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Master the Craft of Artisan Pizza

Dragan Matijevic

4.5

Based on 322 ratings

Dragan Matijevic

In this comprehensive online course, you get the benefit of BOTH those courses: how to use your wood fired oven to best effect, and how to make your ordinary oven produce extraordinary pizza.

Building up to this, you will learn how to:

read your dough, and master all its stages
make and shape a extensive range of different doughs
concoct delectable sauces
design a balanced flavour profile for topping ingredients
create finishing touches that will really elevate your pizza

Contents and Overview

In this comprehensive online course, you get the benefit of BOTH those courses: how to use your wood fired oven to best effect, and how to make your ordinary oven produce extraordinary pizza.

Building up to this, you will learn how to:

read your dough, and master all its stages
make and shape a extensive range of different doughs
concoct delectable sauces
design a balanced flavour profile for topping ingredients
create finishing touches that will really elevate your pizza

Contents and Overview

Our welcome lecture introduces you to our document, How to Use this Course. In it, you will find suggestions for how to proceed, according to whether you're a complete beginner, an improver, a passionately adventurous cook, an aspiring professional or an entrepreneur considering a micropizzeria business. You can follow the suggestions, or just work your way through every recipe as it comes up.

Following a run-down of the essential pizza-making equipment, we move on to Dough-ology, Saucery and Top-ology, introducing a discussion about the basic ingredients, and the importance of sourcing local, organic produce wherever possible. This is because authentic pizza, like all really good food, has a story to it. It's just wonderful to be able to tell your guests what's special about the tomatoes in the sauce, or the particular olives, or the artisan cheese that's on the pizza. It adds depth to everyone's appreciation of the food.

Moving into our tried and tested Seven Steps Method, you'll have a range of different dough formulas to choose from, each with its own unique flavour and texture. From pure Napoletana dough, through sourdough and heritage dough, right through to gluten free, you'll get to understand all the different characters and of course, how each dough has its affinities with different kinds of topping. Simply pick yourself a formula and start at Step 1.

Learning to read your dough is as important as being able to read the recipe for making it. That means understanding the dough in all its moods and modes, as well as how to shape it into balls, then into pizza. You'll get plenty of practice at reading your dough, and lots of exercises in shaping it too.

In Step 3, you'll move on to making sauces, covering everything from the classic tomato sauces, through white bases to home-made pesto and even onion marmalade. You'll also learn how to make infused garlic and chilli oils and other little finishing touches to add in Step 7, once your pizza is baked.

You'll see how we run our Start and Finish Lines, to keep our toppings organised and our garnishes in order, and how important this is if you're making multiple pizzas.

Throughout the course, you'll find videos packed with tips and insights gleaned from years of professional pizza-making experience.

The course finishes with 15 inspiring pizza recipes from The Artisan Bakery School, each designed to showcase a balanced profile of salty, sweet, sour, bitter, smokey or umami flavours, and in a way that makes your dough a star of the show.

So - if you're hungry to learn, you're in the right place.

Here are a few of our favourite 5 star testimonials from our other courses:

I gave five stars because the genuine enthusiasm of Penny and Dragan is so infectious, and all the various aspects are explained and demonstrated in such an easy to follow manner. I felt drawn in and couldn't wait to get a starter going. I'm looking forward to the time when I have rocked & rolled & chafed and, hopefully, ended up with a lovely smooth ball of dough - like the one that Dragan cradled in his hands so affectionately. Looks a little like play dough for grown-ups. George.E. Morley

Penny and Dragan removed the mystique surrounding sourdough and made it very "do-able." Really love the FAB recipe. Bobby Ollar

…The bonus too is they show the stages of dough development clearly and this was something I struggled to understand before this course. They keep it simple as bread baking should be. I'm really looking forward to more courses. Julia Bilecki

Dragan and Penny. Thank you for putting together such an awesome course. Incredible support, you know what you are talking about. Very insightful course. I really learned a lot, all of the additional advice/tips very helpful and useful. All the best for you. Marcelo Ariatti

The videos are priceless. Aden

Why not check out the promo video and the free lectures for yourself?

