Adventures in at-home pizza making: How to make your own almost-restaurant-quality pies
I have long been a proponent of buying already-made pizza dough from local restaurants and using it to make my own pies at home.
It was more than a decade ago when I learned that Knolla’s sold its dough balls for very little, and it has been my go-to trick for years. No offense to Pillsbury, but pizza crust in a can just won’t do. You’ve got to have a crust made with yeast, and if you don’t have the time or patience to make it yourself, getting dough from a restaurant is your best bet.
For Christmas this year, my husband surprised me with a very fancy Ooni Pizza Oven — an outdoor tabletop appliance that hooks up to a propane gas tank and cooks pizzas as though they were made in a wood-fired oven. Slide one in, and in 60 seconds, the pizza is cooked to perfection at 752 degrees.
My mom was in town visiting this weekend, so I decided it was time to unbox the Ooni.
These ovens are used to create pizzas similar to the ones made at one of my favorite local pizza restaurants — Piatto Neapolitan Pizzeria, which opened in 2016 at 1706 E. Douglas.
I recently told owner Robert McMullin about my new oven, and he informed me that he also sells dough balls. His are $4 apiece and produce a 12-inch pie. If you’ve dined at Piatto, you know the dough there is special. McMullin ferments it for three days, which helps to create its perfect chewy fluffiness.
If I wanted the dough for my Ooni usage though, he warned me, I’d have to pick it up the day before. The dough needed to continue fermenting in my refrigerator overnight, he said, and I had to promise to pull it out several hours before so it could rise further and come to room temperature before I cooked it.
I bought five balls and followed his instructions. I have lots of experience handling raw pizza dough (pizza grilling is another one of my party tricks), so I didn’t have much trouble. But I still carefully followed the instructions in my Ooni user’s manual, pressing the dough ball into a circle with my fingers then holding it by the edges to let gravity pull it until it was just the right thinness.
For toppings, I went to Trader Joe’s and tried to pick up the types of ingredients I’d seen McMullin use at Piatto. I grabbed a couple of balls of whole Mozzarella cheese, some prosciutto, some gourmet pepperoni, a bag of baby arugula and a container that held two balls of burrata — a fancy mozzarella that’s soft and curd-filled when sliced into.
I used the first dough ball to make an appetizer, and following my Ooni-oven-owning friend Natasha’s advice, I bruised it with olive oil then topped it with kosher salt and an herb blend from my cabinet. It was marvelous and would have been even better if I’d prepared a tomato dipping sauce to go with it.
Next up was a pepperoni pizza, which I made for my husband, Travis, and stepdaughter, Helen, who prefer a more straightforward pizza. A jarred pizza sauce from Trader Joe’s served as my base (sorry, Robert, I’ll make homemade next time.) Then, I distributed pepperoni on top and sliced up the mozzarella ball, placing little pieces of it all over the pie like McMullin does in the restaurant. Travis insisted that I also top it with some shredded Mozzarella, and we quickly learned that it should be added after the first 30 seconds of cooking. The oven cooks so hot that adding it at the beginning produces overly browned shredded cheese. Either way, it was amazing.
My favorite concoction was one I made imitating a dish I love from Il Vicino (who also sells raw dough.) This pizza was topped just with sauce and sliced mozzarella, and once it was out of the Ooni, I placed a burrata ball in the center then surrounded it with prosciutto and arugula. I doused the whole thing in olive oil and balsamic vinegar and was amazed by the results.
My teen daughter, Alexis, says that next time, I should buy some Nutella and try to recreate the dessert on Piatto’s menu, which features that delicious dough baked with Nutella inside.
The next night, though I was out of Piatto dough, I wanted to demonstrate the Ooni for one of my daughter’s friends. So I used a dough ball from Aldi, who has started over the last several months selling them frozen for $1 apiece. Though the dough didn’t have the depth of flavor and perfect texture that Piatto’s has, it worked fine and would do in a pinch.
Ooni ovens aren’t cheap but are worth a splurge if you love making pizza at home. You can buy them online or at places like Ace Hardware, All Things BBQ, Williams Sonoma and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Mine was $399 and is a 12-inch gas-powered. But you can spend more and get a 16-inch oven or even get one that burns wood. They must be used outdoors.
Even if you don’t have an Ooni, though, you can use dough balls from local stores and restaurants to make fabulous pizzas in your indoor oven. The trick is cooking on a stone at high heat.
Here’s a list of other places in Wichita where you can get dough balls and start experimenting:
Get your dough balls, Wichita
Let me know if you’ve found them anywhere else locally by emailing me at dneil@wichitaeagle.com
Piatto Neapolitan Pizzeria, 1706 E. Douglas: Owner Robert McMullin will sell balls of his artisan pizza dough for $4 apiece, but you’ll need to pick them up the day before you plan to cook them.
Knolla’s Pizza: Knolla’s will sell dough patties big enough to make one of their large pizzas for $2.17 apiece.
Il Vicino, 4817 E. Douglas, 2132 N. Rock Road: This restaurant will sell an eight-ounce dough ball, which makes a 10-inch pizza, for $5
Picasso’s Pizzeria, 621 W. Douglas: This Delano pizzeria sells balls of its excellent dough for $7 a piece, and the balls are big enough to make several individual pizzas.
Whole Foods, 1423 N. Webb Road: Whole Foods sells raw dough balls in the refrigerated section for $2.99 apiece.
Trader Joe’s, 1800 N. Rock Road: You can find fresh pizza dough with the specialty meats and cheeses at Trader Joe’s, and they cost about $2 a round.
Aldi: Wichita Aldi stores recently started selling decent dough balls for $1 apiece. They’re right inside the front door in the refrigerated sections in most stores.
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 12:39 PM.
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