Authentic Italian Bread/Pizza Dough

Contributor: Victoria Blanchard
Source: Brother Metzger, Schenectady Ward, who learned it from his Italian grandmother

Makes 2 large loaves or two large pizzas

Ingredients
Flour (probably 4-8 cups, I'm really not sure)
2 cups warm water
1 Tbs yeast (regular kind)
1 Tbs salt
A little olive oil

In a large bowl, add 2 cups warm water to 1 Tbs yeast. Begin stirring immediately with a whisk and add in 1 cup of flour till smooth (you should see the yeast start to activate). Stir in another cup of flour before adding the salt. (I don't know if it's true, but I heard salt can kill yeast.) Keep adding flour one cup at a time until it is too hard to stir (after the second cup or so you'll want to switch from a whisk to a wooden spoon).

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface. As you knead for the next 10-15 minutes, keep incorporating enough flour until the dough is no longer sticking to your hands or the counter. When the dough is smooth, wash your hands and the bowl.

Put a little olive oil in the bowl, put the dough back in, and turn in upside down so that the dough has a light coating of olive oil (this keeps it from drying out). Cover with a cloth (you can dampen it slightly if you live in a dry area) and let rise for 1.5 hour or until the dough has doubled in size (apparently you can skip the rise if you're doing pizza dough, but I haven't tried this yet) .

Next, punch down the dough and then dump it onto a floured surface. Using a sharp knife, cut the dough in half (don't pull it in half).

If making bread, gently shape it into two elongated loaves. Let rise another 45 minutes. Then cook at 400 for 50 minutes. If you want, you can make a ball, pinch a hole though the middle, and then twist the loop over a few times to make a pretty twisted loaf.

If making pizza, gently shape into balls and then roll out and put on pans coated with cornmeal (or greased). Add sauce and toppings and cook for 15 minutes at 450. You can cover with foil and refridgerate your pizza before cooking, but I usually don't do it for more than a few hours. If you wait a whole day to cook it, there is a definite decrease in yumminess. Apparently, if you skip the rise, you can cook the dough by itself and then freeze it for later use (I'm going to try this one of these days). But don't let it rise and then cook it without toppings because it will get all puffy in the oven (that was disappointing).

Note: You can double the recipe if you want twice as much, but that's a lot of bread/pizza for a small family, especially since it dries out fairly quickly, even if you freeze it. It's best to consume it all in a day or two unless you're going to make bruschetta with it, in which case if you use enough oil, you'll be fine. Apparently this type of bread differs from many because you want to incorporate as much flour as the dough will accept. Traditionally, women would make the dough right in their flour bins, and the dough would naturally pick up whatever flour it needed as it was stirred around. Also, as you may guess from the ingredient list, this bread is pretty bland, which is fine if you're using it for pizza or bruschetta. Apparently you can add herbs or spices to give it flavor, which I think would be fun, but I haven't experimented with that yet. Also, I was really intimidated about making a rising bread, but this is a great recipe to start with because it's very forgiving. I started making it once a week, and within a month I had the recipe and procedure memorized and felt very comfortable with it. So stick with it!