How to make the best pizza dough? What are the secrets of Italian-style pizza? Which ingredients should we use when making pizza? Can you refrigerate pizza dough? Anemon Hotel Executive Chef Eren İncebacak answered the questions.

As someone who studied in Italy, what is the place of pizza there, and at what time of the day is pizza eaten?

Italy is the first country that comes to mind when it comes to pizza, but when you ask Italians this question, they always say that pizza is Neapolitan. The reason is that Naples is very good at pastry. Naples has San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. If you ask when to eat pizza, according to Italians, it can be eaten at any time of the day, but if you ask me, I prefer to eat pizza during a nice dinner.

How do you recognize a good pizza? What are the criteria for labeling a pizza as good?

First of all, the criteria for a good pizza are good-quality flour, aged sourdough, water with a basic pH, salt, olive oil, and good fermentation. After cooking a pizza prepared with these criteria, we begin to understand whether it is good or bad. If there are bubbles or small dots on the dough when the pizza is served after baking, it means that it is well fermented and well baked.

What should we pay attention to when choosing ingredients when making pizza?

• The first and most important ingredient we should pay attention to when making pizza is flour. When buying flour, first of all, we need to look at the gluten value or sugar value behind it and catch a value between 14 and 16. This will allow the yeast, the bacteria we add to the flour, to eat the sugar faster, break the protein chain, and ferment the dough.
• The second most important aspect of pizza is tomato sauce and cheese. Tomatoes should be harvested, used in season, or canned. The first thing we should pay attention to in tomatoes is the acidity, the type, and the place where they grow. If you ask why, not every tomato can be used as pizza sauce. That's why Naples is very lucky that they use San Marzano tomatoes. The San Marzano tomato is a thin-skinned, juicy, low-acid, and pulpy tomato. In Turkey, an example of this would be Çanakkale pear tomato.
• The cheese we use as our second ingredient is mozzarella in water, or buffalo mozzarella throughout Italy. What we need to pay attention to is the milk used in cheese-making. The fat and protein content of the milk is very important; if it has a low fat and protein content, we can see mozzarella made with starch or any binders.
• The third-most important ingredient is yeast. The yeast you use in your pizza should not disturb your stomach or digestion. That's why aged sourdough or the fresh yeast you use comes into play here.

What are the types of pizza dough?

White flour dough, which is a classic pizza dough, is the most commonly used, but it is possible to make pizza dough with alternative types of flour. For example, there are options such as whole wheat dough, gluten-free doughs (chestnut flour, corn flour, chickpea flour, lentil flour, etc.), yellow flour dough called alta muro, and doughs made from whole grain flour.

How to preserve pizza dough?

If we do not want to use our dough immediately after kneading it, place it in a large and deep tray in 260-gram portions with space between them. Cover the tray with cling film so that it does not get air from anywhere. The reason for this is that our dough shouldn't dry out, and the gas released during the fermentation process should stay inside. At the same time, this method does not dry the dough and prevents the dough from cracking.

Is thick pizza dough better or not?

I don't think it makes much difference if the pizza dough is thick or thin, but a traditional pizza is one with a thick crust, like in Naples, with lots of sauce, lots of cheese, olive oil, and very well fermented. Nowadays, there are so many styles of pizza. For example, American or Italian-style pizza. You choose the pizza that suits your taste.

How Many Calories is Pizza Dough?

• A 100-gram pizza dough prepared at home with no toppings is 295 calories on average.
• A slice of pizza prepared with basic ingredients is about 265 calories.
• To reduce the calorie count, you can choose boiled vegetables instead of delicatessen products.