Making Pizza Dough
See Also: Grilled Sourdough Pizza Recipe (below)
Pizza critics often contend that it’s the quality of the crust that makes the pizza. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to make an excellent pizza crust at home with a simple pizza dough recipe as long as you follow a couple of easy, yet critical, instructions to get that great crust.
They are…
1. Crank up the temperature of your oven to the highest heat it will reach. Most home ovens will not exceed 500 to 550 degrees, but that is plenty sufficient as long as you also…
2. Use a quality baking stone and give it time to reach full heat saturation. By “a quality baking stone”, I mean a thick stone with good heat retention and heat transfer qualities. If yours doesn’t fit this description, any baking stone is better than none. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Many people even find quarry tiles purchased at their local building supply store for a few dollars quite satisfactory.
The rest comes with a little practice. Once you’ve made a few pizzas, you’ll develop a good feel for the dough and for the baking characteristics of your oven and baking stone. I’m reluctant to claim that the pizza I make in my kitchen oven or outdoor grill is as good as or better than the award winning wood fired pizza available in town. So I won’t 
. But it’s close enough that I haven’t felt the usual compulsion to buy theirs in a long time.
If you want everyone at your house to be happy, make one of these crusts, put on your favorite toppings and follow the simple baking instructions. Making exceptionally good pizza is easily within reach. I hope these videos inspire you to give it a try.
The pizza dough I make in this video could hardly have been faster or easier. The “appreciation-to-effort ratio” on this one is excellent. In other words, you’ll chalk up some serious points with your spouse, kids and guests without knocking yourself out.
This recipe makes two 12-14″ thin crust pizzas and calls for:
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose or bread flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
- 3 Tbs. olive oil
- 3/4 cup luke warm water
- Your choice of toppings
Before making this pizza, you may also want to watch the following sourdough pizza video.
Grilled Sourdough Pizza
Given my obsession with sourdough starter, doesn’t it figure that I would include a sourdough pizza crust recipe here as well? You bet! And predictably I think it’s fit for the Gods.
This recipe is more involved and may take a little getting used to because of the addition of the sourdough starter. If you haven’t worked with sourdough before, you’re facing a bit of a learning curve. But if you’re already baking bread with it, then you’ll find this recipe almost as easy as the one above.
This recipe also makes two 12-14″ thin crust pizzas and calls for:
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose or bread flour
- 1 1/2 cups sourdough starter
- 1-3 Tbs water (see video)
- 2 Tbs olive oil
- 3/4 tsp. salt
- Toppings
More elaborate recipes may coax more flavor from the grains and possibly improve on the texture and consistency of the crust. But as with the no knead bread recipes, I think these pizza recipes and methods strike the right balance of time, effort and quality that’s suited to the typical harried lifestyle we tend to live.
Breadtopia reader comment:
The “sour dough workout” shouldn’t be a joke. I found that when “air kneading” I got the same exercise for my arthritic hands as I do with my little ball of soft “clay stuff.” Thanks for a great new recipe. Pizza dough has always been a failure for me, but I love my sour dough and this worked great; both eating and exercising.
Notes:
- If you don’t have a pizza peel, prepare your pizza on the back of a cookie sheet spinkled with corn meal.
- From the comments below, Ed suggests: “Try a little semolina flour in your pizza next time. It makes the crust a bit chewy and gives it a nutty flavor”. Thanks Ed!
- Another great tip from Connie Dove’s comments below: Prepare the crusts on top of upside down cookie sheets that have been lined with parchment (works better than semolina or bread crumbs). Slide paper & pizza into oven/grill and once the pizza has been on the stone for a half minute, the parchment paper slips right out from beneath!
- Scroll down (or click here) to the Feb. 12, 2008 post by Fonseca for some great info on converting this recipe to all whole wheat.
- News Flash (8 Nov, 2009). Thanks to Mike Gallaher for scoring this great looking pizza dough recipe, and to “hipkip” for sharing his pizza sauce recipe just below Mike’s posting. (Clicking links will take you directly to their posts below.)
