Simple, 4-Ingredient Homemade Pizza Dough
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
Up your pizza game with this simple, no-knead homemade pizza dough recipe. Made with 4 ingredients — flour, water, salt, and yeast — this dough is a snap to throw together, and you can use it the same day you mix it or store it in the fridge for up to 5 days (or freeze it!). If you love pizza with ballooned edges and crisp but pliable crusts, this is the pizza dough recipe you’ll come back to again and again. 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Listen up: Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t make great pizza from start to finish in three hours. This is a simple 4-ingredient pizza dough recipe. The proportions are based on my mother’s peasant bread recipe, a high-hydration, no-knead, quick-to-stir together dough. It is the simplest of the simple homemade pizza recipes and, in my opinion, the tastiest, too.
Grab a bowl, a whisk, and a spatula — let’s get slinging 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
This post is organized as follows:
- Why High Hydration Pizza Dough is Best For a Home Oven
- Neapolitan Pizza Dough Recipe vs. Home-Oven Pizza Dough Recipe
- Pizza Dough Ingredients: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast
- No-Knead Pizza Dough
- How to Handle High-Hydration Pizza Dough
- Two More Tips for Making the Best Pizza at Home
- Other Pizza-Making Equipment
- How to Make Pizza Dough, Step by Step
- Timing
- How to Freeze Pizza Dough
- 4 More Pizza Styles to Try
- FAQs + Troubleshooting
- My pizza cookbook: Pizza Night
Why High-Hydration Pizza Dough is Best For a Home Oven
The first step to making excellent pizza at home is to get comfortable working with high-hydration pizza doughs. High-hydration doughs, such as Jim Lahey’s popular no-knead dough, this simple sourdough pizza crust, or the one from my cookbook, Bread Toast Crumbs (which is the recipe below), are doughs made with a high proportion of water relative to the flour. The high proportion of water allows these types of doughs to be mixed together quickly and easily — no kneading or stand mixer required — and it also creates a pizza crust that stays crisp but moist during the cooking process with beautiful air pockets throughout.
Why? Let’s back up.
Neapolitan Pizza Dough Recipe vs. Home-Oven Pizza Dough Recipe
In your search for the perfect pizza dough recipe, you may have come across very promising-looking recipes for Neapolitan-style pizza with photos depicting crusts with beautifully ballooned outer edges. Contrary to what you might think, Neapolitan-style pizza dough is actually on the lower end of the hydration spectrum. If you compare those recipes to the one you find below, you’ll notice that those Neapolitan-style pizza crust recipes call for significantly less water relative to the amount of flour with hydration percentages ranging from 60 to 65 as opposed to the 88 percent hydration dough recipe below.
But didn’t you just say the secret to making excellent pizza at home is to use a lot of water? I did.
So why do Neapolitan pizza crusts perform so well at such low hydrations? Because Neapolitan pizzas cook in 60 to 90 seconds in 900ºF ovens. Yeah, and so? Stay with me here: When you bake in a super-hot oven, the cooking time will be reduced, which means there will be less time for the water in the dough to evaporate. In other words, when the cooking time is brief, the dough will be able to retain a lot of its moisture.
So, despite the low hydration, a baked Neapolitan crust is light and airy because the dough is able to retain its moisture during its brief time in the oven.
If you were to bake a 65% hydration Neapolitan pizza dough in your home oven, which can only get up to 550ºF at the most, which will in turn require a longer baking time, you likely will be disappointed with the result because the longer cooking time will allow too much water to evaporate, leaving you with a dry, tough crust.
Make sense? In other words, in order for pizza dough not to dry out in a home oven, it needs more water from the start.
(Incidentally, a high hydration dough is also the key to making excellent focaccia, like this simple sourdough focaccia or this overnight, refrigerator focaccia.)
Pizza Dough Ingredients: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast
OK, so now that we’re on the same page — a home oven requires a high-hydration dough for best results — let’s talk about how to make this simple dough.
