To all the pizza enthusiasts out there — this is an absolute game-changer

I’ve spent years trying to master the art of making pizza dough. Now, finally, I’ve discovered a game-changing technique | WATCH

Delicious: it all starts with the dough

A poor workman blames his tools; I’ve been doing it for decades. But what if he can’t anymore? What if his tools are excellent and it’s the workmanship at issue?

I’ve been road testing the new (to Australia) Gozney Dome, an outdoors, dual-fuel oven that is, first and foremost, a brilliant pizza cooker. It cooks a lot of other stuff but I’m prepared to speculate your average Australian will call it a “pizza oven”. You can run it on gas alone, or wood alone – or both, if you want to achieve internal temperatures that could bisque fire a bit of pottery. It represents, in short, the end of my pizza blame-shifting. No excuses left: it’s now down to dough and technique.

On the latter, there is little room for discussion: you watch an expert stretch and shape the dough and hope that one day you can do something similar. But the former? The mother of all rabbit holes.

There are more dough recipes and methods than Neapolitans in Naples. How, you wonder, can there be so many variations on the seemingly straightforward combination of flour, water, yeast and salt? So it was back to YouTube school; this flash bit of kit, I figured, deserved my best shot. And this is how I discovered the pre-ferment, or “poolish”. La pouliche for French readers. Or biga, should you be feeling Italian. And biga is definitely better. To the many, many pizza enthusiasts out there wanting to up their game, this is an absolute game-changer in terms of flavour, texture and elasticity of your dough.

I’ve hitherto been a same-day, one-process bloke: mix it, let it ferment, use it. Fine, but… not really. Not according to the hundreds of guys on YouTube (I’m looking at you specifically Vito Iacopelli, show-pony of the Italian-American pizzaioli) who produce pizza with the characteristics we’re all after: puffed, crisp and air-pocketed rims; light and easily digested bases; tanned bottoms and almost – but not – charred tops. Pizza that makes you salivate on the keyboard.

So here’s the bottom line: start your dough with a poolish/pouliche/biga on day one, a simple mixture of yeast dissolved in honey-sweetened water and an equal amount of flour. (Major recipe variables: yeast quantities and flour types). Next day, that poolish, which has bloomed (another important variable is refrigeration overnight, or not) becomes the basis for your dough when you mix it with more water, then flour, salt and a touch of olive oil. There’s machine and hand kneading/stretching involved, of course.

This must again be allowed to do its thing overnight before coming out of the fridge, rising to room temperature before shaping and being allowed to gently expand again before making the pizza. It’s a faff but, to be honest, it really is the end of the phrase “pizza tonight?” Check out Vito Iacopelli on YouTube. He’s great.