For a super thin & crispy crust:
Marty (a Breadtopia reader) has developed a method for making a cracker thin pizza crust. So if you like a thin and very crispy crust, give this a try…
Special equipment needed:
- Dough Docker (a fork could be used but the docker really puts a lot of holes in the dough quickly)
- Pizza screen (I use a screen, it has the advantage of being very light weight, and no peel is needed).
- Or a Pizza stone
- Pizza peel, if using a pizza stone.
Instructions:
- Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.
- Roll out your favorite pizza dough, very thin.
- Place dough on pizza screen(or a pizza peel if using a pizza stone).
- Using the dough docker (or forks), pierce the dough, make sure there are a lot of holes! Â This will keep the crust from puffing up.
- When oven is heated up thoroughly, quickly place the dough in oven (or on stone, if using)
- cook for 3 minutes.
- Take crust out of the oven, and flip upside down, and return to oven, cook for 3 minutes more.
- Take crust out of oven, the crust should be light brown and crispy.
- Top with your favorite toppings and return to oven.
- Continue cooking for another 5 to 8 minutes.
The crust will be thin and cracker-like and very crispy!
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I really enjoyed making this dough! I was looking for a new, fun and delicious pizza dough and I found one. It is so tasty and has completely turned me on to sour dough. I want to try all of your recipes now!
Pizza before baking to make a pie, cut into slivers, and so bake
*Click to enlarge
Hi Don.
Super Peel: http://www.breadtopia.com/store/super-peel.html
I am planning on using this recipe tomorrow when I feed my starter. Looking forward to pizza for dinner. I love the pizza peel you used in the video. Where can I find one of those? It looks so easy to use. Even with corn meal I always seem to have a problem transferring to the stone. I would love to have the one you used. Thanks.
I read somewhere that a good way to keep starter alive when not used often is to freeze it. Dehydrating my rye starter was useless. What do you think?
I love your blog and have learned so much! Thank you and all the best.
I’ve made the NK pizza dough/crust many times and it is now a family favourite.
I need to make a large number of pizzas for a party, though, so I want to make the crusts in advance and freeze them to have on hand.
After the second proofing, if I were to roll them out and then place the crusts on layers of waxed paper or parchment do you think I can freeze them.
Then at a later date, thaw them out, put on the toppings and bake them?
Cheers.
Gord
Hi Diana,
Yes, absolutely. Just leave it out. I’ve got some pizza dough proofing this very minute – flour, water, salt, yeast (in this case, sourdough starter). That’s it and I’m sure it will be great.
Hi,
I cannot have butter or oil of any kind. Is it impossible to make a good pizza crust without it?
When baking sweet breads I can substitute applesauce, fruit puree, buttermilk, etc., but I can’t seem to find a way to make a good pizza crust or any crust in general, without oil.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this subject!
Diana
Brian,
Here is the sause I use, actually just made it today along with the dough for pizza tonight. My wife even made fresh mozzerella from scratch:
1 clove garlic minced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 28oz can tomato puree
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp basil
salt/pepper to taste
sautee garlic in oil for a minute, add puree and spices, simmer 30 minutes.
Thanks it and tastes great, enjoy!
Hi Eric, well after going to my local Italian market and asking them about pizza dough, I tried a couple of their suggestions and found it worked great. First here’s the recipe which is a combo of several.
3 cups 00 grind flour. (Italian supermarket)
1/4 cup white wine
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp honey
1 egg
1 1/2 ounces fresh yeast (Italian market)
3/4 cup water
If you can’t get the fresh yeast, you can convert the measurment to dry yeast.
I disolve the yeast in the water first, then assemble the dry ingredients and mix.
Beat the egg slightly and add to the dough mixture. I knead until smooth, about 8-10 minutes. I also learned a quick little trick, turn your oven on for 1 minute and turn off, this
gives you a perfect temp to rise the dough in. After kneading I give the dough ball a coat of olive oil, put it in a bowl and cover with dish cloth, and it takes about an hour to triple in size. Give this one a try, I find the dough is very light, crisp, yet soft. They told me to add the egg, that the yolks allow it to brown up, and the whites make it light and fluffy. When using the 00 grind and the egg, you will find it’s the most supple dough to work with. Enjoy!
