Ultimate Pizza Dough
A long love affair with homemade pizza
Ahhh pizza. A constant and consistent love in my life. I think it would be my last meal if I could choose it. There’s just something about the simplicity of it, and how it can be so easily tailored to anybody’s taste that makes it an everlasting love affair for me. It’s a winner every time in my house, where we make it every single Saturday – no joke. It’s a bit of a ritual at this point.
Pizza dough might seem intimidating if you’ve never made it from scratch before. Thankfully, I’m here to give you all the tips I’ve learnt over the years to ensure you don’t feel out of your depth. I’ve made homemade pizza for over 10 years now, and in that time, I’ve followed a lot of different recipes. And I’ll be straight with you: all of them pale in comparison to the one I’m sharing with you today. Hardly any ingredients are required, and the best thing about the method is that doing less is more. Essentially, leaving the dough alone to do its own thing and being gentle when you work with it will give you the best results, i.e. drool worthy pizza. See below for details.
So let’s hop straight into the recipe so you can start making your own amazing homemade pizza !
Recipe / serves 4
Ingredients
320ml lukewarm water
1 tsp dry active yeast
1/2 tsp of honey/agave/maple syrup
250g pasta flour
250g strong bread flour, plus a little extra for kneading
1 tsp salt
Olive oil, for proofing
Method
First, prepare your yeast. Add your liquid sweetener of choice to the lukewarm water (see notes) and give it a little stir. Then add the yeast, mix it up and leave for about 10-15 minutes until the yeast is activated. The mixture should be looking foamy with lots of bubbles on the surface. If there's nothing happening, it may be because your water was too hot, and the yeast was killed. No worries if this happens - just start again!
Mix the strong bread flour, pasta flour and salt together, then make a well in the center. Add the yeast mixture, and mix together until you have a shaggy dough.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly-floured surface, and start to knead. If your dough is too crumbly, add a splash of water. If it’s too sticky, add a little more flour to your work surface.
The way I like to knead is to pull the top half of the dough towards me, push it down onto itself, and then turn the dough once clockwise. Repeat this for about 6-8 minutes until you have a well-formed ball of dough, with a knobbly, rough texture. Turn a bowl over to cover it and leave for about 15 minutes.
Remove the bowl, and you should see that the gluten in the dough has relaxed. The knobbly, rough texture should have developed into a smooth-ish texture instead.
Knead your dough again for another couple of minutes. The texture should be smooth and elastic, and when poked, should spring back pretty easily.
To double check whether or not your dough has been kneaded enough, it's best to use the windowpane test. Tear off a small section of dough, and stretch it between your thumbs until it's super thin and allows light to come through it. If the dough has been kneaded enough, it should be able to withstand the stretch without tearing immediately. If not, then it needs to be a kneaded for a few minutes more.
When the dough has passed the windowpane test, shape it into a ball, then leave in a well-oiled bowl and cover with a wet tea towel to proof until doubled in size. This should take about 1-2 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
Once proven, knock the air out of your dough and proceed to divide the mixture into 4 pieces. I tend to weigh them individually to make sure they’re all an equal weight.
On a very lightly floured surface, take a piece of dough, then begin to fold it onto itself on one side. Pinch it in the middle, then turn it upside down - this will form the base of your dough ball.
Using both hands, cup the dough ball and push with the outside of your hands to make sure the base of the dough is as tightly pinched as possible.
To smooth out the base of the dough ball, use one hand to roll it around your countertop to allow it to roll over itself and smooth itself out.
Place on a well-floured tray to proof (again!) and cover with a wet towel. Continue with the other pieces of dough until you have four well shaped pizza dough balls.
Leave for about an hour at room temperature, or for up to 3 days in the fridge. Once the dough has almost doubled in size, and you should be able see small air bubbles, your dough is ready to be shaped. Remember to work carefully with the dough – you want to keep that air trapped!
Place a single dough ball on a well-floured surface, and ensure it's covered in a light layer of flour. Then, start to gently press the middle of the pizza dough with your fingertips, pushing the air out towards the crust.
Once you’ve formed a circlular base, carefully pick up the dough and rotate it on your knuckles, letting gravity do its thing. Once you can see the dough in the middle thinning, place it back down and continue to push and pull until you’re happy with the shape. Just remember to be gentle!
Place the pizza base on a pizza peel, in a cast iron pan or pizza tray and decorate with your favourite toppings. Cook the pizza in your preferred way, then top with basil and enjoy!
Notes
Working with yeast
If you only have instant yeast, there's no need to activate it with the sweetener and water. You can add all the ingredients at once to the bowl and work from there.
The best temperature for water when activating your yeast is barely lukewarm. When you test it with your finger, it should feel just a tad warmer than your overall body temperature, which is about 36.5–37 °C / 97.7–99.5 °F. If the water is too hot, there is a strong likelihood of the yeast being killed, resulting in sad pizza dough.
If your water temperature is perfect, and the yeast still isn't doing anything, it may be out of date and not active anymore. It'd be best to run to the supermarket and pick up a fresh box!
Never work with cold dough.
If you plan on making your pizza dough a few days ahead, always take the dough out of the fridge 1-2 hours before cooking it. If the dough is too cold, it won't be as elastic and could go into shock when placed in the oven to cook. The resulting pizza will just not be as good, so it's always best to let your dough come to room temperature before working with it.
Storage
This pizza dough can be kept in the fridge for up to three days. Always make sure your pizza dough is at room temperature before stretching out and using. Take the pizza dough from the fridge about 1-2 hours before you plan to use it.
This dough is suitable for freezing, and can be kept in the freezer for up to 3 months. Once you've shaped the dough balls, cover them in flour, and place them into individual ziplock bags. The day before you want to make pizza, take the dough out of the freezer, place on a well floured tray and allow to defrost slowly in the fridge. Remove from the fridge about 1-2 hours before you plan to start cooking to allow the dough to come back to room temperature.