Who doesn’t love pizza? ?Of course we can order from our favourite restaurant or we can buy frozen pizzas. Another option is to buy pre-made dough from your grocer and make your own. But it’s a really good idea to learn how to make pizza dough. You never know, one day you may end up somewhere that doesn’t have pizza, like we did! Eventually there were restaurants that opened up and some of them made a decent pizza, but they could be really expensive for what you got. So I learned how to make a simple pizza dough. Over the past 6 years I’ve tested and experimented with different flour & yeast. In the end, making your own pizza dough isn’t difficult and can be very rewarding to make.
Perfect Pizza Dough – Yields 1 X-large thick crust rectangle pizza OR 2 Large thin-crust round pizza – thicknesses of crust will depend on how much pizza you yield
Ingredients – Preheat oven to 400F for 20-25 minutes
Author: Ordinary Day with Milena
- 4-5 cups high quality all purpose flour plus extra for rolling – I used Polselli Tipo 00
- 1/2 cup semolina flour plus more for baking (optional)
- 4 tsp yeast
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp high quality extra virgin olive oil
- 1 cups water plus extra
Directions
- In mixing bowl add yeast to 1 cup of warm but not hot water. Allow to sit for 10 minutes till the yeast has begun to foam.
- Add flours, salt, 2 tbsp olive oil and mix well in standing mixer with hook attachment. If you don’t have a mixer then roll out onto counter and knead well for 10 minutes. Mix well and knead for about 3 minutes. Pinch dough; if it holds its shape it’s done.
- Transfer dough to large bowl, drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil, cover and let rise in warm, draft-free area. Place in warm oven if you don’t a warm area in kitchen.
- Let rise in double, approx 3-4 hours. Then punch down and knead for about 5 minutes. Re-cover and let rest again for another 1-2 hours. If pressed for time you can forgo the second rise but it’s ideal to let dough rise again.
- After second rise, flour clean kitchen surface and roll out dough to desired thickness and shape.
- Oil baking pan with 2 tbsp olive oil, sprinkle with semolina flour (if you have it) and then place dough in pan pressing down gently on dough so semolina will stick to it. Prick dough with fork in even lengths then add sauce, cheese and favourite toppings. Dry wet toppings like olives, banana peppers etc before topping pizza.
- Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 min. To test doneness of dough lift a corner and tap underside if dough. It should sound hollow when tapped.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool about 5 minutes before slicing into, allowing cheese to solidify slightly and keep toppings in place. Enjoy!!
With this dough I made 4 Calzones and 1 small thin-crust pizza