Pizza Dough

I have recently started making pizza dough by hand at the restaurant. It takes two batches on the week-end, and that's alot of elbow grease. Due to the batch size, and heavy duty mixer usually implemented to do this type of task it never occured that I might share this recipie. After a few weeks going it the old school way, I'm realizing that everyone should give it a try. This recipie is directly scaled down from my 12 pound batch size, so if things are loose don't hold back in tossing in more flour.

6 cups AP Flour

2 cups warm Water

1/2 oz Yeast

1/2 oz Honey

1 tblsp Salt

1 tblsp EVOO

Disolve honey in warm water then add yeast, letting this mixture rest for 10 minutes. Measure out the rest of the ingrediants into a bowl and incorperate the water mixture. Using your hands mix this mass untill a fluid ball forms, then turn this dough out onto a table. Kneed the dough for about 10 minutes, I usually measure this by 3 songs on the radio. When you first start to kneed the dough will break and pull apart, after some time the dough will streach, and pull back on itself, this is what we want. Take the kneeded dough and place it in a oiled bowl and top this with a cloth soaked with warm water. The dough will grow, and when it is about doubled in size it is ready to portion. For a thin crust divide the dough into 6 pieces, for a thicker crust try only 4 portions. Take each divided piece, and using your hand as a cage, roll the dough ball around on the table top where the dough becomes tight, and uniformly round. At this point let the dough rest under a wet towl for another 10 minutes. At that point we can roll it out flat, top it with cheese and call it a pizza.