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What's inside

Learning objectives

Make seven different kinds of pizza dough, including napoletana, sourdough, heritage and gluten free.
Manage rising, proving and baking schedules.
Shape the dough like a pro.

Make authentic sauces, show-stopping toppings and fabulous finishing touches.
Bake pizza to perfection in a domestic oven, or in a wood fired oven.

Make seven different kinds of pizza dough, including napoletana, sourdough, heritage and gluten free.
Manage rising, proving and baking schedules.
Shape the dough like a pro.
Make authentic sauces, show-stopping toppings and fabulous finishing touches.
Bake pizza to perfection in a domestic oven, or in a wood fired oven.

Syllabus

Introduction

Hello and welcome!

Please Read! Health & Safety Disclaimer.

How to Use This Course

Printable pdf containing all the Dough Formulas for this course:

Napoletana

Dragan's Dough (4 variations)

Sourdough

Heritage Dough (Brown and White)

Focaccia Dough

Fridge Dough

Gluten Free Dough

Authentic pizza Napoletana is made with very specific ingredients: 00 flour, fresh yeast, San Marzano tomatoes, and mozzarella Campana, made from buffalo milk. Naturally, we don't all have access to tomatoes grown near Mount Vesuvius or mozzarella with its own Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), but it is vital that we make the effort to source the freshest, most flavoursome produce available, because the fewer the ingredients, the more attention each will be paid.

Great pizza is about the love and care that goes into making it. You want each properly considered and carefully sourced ingredient to play an identifiable part in a harmonious whole, where the dough, the sauce and the topping are perfectly balanced. Although toppings can be highly sophisticated these days, and are often excessively so, if you build every pizza as if it was going to be only made from dough, cheese and tomato - but the most exceptional dough, cheese and tomato - you will be starting from a very good base.

Make a truly indulgent pizza base using this recipe for focaccia dough, enriched with lashings of luscious olive oil.

Make a masterly gluten free pizza base using all-natural ingredients. Everyone will love it.

Use the white heritage dough as your base for this white pizza made with a creme fraiche sauce, smoked salmon and fresh dill.

Master the Napoletana, the great-grandmother of all true pizzas!

Gamberetti with a difference : fresh prawns and sea scented samphire.

Home-made rocket pesto and fresh griddled asparagus, a stunning combo with your brown heritage dough.

Gorgonzola is now forgiveable, thanks to the healthy dough and the raw radicchio in the Finish Line.

Raise the humble mushroom to magnificence in this classic pizza.

Get your sourdough mojo rolling for this meat feast pizza!

Green and blue pizza. It's a thing.

The charm of simplicity - a pizza with all the freshness of summer.

Stripey veg pizza, with all the flavours of the Mediterranean.

Even if you don't make your own onion marmalade or your own balsamic glaze, this pizza will still be a stunner. Try it!

Subtle flavours, edged with the smokiness of sage - fabulous in the wood fired oven.

Learn to bake in two stages, to get fish without the fishiness, and a gorgeous gremolata finish.

What do you know about your dough?

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Career center

Learners who complete Master the Craft of Artisan Pizza will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

Pizzaiolo

A Pizzaiolo is a highly skilled chef dedicated to crafting exceptional pizzas, often working in specialized pizzerias or authentic Italian restaurants. This course directly prepares you for such a role by delving deep into every aspect of pizza creation. You will gain mastery in making seven distinct types of pizza dough, including Napoletana, sourdough, and gluten-free, learning to read your dough and shape it expertly. The curriculum covers concocting delectable sauces, designing balanced flavor profiles for toppings, and creating exquisite finishing touches. Understanding how to manage rising, proving, and baking schedules, along with professional tips for organizing toppings, is crucial for efficiency in a busy kitchen. This specialized training in artisan techniques, including baking in both domestic and wood-fired ovens, directly aligns with the daily demands of a professional Pizzaiolo, enabling you to produce consistently extraordinary pizza.

