Got leftover pizza dough? Here's a secret: It's also bread dough. Use it to make quick, easy bread. And then start making "too much" pizza dough all the time.

​Too much pizza dough. How does that happen? Dumb mistakes, that’s how.
 
I recently found myself with an extra batch of dough. This did happen during my recent bout with COVID, so you can understand how my thinking processes may have been muddled.
 
That said, I fell upon a solution to deal with all that dough, and I’m going to share it with you.

​It will be some of the best, easiest bread you’ve ever had.

All you need is an extra dough ball.
 
I had an extra dough ball. In fact, I had four of them. It was far more than I needed. I was debating what to do with it all. My small freezer is bloated with cold, hard cash crops, and I was thinking that I really didn’t want to squeeze all that dough in there with heritage chickens and gifted meatballs and surplus Cajun Italian sausage from the local butcher.
 
And through the accidental magic of Facebook advertising, that’s when I saw one of Andris Lagsdin’s many, many social media videos.
 
I interviewed Andris about a year ago, since he’s the guy who launched the baking-steel trend commercially. The Cooking Lab (those lovely people who gave us the 32-pound Modernist Pizza, among other cooking epics), had experimented with baking on steel. The Wall Street Journal wrote about it. Then Andris read about it. And since he's a former chef and pizzaiolo for Todd English, and he happens to come from a steel-fabricating family, Andris picked up the steel plate and ran with it.
 
Earlier this week, I saw one of Andris’s videos that said essentially, Have you got extra dough? Stretch it out, pop it onto a hot steel in a 450-degree oven for 15 minutes, and you’ve got bread.
 
It tried it, and guess what: it does exactly as advertised. It becomes bread.
 
I literally turned on the oven, pulled a dough ball out of the fridge, let it warm for the hour of preheating, then pulled the dough into an oblong shape, tossed it straight onto the steel, and let it bake for 15 minutes.

Dough quickly stretched into flats. (It's not sweating. That's olive oil. And it's just the angle that makes the back one seem so small...)

The two loaves baking. The oven door is not as dirty as it looks. Don't judge.  

The two loaves, fully baked and cooled. Notice the extensive blistering. This dough had been cold fermenting for four days. It was mightily tasty.  

Loaf sliced to reveal the crumb (which looks pretty good for a no-effort bread) and romanced with a little food-photo bokeh. (That's "out of focus" for all you civilians.)

​This spare pizza dough turned into some of the best bread I’ve ever made.
 
You can do it, too.
 
I won’t bother writing an actual recipe, because there’s no actual recipe to write. You already have pizza dough. Just follow these steps:

• Preheat baking steel to 450 for an hour

 

• Let dough come to room temp as the oven heats

 

• When ready to bake, stretch the dough into a flat oblong and place it in the steel. (Use parchment paper if you so desire.)

 

• Bake for 15 minutes, rotating loaf at 8 minutes

 

• Remove from oven and allow to cool. (The internal temperature of the bread should be about 190 degrees.)

 
My wife has been doing her best to not fall upon these loaves like a wild animal. That’s how good this bread is.
 
Granted, the loaves are not pretty. (Although, I have been experimenting with shaping them into baguettes.) But they taste great, and in a high-humidity environment, they remain crusty long enough to scarf them down slathered with good Irish butter and wish you’d made more. (But the next day, they will be tough and chewy, and probably destined for the toaster.)
 
If you’re interested in learning more about Andris and his steel, click here. (Yes, that’s an affiliate link. If you buy something from him, Andris owes me money. Whee!) I can highly recommend him and his products. He’s very hands-on. I’ve recommended him to friends, and they’ve been very pleased with not just the product, but the experience. And he has tons of cooking videos, and does live hangouts and online classes.
 
I will now return to my previously scheduled COVID head. (I’m no longer contagious. Just stupid.)
 
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Are you new to making pizza? The Modernist Pizza book weighs over 32 pounds and lists for $425. I paid for it myself and reviewed the entire thing in about 50,000 words. You probably don’t need it. For a somewhat simpler and sillier pizza manual, check out  Free The Pizza: A System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have by clicking here. But if you think you need to know more about Modernist Pizza, click here.