making so you can understand how to make your own recipes if you want to.

FWSYis on sale on Amazon still, I just bought the Kindle version for $4 yesterday.

I can't rave about this pizza book enough. By Peter Reinhart, who won a couple James Beard awards for his books about bread making.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399581952/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Highly recommend the class with Peter Reinhart. Awesome guy and prolific baker. The dude has a whole book dedicated to the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Pie-Search-Perfect-Pizza/dp/1580084222

The most fashionable right now in /r/Breadit is FWSY, aka "Flour Water Salt Yeast" by Ken Forkish (http://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X). It covers both pizza dough and traditional french bread, delving into technical details like levain, poolish, prefermenting and so on. I haven't read it myself but I must say I'm impressed by the pictures people post on /r/Breadit from the book's recipes.

Checking the term "FWSY" in Google images will give you an idea: https://www.google.com/search?q=FWSY&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch

Ninja edit: it's not written in french though, sorry...

flour water salt yeast your got it right. It's a great book, but almost more of a textbook.

I've got two on my shelf.

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza

and

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

The second one is probably closer to what you're looking for and covers just about everything cooking related you want. I got my bread ratios out of it and am now using it to fight my way through gravy making.

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza

Goes into the hows and whys of baking bread, and has a lot of good recipes.

There is a book called Flour Water Salt Yeast that is in the same vein. Still exact measurements, but it explains the chemical reactions enough to where you might be able to eyeball it if you understand gluten development.

One of my favourite breadmaking books includes the temperature that the water and even the dough should be at every step of the way to be consistent.

If you don't do this already, I recommend weighing water rather than using a measuring jug, you'll get much more accurate measurements. For yeast, I use a pocket scale (which goes down to 0.01g) because most of my recipes don't fit neatly in with 7g sachets.

His pizza book has my go-to pizza dough recipe. The 72-hour biga recipe really is amazing. I usually make mine in the oven, so it likely would do great in your dialed in Kettle.

if you really want to understand the differences, I suggest reading Water Flour Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. There's a whole poolish chapter, and a good deal of the book is dedicated to explaining pizza dough: https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

You'll see a lot of people on this sub talking about Ken Forkish's Book (FWSY) and in particular the Saturday White Bread with an overnight poolish.

To make that loaf fresh daily, I do everything as written until the last half hour, then plastic wrap and refrigerate one loaf and bake the other! That second loaf will be just as good cooked up a day or two later.

Most focaccia doughs I've tried are fine being cooked up a few days later, just be sure to let any dough sit at room temp for ~1 hour before baking as a general rule.

I've been doing it this way for a few months now so that I have a fresh loaf twice a week (plus bagels or focaccia on the weekends) and I love it - for me it's definitely worth it. If you want fresh loaves more often but only for one person then you could certainly try splitting the FWSY recipe into four loaves instead of two - just lower the dutch oven bake time slightly (this'll be easier if you have a meat thermometer to check the internal temp).

https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=8QF9Z7P4L1BO&keywords=ken+forkish+flour+water+salt+yeast&qid=1647227725&sprefix=Ken+forkish%2Caps%2C317&sr=8-3

From Flour Water Salt Yeast - https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X

Complete success!

I use dough recipes from Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast, most often the "Same Day Straight Pizza Dough" recipe, because I am bad at preparing for things more than a day in advance.

I highly recommend this book even though it only has 2 chapters dedicated to Pizza. The whole book is golden. He has a pizza specific book now, too. That's on my wishlist.

I used to make this all the time in my conventional gas oven at 500F, but this one was fired in a gas-powered Ooni Koda 16 at the low temp setting. You have to add the walnuts afterward if you're doing it a small pizza oven like that , they almost instantly combust and char in the Ooni (found that out the hard way 😄).

There's a reason one of the best-selling bread books is called "Flour, Water, Salt, and Yeast". Those are the only ingredients need to make bread.

Here's some reading on how enzymes in flour provide sugar for fermentation.

I bought the book called Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani. It has a recipe for a Neapolitan style dough without a starter. The book is fantastic has so much information.

The Pizza Bible: The World's Favorite Pizza Styles, from Neapolitan, Deep-Dish, Wood-Fired, Sicilian, Calzones and Focaccia to New York, New Haven, Detroit, and More https://www.amazon.com/dp/1607746050/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_PBVFT97VE2JRK7FYQHDJ

I'd recommend this book, it was a game changer for me. He has pizza dough recipes in there and goes over techniques for hand mixing, incorporating ingredients, stretching, etc. It's incredibly informational.

https://www.amazon.com/Flour-Water-Salt-Yeast-Fundamentals/dp/160774273X/ref=sr\_1\_4?crid=2RVDV2956KHZD&keywords=ken+forkish+pizza+book&qid=1643572598&sprefix=ken+piz%2Caps%2C464&sr=8-4

I don't have a recommendation that the other person didn't give, but also the book Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast has been really helpful for me.