See salaries and explore the career path for Pizzaiolo

Restaurant Owner Micro Pizzeria

Becoming a Restaurant Owner Micro Pizzeria is an exciting venture for those passionate about food and entrepreneurship. This course is explicitly designed to support individuals considering a micropizzeria business, providing both the culinary expertise and a foundational understanding of operational excellence. You will learn to prepare an extensive range of pizza doughs, from Napoletana to gluten-free, ensuring a diverse menu offering for your establishment. Mastering authentic sauce preparation, designing balanced flavor profiles, and crafting exquisite finishing touches are essential for creating a unique selling proposition. The course's insights into professional pizza-making experience, including organizing Start and Finish Lines for toppings, offer practical skills vital for efficient kitchen management. This comprehensive training ensures you can consistently deliver extraordinary pizza, a cornerstone for building a successful artisan micropizzeria business and captivating your clientele.

See salaries and explore the career path for Restaurant Owner Micro Pizzeria

Culinary Instructor Pizza Making

A Culinary Instructor Pizza Making role involves sharing the art and science of pizza creation with aspiring chefs and home cooks. This course provides an exceptional foundation for such a career, equipping you with comprehensive knowledge of artisan pizza techniques. You will master making and shaping seven diverse doughs, including complex types like sourdough and heritage dough, understanding their unique characteristics. The detailed curriculum covers concocting delectable sauces, designing balanced flavor profiles for toppings, and creating finishing touches that truly elevate a pizza. Crucially, the course emphasizes reading your dough, a nuanced skill critical for effective teaching, and offers insights gleaned from years of professional experience. As an instructor, you will be able to guide students through the Seven Steps Method and various baking techniques, making this course invaluable for developing the expertise to educate others in the craft of artisan pizza.

See salaries and explore the career path for Culinary Instructor Pizza Making

Entrepreneur Food Truck Owner

An Entrepreneur Food Truck Owner operates a mobile culinary business, often specializing in a particular type of food. This course can be highly beneficial for an Entrepreneur Food Truck Owner focusing on artisan pizza. It provides the essential skills to create a standout product, from mastering seven different kinds of pizza dough to crafting authentic sauces and show-stopping toppings. Learning to bake pizza to perfection in both domestic and wood-fired ovens offers flexibility in equipment choices, crucial for a mobile setup. The professional tips on organizing Start and Finish Lines for toppings are critical for efficient workflow in a compact food truck kitchen, enabling you to produce multiple pizzas quickly and consistently. This comprehensive culinary expertise helps build a strong foundation for a successful food truck that delivers extraordinary, memorable pizza experiences to diverse customers.

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Food Product Developer Artisan Doughs

A Food Product Developer Artisan Doughs specializes in creating new and improved dough products for food manufacturers or bakeries. This role demands a deep scientific and practical understanding of dough, making this course particularly relevant. You will gain extensive knowledge in Doughology, learning to read your dough and master all its stages, from mixing to shaping. The course covers an extensive range of doughs, including Napoletana, sourdough, heritage, and gluten-free, providing insight into their unique flavor and texture profiles. Understanding the affinities each dough has with different kinds of topping is crucial for product development. This deep dive into dough formulas, ingredients, and the intricacies of rising and proving schedules will be instrumental in developing innovative artisan dough products, ensuring quality and consistency in a commercial setting, and understanding scalability for new culinary creations.

See salaries and explore the career path for Food Product Developer Artisan Doughs

Artisan Baker Specializing in Italian Breads

An Artisan Baker Specializing in Italian Breads creates high-quality baked goods, often using traditional methods and natural ingredients. While this course focuses on pizza, the core principles of Doughology are directly transferable and highly beneficial. You will learn to make and shape a diverse range of doughs, including sourdough and heritage dough, foundational elements for many Italian breads like focaccia, which is also explicitly covered. The emphasis on reading your dough, understanding its moods and modes, and mastering rising and proving schedules is critical for any artisan baker. Learning to source local, organic produce and appreciating the story behind ingredients aligns with the philosophy of artisan baking. This deep understanding of various dough formulas and advanced techniques helps build a strong foundation for expanding into other Italian bread specialties, ensuring you can create products with authentic flavors and textures.

