It is the first Sunday of February. And it is SuperBowl Sunday too. Unfortunately, there is no SuperBowl party this year because of some virus. Terri and Zach went down to visit family in North Carolina, Ben is working, so I’m home alone. Pizza Hut is heavily advertising and trying to get my attention by showcasing a Pac-Man cocktail table in the commercial. I’m going to make my own pizza for the SuperBowl instead. I started at 5pm planning to sit down to eat at the 6:30 kickoff time.

I wanted to try the Detroit-style pizza again. Since the dough was so sticky last time, I adjusted the recipe to add more flour. Last time I weighed it out to be 400 g of flour and 340 g of water for two dough balls. I halved it this time for a single dough ball. That is 200 g of flour and 170 g of water which is an 85% ratio of water to flour. I calculated for it for 80% instead. That is a flour addition of 12.5 g and I rounded that up to 15 g. For halving the packet of yeast, I simply dumped out the full packet into a bowl and then eyeballed half of it.

I combined all the ingredients and started up the stand mixer. The dough was still way too sticky:

The dough was liquid enough that it could pool at the bottom of the bowl while the stand mixer was running. I added a spoonful of flour at a time until there was no longer a pool. It came out with a better consistency than last time. Still a bit gooey but it didn’t slide off the dough hook.

I was able to knead it a bit, form it into a ball, and walk away with a clean hand. I oiled up a bowl, added the dough ball, and covered it while I went to prep the toppings.

I still had some colby jack left. I cubed that up but shredded the mozzarella this time. I opened a small can of black olives and drained them. I also sliced up some onions. I placed the cheese and toppings into bowls and put them in the fridge.

At 6pm, the dough was looking ready and had doubled in size:

The dough stretched out nicely in the pan and it had a good spongy feel. It pulled away just a little at the corners so I let it sit for another five minutes and then finished it up.

I didn’t feel like making pizza sauce today so I cracked open a bottle of Classico. Instead of sauce stripes, I put down some “random dollops” as the Buddy’s recipe indicates. I then put on the toppings and it looked like this before baking:

I put it on the stove top again but I think I let get a little to hot. It was bubbling quite vigorously at the edges and I pulled it off after four minutes. It then went into the 550°F oven for ten minutes and it came out looking like this:

Once again it came out of the pan with ease and the side crust had a really nice looking char:

The pizza was cut, plated, and the beer was poured with ten minutes to spare.

The pizza really hit the spot. I’m not sure if it was because it was really good or if that was because I ate a salad for lunch. The underbelly had a nice crisp to it and the dough was cooked all the way through. It still had a pleasant spongy-ness to it. I’m going to make this again for Niles when he comes over next. I want to see how he feels about it.

Today I did out pizza the Hut. So can you.