The recipe below calls for flour, salt, water, and yeast, all of which we will discuss in more detail below. What you will not find in this recipe is olive oil, sugar or honey, or diastatic malt. Why? For one, simplicity. But more importantly, for this style of pizza, these ingredients do not help. Here’s why:
Olive Oil: Olive oil is added to dough recipes that call for long bakes because olive oil helps keep dough tender by “shortening” the gluten network. But for a short bake, such as the 5- to 6-minute bake called for here, olive oil mostly helps transfer heat from the cooking surface to the dough, which can result in too much browning.
Sweetener: Simply stated, a sweetener is not needed — the yeast, contrary to popular belief, does not need sugar to activate or thrive. Sweeteners, moreover, can cause the dough to ferment too quickly and they can also cause the dough to burn when baked at hot temperatures.
Diastatic Malt: Diastatic malt, an enzyme that converts the starches in flour to sugar, is added to pizza dough to promote good browning in the crust. Truthfully, I’ve never used it because I don’t like running around for odd ingredients that I don’t believe to be necessary. Ideally, with this recipe, the dough will spend some time in the fridge (see below: How to Make the Best Pizza Dough at Home: Two Tips), during which time enzymes in both the flour and the yeast will break down the starches in the flour into simple sugars, which will contribute both to flavor and to browning.
No-Knead Pizza Dough
To make this dough, you’ll whisk together flour, salt, and instant yeast. Then you’ll add water and stir with a spatula until the water is absorbed and you have a wet, sticky dough ball. That’s it. That is the beauty of a no-knead dough. Let’s take a look at the ingredients in more depth:
Yeast
Yeast is what will make your pizza rise, and my preference for all pizza and bread recipes is SAF Instant Yeast. The beauty of instant yeast is that you can stir it directly into the flour — no need to “proof” or “bloom” it.
Active Dry Yeast works here, too: Red Star Active Dry is my preference. To use active dry yeast instead, simply sprinkle it over the lukewarm water and let it stand for about 10 minutes or until it gets foamy before adding to the other ingredients.
Store yeast in the fridge or freezer for up to a year. These quart containers are great for storing yeast.
If you would prefer to make pizza with a sourdough starter, see this Sourdough Pizza Crust Recipe
Flour: Tipo 00 vs. Bread vs. All-Purpose
Tipo 00 flour is the flour requisite in the production of D.O.C. Neapolitan pizza. Contrary to popular belief, the “00” is not an indicator of protein content. It refers, rather, to the fineness of the milling, “00” being the finest grade in the Italian classification system.
If you have never used tipo 00 flour, you may have enjoyed how nicely your dough handled, how easily it extended.
There was a period during which I used tipo 00 flour exclusively, but today I find I get just as good results when I use bread flour or all-purpose flour, King Arthur Flour being my favorite brand.
What is the difference between the two? Mostly the protein content. KAF bread flour has a higher protein content (12.7% protein) than the all-purpose flour (11.7% protein).
A dough made with bread flour as opposed to all-purpose flour will absorb slightly more liquid and will therefore be slightly stiffer. If you live in a humid environment and often find your dough to be too wet, using bread flour may help.
I must confess I am constantly changing my opinion about what type of flour makes the best pizza and this, I’ve learned, is because the flour itself is constantly changing from season to season and from year to year.
Moreover, every brand of flour absorbs water differently. For instance, King Arthur Flour’s 00 flour will absorb water differently than Giusto’s 00 Flour and Caputo’s 00 flour. Each of these varieties of 00 flour will taste differently, too. Same goes for different brands of all-purpose and bread flours.
In sum, the key is to use good flour: unbleached and unbromated flour. And I encourage you to experiment. What works best for me in my environment might not work as well for you in yours.
Salt
For pizza dough, my preference is Diamond Crystal kosher salt or Baleine fine sea salt, both of which dissolve quickly.
For finishing, I love Maldon sea salt. I finish nearly every pizza dough round I top with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt.
Water
I have no trouble using cold water from my tap, which I mix with boiling water to create perfectly lukewarm water (see recipe box for details). That said, if you suspect your water is adversely affecting your pizza dough, here are two tips:
- Use water that you’ve left out overnight to ensure any chlorine has evaporated.
- Buy spring water. In some places, letting water sit out overnight will not be effective.
Working with High Hydration Dough
OK, let’s review: to make great pizza at home, a high-hydration dough made with four good ingredients is best. Now let’s talk about how to deal with this super wet dough.
#1 Tip: Handle it gently.