Just made the sourdough pizza last night for dinner, so good! I don’t have a stone having had bad luck with them in the past including an incident with dozens of pieces of shrapnel in my oven and a wasted batch of pita bread dough. Instead I rolled it out very thin (half the recipe, about 15″ by 11″ I’d guess) and topped it lightly, a bit like the Crispani that Panera had on the menu a few years back. I topped it with sauce, a little mozzarella, mushrooms, and kalamata olives and baked for 10 minutes. It didn’t have the nice browning on the bottom but it was tender yet crispy and very tasty. One pizza was enough for 2.5 people (the 0.5 being my 4 year old) and the other crust is in the freezer.
My husband and I tried the new pizza recipe, it was very good. We cooked it on the outside Bar-B-Que, we do not have a pizza stone, but we used fire brick, which I use in my oven as well, it works very good, The crust was crusty, the topping and the crust were done at the same time. We enjoyed it very much. We used 6 fire bricks, just line them up and put your pizza on them and it’s just like using a pizza stone. Thanks so much for the good pizza recipe.
Have a great day
Genny
Hi Eric,
The pizza has turned out great! I was wondering if you could recommend a good pizza sauce recipe. I made Hawaiian, and Margarita pizza using this recipe, but it will be better with a good sauce. Any ideas for a recipe for bread sticks?Note I have used this recipe to make a desert pizza with apples, and cinnamon. You can even serve that with a side of homemade royal vanilla ice cream. Also cinnamon pizza with a glaze, all good. Plus that makes a great pastry to go with a nice cappuccino or latte.
Great recipe thanks again.
Hi Ginette,
I’m don’t have any brilliant ideas. If you know that you can tolerate spelt flour, then just substitute it for the white flour. You may want to adjust the amount of water as spelt flour will no doubt have a different moisture absorption property than regular flour. I can’t recall whether it’s higher or lower though. You may also want to increase the amount of yeast some. Maybe to 3/4 – 1 teaspoon to help compensate for the lower gluten of spelt. Fortunately, with pizza dough, even a denser dough can still be very good. I think it shouldn’t be too difficult to arrive at something you really like.
This was extremely easy to make and wonderful. I used a pizza stone, but needed to get a peel. The husband raved about it and that’s what counts!
I was wondering if you had a suggestion or recipe to make pizza dough with Spelt flour as I have a sensitivity to wheat?
Thanks!
I used your sourdough pizza crust recipe with King Arthur white whole wheat flour (and a heaping tablespoon of vital wheat gluten) to make one of the best pizzas I’ve ever tasted! I made up the dough and let it sit in the refrigerator for a day, then left it on the counter for an hour or so before shaping it and baking it at 450 F for 12 minutes. The dough didn’t have that nice stretch that white flour gives it, but it did well for a 100% whole wheat recipe. I wish it had been crunchier on the bottom, but that’s probably because I didn’t use a pizza stone. Next time I’ll find my stone and turn the heat up a bit more. Thank you for your great pages.
Hi Sergio,
The fabric is a cotton canvas material.
Hi Eric and all,
I fell in love with that peel, that seems store-bought, but since I’m a home-made guy, can you tell me if that cloth is fabric or vinyl please? Thanks.
Other than that, I’m gonna try your recipe as soon as my starter is ready, but I’ll make a yeast one, since I just realized the difference between that and sourdough, and before I couldn’t understand how my grandma would use a bit of dough of the day before to make bread and yet it wasn’t sour. I’m writing all this so it may come out in some internet search for anyone else who couldn’t care less for a sour taste in something hearty and sweet like bread, but would like to make bread the old way.
Sergio
Thanks!
I really liked this recipe. I tried other recipes for softer doughs that were just too hard to shape. I feel like I am constantly fighting the dough for dominance, and the dough always wins.
However, this dough was very easy to shape and get a thin crust and it was delicious, too. A nice, polite dough! ;o)
My family complained that it was a little too “crispy” for their tastes, so I might turn the oven down a bit next time. But I enjoyed pizza making for the first time.
