Pizza tips

I just emailed a friend some tips for making good pizza crust. Here's what I sent: I've had lots of pizza dough failures and here are the things I've done that may have contributed to success: 
1.  preheat the oven to your highest temp (not broil obviously) for at least 1/2 hour  

2. I roll the dough out on my counters (which are granite). I don't know what your counters are, but the idea is to roll them somewhere that the dough kind of sticks (not like sticky sticks) but so that the dough stays spread out for a while. Sometimes I have to put a little bit of flour so it isn't too sticky but if you put too much flour it just springs back on itself (what sometimes works is to put flour kind of in the center of where you are rolling and when you've got it rolled out pretty thin, pull each edge over to the counter where there isn't any flour so it sticks spread out thinner--hope that makes sense).

3. Roll it out at least 15 minutes before you are going to put it on your cookie sheet (this is especially important with Trader Joes dough which seems to be way over elastic).  Let the dough sit on the counter in that stretched position while the oven preheats.  I roll it out as thin as I can at this point.  

4. Put the dough on a cookie sheet when the oven is preheated and pre cook the crust for about 7-8 minutes so that it isn't doughy but isn't really done.  Remove and either put on your toppings and put back in on your baking stone or cool (at this point, you can wrap it in plastic and keep overnight). If you do put it right back in on the baking stone, the stone needs to be preheated.  

What I did was pre-cook the crusts (I doubled the dough and made two crusts) the day before, and then wrapped them in plastic.  The next day, I preheated the pizza stones in the oven at 500 for 1/2 hour, topped my pizzas and gently put on the preheated pizza stones for about 6 minutes.  I'm guessing you can freeze the prebaked crusts too but I haven't done it yet.   
  
Dough Recipe
The dough recipe is from Williams and Sonoma Italy cookbook   In small bowl, sprinkle 1 1/4t yeast over 1/2 cup warm water and let stand until creamy, about 5 minutes. STir until dissolved.   In a large bowl, stir together 1 1/2 cups flour and 1t salt. Add the yeast mixture and stir until a soft dough forms (I do this in my  mixer with the dough hook).  I mix with the dough hook for about 8 minutes.  The recipe says to stir until a soft dough forms (about two minutes). Knead on a lightly floured surface about 10 minutes (I don't do this when I use the mixer).   Place the dough in a floured bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft free place until doubled in bulk about 2 hours.   Punch down the dough and knead briefly on a floured work surface. leave the ball on the surface, invert a bowl over it and let stand for another hour.   Now roll out as I stated above.  

HInts for the dough--the dough consistency in the mixer when the kneading is over should be such that you can touch it and it kind of pulls away with your finger but doesn't stick if that makes sense.  You should have a ball in the mixer but not a firm ball.  Again, I've probably done this 50 times and I'm only now starting to get it right.