“As soon as I began really paying attention to how I shaped my pizza rounds by taking care to use a gentle hand, I noticed a difference in the finished product. The air pockets pervading the unbaked round really affect the texture of the baked pizza.”
During the shaping process — the point at which you are stretching your ball of dough into a 10- to 12-inch round — take care to use a light touch (see the video above for reference). When you handle the dough minimally, you preserve the bubbles created during the rising. See these bubbles? …
Those bubbles become these ballooned textures throughout the dough:
Two More Tips for Making Excellent Pizza at Home
Let’s review again, to make excellent pizza at home, you should:
- Use a high-hydration pizza dough.
- Use good quality ingredients.
- Handle the dough minimally.
Here are two more tips:
1. Invest in a Baking Steel
The single best and easiest/most affordable step you can take to make better pizza at home is to invest in a Baking Steel. In short, steel is a more conductive cooking surface than stone. This means heat transfers more quickly from steel to food than it does from stone to food. Why is this important for pizza? Serious Eats’ Kenji J Lopez Alt offers this explanation:
“How does the baking surface affect hole structure? Well those crust holes develop when air and water vapor trapped inside the dough matrix suddenly expand upon heating in a phenomenon known as oven spring. The faster you can transfer energy to the dough, the bigger those glorious bubbles will be, and the airier and more delicate the crust.”
I get the best results when I place my Baking Steel in the upper third of my oven, but every oven is different, so play around with placement till you find the sweet spot.
The beauty of the Baking Steel + a high-hydration dough.
2. If Time Permits, Refrigerate The Dough
During a long, slow, cold fermentation, enzymes in both the flour and the yeast will break down the starches in the flour into simple sugars, which will contribute both to flavor and to browning. Moreover, during this time in the fridge, the dough will relax, making it easier to stretch.
Other Pizza Making Equipment
As always, for best results with bread or pizza recipes, use a digital scale. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of this. Measuring by weight is the only way to truly measure your ingredients accurately. It also, in turn, allows you to make meaningful adjustments to a recipe — i.e. reducing the water quantity — to make it work best given the flour you are using and your environment.
A pizza peel. You need a mechanism to get the dough round from your counter to your Steel. A peel plus a sheet of parchment paper makes this easy.
Parchment paper. For easy transfer of pizza from peel to Steel, my preference is to use parchment paper, which stays with the pizza in the oven. The alternative is to sprinkle your peel with cornmeal or flour or something to prevent it from sticking. These ingredients ultimately end up burning on the Steel or making a mess on your oven floor. No thank you. Recently, I’ve been buying these rounds, but standard rectangular sheets of parchment work just fine, too.
Quart containers: These are the handiest containers for all sorts of things (soups, stocks, stews, storing yeast) but especially rounds of pizza dough. Dough can stay in the fridge for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 3 months.
How to Make Pizza Dough, Step by Step
OK! Are you ready? Let’s make pizza dough:
Whisk together flour, salt, and instant yeast (SAF is my preference):
Add water, and …
… mix to form a sticky dough ball:
Let rise in a warm spot till nearly doubled, about 1.5 hours.
Turn out onto a floured work surface.
Divide into four portions and …
… ball up, using as much flour as needed.
If you are baking pizza immediately, let the dough rest for another hour before shaping. Otherwise, transfer the balls to quart containers and stick them in the fridge.
This is the dough after a night in the fridge.
Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and use your hands to cup the dough into a round.
Let the rounds sit for about an hour covered in a towel.
Gently stretch a round into an 11-inch round (roughly).
Transfer the round to a peel lined with parchment paper.
Get your toppings ready. For a classic Margherita pizza, youll need tomato sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil.
Spread about 2 ounces of tomato sauce over your dough.
Top with about 3 ounces of mozzarella. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake on a preheated Baking Steel at 550ºF for 5 to 6 minutes. Shower with fresh basil out of the oven.
The beauty of the Baking Steel + high hydration dough: oven spring.
Timing
As noted above, you can mix and use this dough today — it does not require a long, slow rise. If you want to make it ahead of time, however, and stick it in the fridge until pizza night, that works, too:
- Make it Tonight: Plan on 3 hours start to finish from when you mix your dough to when you turn out a freshly baked pizza.
