Pat's Kitchen Journal: Beer Battered Pizza dough (Dan Lepard)

I have made pizza many times for the family, this is the first time I've used beer for the batter . Quite an interesting attempt.

I love beer battered fish, chips and now the pizza :)

According to Dan, using beer is another straightforward way to add malt to it. And, if replacing beer with water, think about adding 1 tablespoon malt extract or brown sugar to help the crust colour quickly.
Also said, Italian "00" flour makes a softer dough than the same weight of strong white flour, so if using the latter one would have to add a little more liquid.

Here are the main ingredients:

stout beer

"00" flour

Recipe: Dan Lepard ( The Guardian)
Ingredients
( makes 5 x 200g balls)

200ml warm water
175ml beer, room temperature
7g ( 1 satchet) fast-action yeast
50ml olive oil
600g Italian "00" flour, or strong white flour
2 tsp salt
Tomato sauce
Your choice of toppings

Method

1. Pour water and beer into a large, mixing bowl, whisk in yeast. Add oil, flour, salt and mix to a dough. For extra soft dough, take beer to 200ml ( even more with strong flour). This will make the pizza trickier to shape though, but it gives a lighter and crispier crust.

2. Leave dough for 10 minutes. Knead for 10 seconds on an oiled worktop, rest when it starts to stick. Return dough to the bowl, cover and leave for 90 minutes in a cool room. ( To store some for later, cover in a bowl or ziplock bag for a few days in the fridge or cut into portions and freeze on a tray lined with baking paper).
Thaw or bring to room temperature before using.

3. Now, stretch and fold the dough to make the finished crumb even lighter. This will further increase the size of the air bubbles in your dough. Oil the worktop once more, dimple the dough out into a rectangle, pull one side of the dough out and fold it back in upon itself. Do the same with the other side, then rotate the dough through 90 degrees and repeat the dimple, stretch and fold steps once more. Return dough to the bowl to rest for 30 minutes.

4. Divide dough into five 200g pieces. Dust flour over your hands and the top of the dough, shape each piece on the worktop so the outer surface becomes taut and the dough forms a ball. Place these on floured tray, cover with a cloth and leave at least 30 minutes. This allows the dough to relax, making it easier to shape.

5. Heat oven to 240C/220C fan / 465F / gas mark 9 with a baking stone inside. Or, line a baking tray with a nonstick paper or dust with flour. Flour a piece of dough, your hands and the worktop then dimple the dough out into a circle. Get your knuckles underneath it and stretch the dough out to a width of about 20cm.

6. Stretch the dough out on it ( or on the tray) again, to 30cm across, dimple the edges with your fingertips, leaving a 1cm border. Quickly spread tomato sauce up the edges and fill toppings. Bake for about 10 minutes.