See salaries and explore the career path for Artisan Baker Specializing in Italian Breads

Private Chef High End Events

A Private Chef High End Events crafts bespoke culinary experiences for discerning clients, often requiring a diverse skill set and meticulous attention to detail. This course can significantly enhance your offerings by enabling you to create extraordinary artisan pizzas, a sophisticated addition to any high-end menu. You will master the preparation of seven different types of pizza dough, ensuring variety and catering to dietary needs, such as gluten-free. The course teaches you to design balanced flavor profiles for toppings and create fabulous finishing touches, critical for the presentation and exquisite taste demanded at exclusive events. The ability to source local, organic produce and understand the story behind ingredients adds depth to the culinary narrative you can offer. By learning to make show-stopping pizzas consistently, whether in a domestic or wood-fired oven, you elevate your culinary repertoire to provide truly memorable dining experiences for your clients.

See salaries and explore the career path for Private Chef High End Events

Recipe Developer Food Blogger

A Recipe Developer Food Blogger creates engaging culinary content, develops original recipes, and shares their passion for food with a wide audience. This course can be highly beneficial for a Recipe Developer Food Blogger looking to specialize in artisan pizza or Italian cuisine. You will master creating seven different kinds of pizza dough, along with authentic sauces and show-stopping toppings, providing a rich source of content. The course encourages designing balanced flavor profiles, which is excellent for creating unique and appealing recipes. Furthermore, the emphasis on quality ingredients and the story behind them offers compelling narrative opportunities for blog posts and social media. The specific recipes provided by The Artisan Bakery School, showcasing balanced flavors and making the dough a star, serve as excellent inspiration and foundational knowledge for developing your own innovative and popular pizza recipes to share.

See salaries and explore the career path for Recipe Developer Food Blogger

Restaurant Menu Developer

A Restaurant Menu Developer designs and refines culinary offerings to attract customers and optimize profitability. This course can be highly beneficial for specializing in Italian cuisine, particularly artisan pizza. You will learn to develop a diverse range of pizza doughs, sauces, and toppings, crucial for creating innovative and appealing menu items. The course emphasizes designing balanced flavor profiles and creating fabulous finishing touches, which are key to crafting unique and memorable dishes. Understanding various dough affinities with different toppings allows for creative pairings. The 15 inspiring pizza recipes from The Artisan Bakery School provide concrete examples of how to combine elements for a balanced profile of salty, sweet, sour, bitter, smokey or umami flavours, offering a robust framework for developing exciting and commercially viable pizza menus.

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Food Consultant Restaurant Operations

A Food Consultant Restaurant Operations advises businesses on improving kitchen efficiency, menu development, and food quality. This course may be useful by providing a deep understanding of optimized pizza production. You will learn the Seven Steps Method for making pizza, which can inform efficient workflow design. Insights into professional pizza-making experience, including setting up Start and Finish Lines for organized topping management, are directly applicable to streamlining kitchen operations. The course's emphasis on consistent product quality, through mastering dough stages, balanced flavor profiles, and perfect baking, provides a benchmark for operational excellence. Understanding the importance of sourcing quality ingredients, as discussed in Doughology Saucery and Topology, also contributes to advising on supply chain and cost-effective, quality ingredient procurement for a successful restaurant.