- Make it Tomorrow (and beyond): Method 1: Mix your dough today, let it rise for 1.5 hours (roughly). Portion it into 4 balls; then transfer to the fridge for up to 3 days (or even longer). When using dough you’ve stored in the refrigerator, remove it one hour prior to baking.
- Make it Tomorrow (and beyond), Method 2: Mix your dough, cover the bowl with an airtight lid or seal it tightly with plastic wrap, and immediately transfer it to the fridge. When you are ready to bake, remove the dough from the fridge 60 to 90 minutes prior to baking, portion it into 4 balls; then transfer as many as you wish to bake to a well-floured board. Transfer the remaining balls to the fridge for up to 3 days (or even longer). When using dough you’ve stored in the refrigerator, remove it 60 to 90 minutes prior to baking.
The refrigerator is your friend: The two quart containers on the left are holding freshly portioned dough; the two quart containers on the right are holding dough after 2 days in the refrigerator. Look at those bubbles!:
Can You Freeze Pizza Dough?
Yes! This has been a game-changer. To freeze pizza dough, make it through step 4 in the recipe below or until after you transfer the portioned rounds to quart containers. At this point, transfer the quart containers to the freezer for as long as 3 months. To thaw, remove a container (or more) and let thaw in the refrigerator for 18 to 24 hours or thaw at room temperature for 4 to 8 hours. Then, proceed with the recipe.
PS: Easy, Homemade Pita Bread Recipe
Four More Pizza Styles to Try
Find ALL the pizza recipes here. Below are links to four different styles of pizza to try.
FAQs & Troubleshooting
Why is my pizza dough too wet?
It is possible that given your environment and the type of flour you are using, you are using too much water relative to the amount of flour. The fix is simple: reduce the amount of water. Ideally, you are measuring with a scale, so you can ensure you are measuring accurately and making meaningful adjustments. Try holding back 50 grams of water and seeing if that helps.
That said, please read above about the importance of using a high-hydration pizza dough in a home oven. If your dough, upon being mixed, is unable to form a sticky dough ball, you likely need to reduce the water. Reference the video for dough texture.
Why is my pizza dough soggy?
There are several culprits here:
- too much sauce, cheese, and/or toppings
- oven not hot enough
- too short of a baking time
Solutions:
- Invest in a Baking Steel. Read why above.
- Try laying the cheese on top of the dough; then the sauce. The cheese might provide some insulation from the sauce, thereby preventing the dough from getting soggy.
- Consider employing a parbake: bake your pizza “naked” for one minute; then continue baking for 4 to 5 minutes more once topped.
- Try using semolina on your peel.
- Before stretching your dough ball into a round, slick it lightly in a bit of olive oil.
- Use a lighter hand when topping.
Pizza Night
My cookbook, Pizza Night, which includes 52 pizza and 52 salad recipes, one pair for every week of the year, as well as five simple desserts is now available for preorder 🍕🍕🍕
It’s organized seasonally and includes recipes for the home oven, outdoor oven, the grill, Sicilian-style, Detroit-style, grandma-style, skillet pizzas, gluten-free, and more. There are both yeast and sourdough recipes for every style of pizza in the book.
Get your copy here: Pizza Night.
Simple, 4-Ingredient Homemade Pizza Dough
- Total Time: 2 hours 35 minutes
- Yield: 4 pizzas
Description
If you love pizza with ballooned and blistered edges and a crisp but pliable crust, this is the pizza dough recipe you’ll come back to again and again. And it’s easy to make—the pizza dough is no-knead, made with 4 simple ingredients, and doesn’t require special flour. Video guidance below.
**Attention Pizza Fans**: My new cookbook, Pizza Night, is available for preorder.
NOTES:
This recipe yields 4 rounds of dough. Recipe can be halved; dough can be refrigerated for up to five days. I refrigerate individual rounds of dough in quart containers.
Dough can be frozen, too. After the first rise and after you transfer the portioned rounds to quart containers, this is your opportunity to freeze. Transfer the quart containers to the freezer for as long as 3 months. To thaw, remove a container (or more) and let thaw in the refrigerator for 1 day or thaw at room temperature for 4 to 8 hours. Then, proceed with the recipe.
