“You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” –Yogi Berra
How to Make Pizza Dough
One of the most challenging things to make is perfect pizza dough. But making pizza dough, challenging as it is, brings rewards along with the challenge. Handmade pizza dough is the best sort of dough to use, and is the most important factor differentiating good pizza from amazing pizza.
Pizza Dough Equipment
How to Make Perfect Pizza Dough
Making pizza dough by hand requires no special tools. You will need the following though:
- A large mixing bowl
- Some measuring spoons
- A measuring cup
- A wooden spoon or a whisk
- Some kitchen film
- A dish towel
Pizza Dough Ingredients
That’s all you need for equipment, but you’ll also need ingredients to make the pizza dough with:
- A quart ounce envelope of active dry yeast
- About 1 ½ cups of warm water – that is, around 115 degrees
- 4 cups of bread flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons of salt
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- A tablespoon of sugar
- Some extra sugar and olive oil
Steps to Making Perfect Pizza Dough
Once you’ve got the equipment and the ingredients together, follow these steps to make perfect pizza dough:
- In the mixing bowl, mix the warm water and the sugar, stirring until it is completely dissolved.
- Then add the yeast, making sure to stir it gently while the yeast dissolves as well.
- Once it has dissolved, let it sit there for about ten minutes, which allows the yeast to become “active.” In doing so, the yeast will foam at the top and give off a cloudy view, releasing a familiar yeast smell.
- Now stir in the salt and olive oil, followed by the first cup of flour, stirring until it all dissolves.
- Add the second cup of flour, stirring until dissolution.
- Repeat with the third cup. The idea here is to slowly add the flour to avoid clumping or any other issues.
- Add the last cup and begin hand mixing until all of the dough, which should now be thick, is moistened into this mass.
- Every so often, a dusting of flour may be necessary to keep the dough from getting too sticky from working with the hands.
- Remove the flour from the bowl and place it onto a flour-dusted tabletop to knead.
- To knead, press the dough out and fold it in half, pushing the fold into itself.
- Repeat this for ten minutes. This will help the dough become more elastic and durable in preparation and baking.
- Cover the dough with a thin layer of the oil and place it into an olive oil-coated bowl.
- Stretch kitchen film over the bowl and set it in a warm place to rise for about an hour. Risen dough will be twice the size it was before.
- When this is so, take it and cut it in half, patting down each half to release any air and then molding both of them into a ball.
Using Homemade Pizza Dough – Now or Later?
From this point, the dough can be used or stored for later. To store the pizza dough for later, place it in zip-lock bags coated in some olive oil. Either refrigerate or freeze, but be warned that the dough may continue to rise until it has finished cooling down. If the bag breaks, just remold it and put it into a new bag. Dough in the fridge should be good for up to 48 hours while frozen dough remains usable for up to a few weeks.
To use the dough immediately, it may need to be “proofed.” Let the dough to sit in a bowl or a tray for an additional twenty minutes to rise a little bit more. When the dough has been proofed, then it may be rolled out and topped with sauces and cheese.
Making pizza dough correctly is a multi-step process, but with a little practice, and the checklists above, you’ll be making your own excellent pizza dough in no time.
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