Hello Bread lovers and friends
I know when i reach a glitch i have a great resource to ask for advice here at Breadtopia. I am making pizza for an event and have experimented with different crusts. I think a medium crust is best to use because it may have to be reheated……..I am experimenting with thin crusts recipes..yours and Peter Reinholt’s….which are excellent and like the taste very much. My question is does the thin napolitan style recipe translate nicely into a thicker crust by doubling the recipe and rolling it out thicker or do I end up with a mortar board with sauce and cheese? Would it be better to make a bread recipe for the pizza crust if I want it a bit thicker, chewier yet still crusty. Help..I have only a few days to make a decision!
PS…I attached a pix of one of the breads I made in the La Cloche …I think it’s the whole grain sour dough…..
*Click to enlarge
Hi Yvonne.
I’m not sure about the grams for a cup of flour and how it varies for the type of flour. But I do know that you just add the SAF instant yeast to your dry ingredients and then combine with the water and other ingredients as indicated in the recipe. No activation necessary.
Hi Eric,
Just a few comments and 2 rather pressing questions. First I absolutely love your website. I have recently returned to baking my own bread and I can’t tell you how much I missed making dough and kneading it by hand. I feel somehow like I’ve come home. But so much has changed since I was away.
I wanted to thank you for the wonderful videos as well! They are simply inspiring. You know what they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” If that’s the case, then video is priceless. LOL And I love your online shop. I learned about the dough whisk on your video. So now, I can’t wait to use it because I bought it from your online shop.
I was so impressed by your website, I passed it along to my friends in Québec and France and the UK, as they all share the same passion for baking. Their challenge is finding some of the ingredients and of course unit conversions. I have two questions on behalf of myself & my friends. And if anyone has other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
1) How much does 1 cup of flour weigh in grams? And, what’s the weight difference with respect to the type of flour: durham vs bread flour for example?
2) I bought the saf-instant yeast recommended here. (I have yet to try it) But, do I need to proof this yeast or add hot-ish water (130F) to the dry ingredient mixture in order to activate this yeast? Strangely enough there are NO directions on the yeast package, which I find a little odd.
Thanks again, I love this site and all the great ideas shared here.
BreadGirl aka: Yvonne
Hi, everyone!
Just wanted to thank you all for your useful comments and let you know how enlightening the videos are. I’m from Barcelona, and it’s very difficult to get proper equipment (and ingredients!), so reading this page feels like arriving at an oasis!
In case Javi is still reading, he should be able to find fresh yeast in the refrigerated section of most supermarkets!
Thank you all for your tips, and enjoy the baking!
Angels
I have been making mine with the SAF Active Dry. Now that I have gotten the Instant from Eric, I will give that a try.
Bob
SAF yeast. I made this pizza for the first time using SAF yeast instead of the supermarket yeast, Fleishmans… I noticed a really BIG difference. The crust came out soooooo much better with SAF. Thin, light and tasty. Thanks Breadtopia! I love you guys!
I’ve made this pizza dough recipe about 4 times. I love it just as much as the Whole Grain Banana Bread. Thank you.
Hi Eric,
It’s been about a year since I embarked on the journey in which I’ve never looked back – baking on a stone! Scones, biscuits, breads (I happened across the no-knead recipe while I was sick at home with ‘mono’ for a whole month — so weak I could barely stand, but burning with the desire to try this recipe [the pictures looked so good!], I cranked out a loaf and it looked amazing! Shame I could only eat about two bites…), but pizzas – oh man what a joy. I’m 22, and what young guy doesn’t like pizza.
My girlfriend bought me buckwheat after I used up a sample Ziploc a friend had given me (I made waffles! Excellent), and in discovering new ways to incorporate buckwheat into baking, I ground up some buckwheat “groats” as they are called, and used this buckwheat ‘flour’ (though not related to wheat – it is not a cereal or grass) in my pizza dough, also incorporating buckwheat flour. The flavor is incredibly unique, and the complexity of the dough is hearty and satisfying. It has a toasty, dark nutty quality. I’m not persuing ‘gluten-free’ cooking or any reasons some use buckwheat, but if you have any on hand, it might be an interesting experiment!
Thanks for the information you provide on this site; having recently discovered it after setting out to make sourdough bread starter (a sample of sourdough at the farmer’s market had my head spinning and left me wanting more!!!), tonight I will be utilizing the instructions you’ve provided on doing so!
Happy baking,
Matthew, Atlanta GA
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