Yeast: If you need to use active dry yeast instead of instant, sprinkle it over the lukewarm water and let it stand for about 10 minutes or until it gets foamy before adding to the other ingredients.
Warm place to rise: Here’s a trick for making the perfect warm spot for the dough to rise. Turn the oven on and let it preheat for 1 minute; then shut it off. The temperature will be between 80° F and 100° F. you should be able to place your hand on the oven grates without burning them.
Flour: You can use bread flour and all-purpose flour here but if you live in a humid environment, I would consider using bread flour if you can get your hands on it. If you are in Canada or the UK, also consider using bread flour or consider holding back some of the water (see next paragraph). Reference the video for how the texture of the bread should look; then add water back as needed.
Water:
I find the sweet spot for me to be about 418 grams of water, which is roughly an 82% hydration dough. If this is too high, try using 400 grams of water or even 395 grams of water, which will lower the hydration to 77%.
As noted above, this is a variation of the peasant pizza dough recipe in my cookbook. If you are unfamiliar, the peasant bread dough is a very wet, no-knead dough. The key when handling it, is to use as much flour as necessary to keep it from sticking to the board and your hands. That said, you absolutely can start with less water to make the dough more manageable. If you live in a humid environment, if you live abroad, if you are using all-purpose flour or Tipo 00 flour, if you dislike handling wet doughs, consider starting with 400 to 425 grams of water. Add water as needed to get it to the right consistency (reference the video).
To make lukewarm water, use 1 part boiling liquid to 3 parts cold liquid. For 2 cups of lukewarm water, use 1/2 cup boiling, 1 1/2 cups cold water. You don’t have to be so precise, but using this rough ratio will give you perfectly lukewarm water.
Parchment: These rounds are so handy.
Toppings: In the notes below the recipe, find the toppings for a classic Margherita pizza and for a kale, parmesan, and crème fraîche pizza. See above for 6 other favorite pizza recipes.
Ingredients
- 4 cups (512 g) bread flour or all-purpose flour, plus more for assembly
- 2 to 3 teaspoons (12 g) kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon (4 g) instant yeast
- 1.75 to 2 cups (400 to 454 g) lukewarm water, see notes above
Instructions
- To make the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and instant yeast. Add the water. Using a rubber spatula, mix until the water is absorbed and the ingredients form a sticky dough ball. Pour a drop or two of oil over top and rub with your hands to coat.
- Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot to rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until the dough has doubled in bulk.
- If you are baking the pizzas right away (as opposed to refrigerating the dough for another day), place a Baking Steel or pizza stone in top third of oven and preheat oven to its hottest setting, 550°F. Be sure the Baking Steel heats for at least 45 minutes once the oven temperature reaches 550ºF.
- Cover a work surface or cutting board liberally with flour — use at least 1/4 cup and more as needed. The dough is very wet, so don’t hesitate to use flour as needed. Turn the dough out onto your floured surface and use a bench scraper to divide the dough into 4 equal portions. With floured hands, roll each portion into a ball, using the pinkie-edges of your hands to pinch the dough underneath each ball. If you are not baking the pizza the same day, transfer each round of dough to a plastic quart container (or something similar), cover, and store in the fridge. (At this point, transfer the vessels to the freezer for up to 3 months. See notes above for thawing.) If you are baking right away, let the balls sit on their tucked-in edges for at least 30 minutes without touching.
- To Make the Pizzas: If using refrigerated dough, pull out a pizza round from the fridge one hour (or even 90 minutes if time permits) before you plan on baking. Dust dough with flour and place on a floured work surface. Cover the dough with a towel or plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out. (Update: I now let my dough balls rest in a lidded vessel or a pan covered with plastic wrap to ensure the dough balls do not dry out during the 60-90 minutes at room temperature.) Let rest untouched for 60 to 90 minutes.
- Handling the dough as minimally as possible, shape the dough into a 10″–12″ round. If the dough has proofed sufficiently, you should be able to pick it up and stretch it very easily using the back of your hands. Lay a sheet of parchment paper on a pizza peel, and pour a few drops of oil into the center of it. (Note: the oil is optional. It’s especially helpful if you find shaping dough using the backs of your hands tricky.) Transfer the dough round to the parchment-lined baking peel.
