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Comment by sosuke | Hacker News Reader

Is there a way to make pizza that wouldn't be considered junk food? Bread, cheese, tomato sauce. I am hoping that the "junk food" of pizza is because of the stuff added for longer shelf lives or added ... something. Frozen pizza should be the same as bread, cheese and tomato sauce. But I'm guessing it isn't the same.

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Look into Vito Iacopelli's recipes on Youtube. The dough consists of flour, water, salt, and some yeast and honey. The sauce consists of canned tomatoes, salt, oil, and basil. That's about four ingredients. The only real hurdle is having an oven that can go hot enough (900+ deg F). My family got an Ooni pizza oven and started making pizzas every other weekend during lockdown. It's pretty great! Works well for tandoori parathas too.

I see two nutritional concerns with "clean pizza". How healthy is finely-milled flour? More importantly, how many vegetables/protein sources can I put on pizza or have alongside pizza? There's no way to get around the opportunity cost of not having more proteins and fibrous vegetables in your diet.

> The only real hurdle is having an oven that can go hot enough (900+ deg F)

While that's necessary for some pizzas, there's plenty you can make with an oven at 500-550F + a pizza stone/steel. And then there's deep dish/sicilian/etc. at 425-450F.

Absolutely, pizza can be healthy. Frozen or delivery pizzas often have added sugar. I make pizza at home and it’s just bread, tomatoes, vegetables, and cheese, which I think would be considered a pretty balanced meal by most people if it was served deconstructed.

You can make pizza from scratch. It's an oily dough (I think it can be done with yeast), with sauce and toppings. Sauce can be mostly canned tomatoes, which doesn't have sugar.

The dough isn’t necessarily oily, that depends on the texture you’re going for. It’s almost always yeasted though.

Absolutely. My go-to thin crust pizza dough is just a high hydration, lean baguette dough that's proofed overnight in the fridge. Just unbleached flour, salt, yeast, and water.

How do you roll your dough out?

I hand stretch it and bake it at 550F on parchment (which stays under the pizza long enough to set the bottom but not so long it lights on fire...). The pros use a peel and corn meal but I'm too lazy for all that... ;)

Because the dough is high hydration and proofs gently overnight, it comes out super relaxed and stretchy, so no roller is needed.

Do you stretch it on a countertop, or do you spin it?

On the countertop with a liberal dusting of flour.

My process is basically as follows: The night before, prepare dough, divide into portions, place in individual ziploc bags with a bit of oil, and place in the fridge to proof overnight.

Next day, a couple of hours prior to baking, remove the dough from the fridge and allow to warm to room temperature.

Place a pizza stone in the oven and crank the thing to 550F to start heating.

When making a pizza, remove the ball of dough from the bag, dust liberally with flour, then place on parchment, stretch to desired size, and top the pizza however you like.

To load the oven, grab the parchment and slide the pizza onto the back of a sheet pan and deliver onto the stone. Bake for 5-7 minutes. At the 2-3 minute mark, open the oven and slide the parchment out from underneath the pizza.

When it's done, I pull the pizza out onto the sheet pan and place on a cooling rack before serving (thereby preventing the bottom from getting soggy).

Done right I get beautiful thin crust pizza with a nice, crisp, spotty brown bottom.

Thank you!

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