See salaries and explore the career path for Food Consultant Restaurant Operations

Catering Chef Special Events

A Catering Chef Special Events plans, prepares, and presents food for various large-scale or intimate gatherings. This course may be useful for expanding your catering menu with an impressive and popular option: artisan pizza. You will learn to make and shape an extensive range of different doughs, including heritage and gluten-free, allowing you to cater to diverse client preferences and dietary needs. The course's focus on concocting delectable sauces, designing balanced flavor profiles for toppings, and creating exquisite finishing touches ensures your pizza offerings will be both delicious and visually appealing. Crucially, the professional tips on organizing Start and Finish Lines for toppings are practical for managing ingredients efficiently when making multiple pizzas for events, helping to maintain quality and streamline service during busy periods.

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Food Quality Assurance Specialist Bakeries

A Food Quality Assurance Specialist Bakeries ensures food products meet safety, quality, and regulatory standards. This course may be useful by providing a foundational understanding of the critical parameters for high-quality dough and pizza production. You will gain detailed insights into Doughology, learning to read your dough and master all its stages, which is essential for identifying quality issues in dough batches. The course emphasizes precise ingredient sourcing, understanding the role of each element in a harmonious whole, which is fundamental to quality control. Knowledge of managing rising, proving, and baking schedules, along with specific dough formulas like Napoletana, sourdough, and gluten-free, provides a technical basis for evaluating product consistency and adherence to recipes. While not a direct QA course, the deep dive into the craft helps build a strong reference for assessing quality in artisan bakery products.

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Food Science Research Assistant Dough Rheology

A Food Science Research Assistant Dough Rheology supports experiments and analyses concerning the flow and deformation of dough. This role typically requires an advanced degree. This course may be useful by providing practical insights that complement theoretical food science knowledge. You will gain an in-depth, hands-on understanding of Doughology, including how to read your dough and master all its stages, from mixing through rising and proving. The course covers an extensive range of doughs, such as Napoletana, sourdough, heritage, and gluten-free, each with unique characteristics and handling requirements. This practical experience with different dough behaviors, coupled with knowledge of various dough formulas and ingredient interactions, helps build a foundational intuition for dough properties that is invaluable when conducting scientific research into rheology and developing experimental protocols.

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Food Photographer specializing in Culinary Arts

A Food Photographer specializes in capturing visually appealing images of food for cookbooks, magazines, or marketing. This course may be helpful for a Food Photographer specializing in Culinary Arts by deeply immersing you in the visual and textural elements of artisan pizza. You will learn about designing balanced flavour profiles for topping ingredients and creating finishing touches that will really elevate your pizza, which are directly tied to aesthetic presentation. The course's focus on show-stopping toppings and making your dough a star of the show provides excellent guidance for styling food to highlight its artisanal qualities. Understanding the various stages of dough, the vibrant colors of fresh sauces, and the perfect bake contributes to a photographer's ability to conceptualize and execute stunning food imagery, authentically representing a chef's craft.

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Local Food Systems Advocate

A Local Food Systems Advocate promotes and supports local, sustainable, and equitable food production and consumption. This course may be useful by highlighting the practical application of advocating for local sourcing within a popular culinary context. The course explicitly introduces a discussion about the importance of sourcing local, organic produce wherever possible. It emphasizes that authentic pizza, like all really good food, has a story to it, and being able to tell guests what's special about the tomatoes, or the particular olives, or the artisan cheese adds depth to everyone's appreciation of the food. This philosophy of connecting food with its origins and producers directly aligns with the goals of a Local Food Systems Advocate, providing a tangible example of how local ingredients enhance quality and appreciation in a highly relatable product like pizza.

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Reading list

We've selected 50 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Master the Craft of Artisan Pizza.

Modernist Pizza

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This multi-volume set offers an incredibly comprehensive and scientific deep dive into pizza making. It covers history, techniques, ingredients, equipment, and includes over 1,000 recipes. While extensive and a significant investment, it's an invaluable reference tool for serious students and professionals seeking to understand the 'why' behind every step. It's more than a cookbook; it's an exhaustive guide commonly referenced by those at the highest levels of the culinary world.

Master the Craft of Artisan Pizza

What's inside

Learning objectives

Syllabus

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Reading list

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