- Top pizza as desired or to make the Margherita pizza: spread 2 ounces of tomato sauce over your pizza dough. Top with 3 ounces of mozzarella. Drizzle with olive oil. Season with a pinch of flaky sea salt. Shimmy the pizza, parchment paper and all into the oven. To make the kale and crème fraîche pizza: Place the kale in a small bowl, drizzle lightly with olive oil, season with sea salt, and toss with your hands till the kale is coated in oil and salt. Spoon crème fraîche over the dough leaving a 1/2-inch border or so—I use 1 to 2 tablespoons per pizza. Sprinkle with the garlic and a handful of the grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Top with the kale. Shimmy the pizza, parchment paper and all into the oven.
- Bake pizza until top is blistered, about 5 minutes. Transfer to cutting board. Shower basil over the pizza Margherita. Cut and serve. Discard parchment paper.
Notes
Margherita Pizza:
- 2 ounces tomato sauce, such as this one
- 3 ounces fresh mozzarella (if using buffalo mozzarella, drain before using)
- olive oil
- flaky sea salt
- fresh basil
Kale & Creme Fraiche Pizza:
- extra-virgin olive oil
- a couple handfuls of baby kale
- 1 to 2 cloves garlic
- Sea salt, such as Maldon
- 2 tablespoons crème fraîche
- grated Parmigiano Reggiano, about 1/4 to 1/3 cup
- Prep Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 minutes
- Category: Pizza
- Method: baked
- Cuisine: American, Italian
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
583 Comments on “Simple, 4-Ingredient Homemade Pizza Dough”
So I see this recipe calls for yeast… have you ever used a sourdough starter to make it? If so what would be different about the recipe?
Hi Sarah! Here’s my sourdough pizza recipe: Simple Sourdough Pizza.
Omg. So so so good!! It was light and airy but chewy and crisp. Perfection. Sprayed with olive oil, sprinkled crust with Sesame seeds. Gotta try it.
Already thinking about my next pizza.
Oh yay! So nice to hear this, Nevena! Thanks so much for writing!
I’ve tried several recipes for pizza dough, and this is the best crust so far. The dough was sticky but manageable. It came together quickly with very little handling. I made a half recipe using 00 flour, and proved the dough overnight in the fridge. The dough was easy to stretch after sitting at room temperature for about 1 1/2 hours. Great oven spring around the outside rim. We felt that the dough needed more salt. I added 1/4 tsp each onion and garlic salt to the kosher salt, but the crust still tasted slightly underseasoned. Thank you for the detailed instructions and tips. They’re very helpful.
So great to hear this, Sadie! I could totally see this on the salt. I just added a weight measurement in the recipe box — 11 g — which is up from the usual 10 grams that I’ve been doing in the past. (I actually recently experimented with 12 grams of salt, and didn’t find it to be too salty, but I’m going to keep it at 11 because I know my salt tolerance is a little higher than most.)
Thanks for writing!
How come this recipe doesn’t call for sugar or honey?
Hi Viri! I just don’t find the sugar or honey necessary. Sometimes recipes call for small amounts of sugar or honey to activate the yeast. Sometimes recipes call for it to promote browning. You absolutely can add a teaspoon or two of either, but I would try it without first and see how you like it 🙂
Great detail and so helpful at answering many questions I had about this process. Just to clarify, are you saying to wait 30 minutes after forming into four balls to then form the rounds, then wait ANOTHER 30 minutes before working to make the full 10-12 inch pizza shells? Similarly, when pulling from the fridge, let sit an hour to get to room temperature, and then form the rounds, and then wait another 30 minutes before forming the shells? Just want to make sure I’m clear. Thanks!
Hi Rob! Great to hear 🙂
Regarding your question: if you are baking pizzas the same day you mix the dough, letting the dough rest for 30 minutes after you divide the dough and ball each portion into a round should suffice. If it’s very cold, you may need more like 45 minutes before stretching the round into a 10-12 inch shell.
If you are using refrigerated dough, letting the rounds rest for 60 minutes at room temperature is about right before stretching them into 10-12 inch pizza shells.
I hope that clarifies… let me know!
I finally found where to give you stars! lol
Best pizza dough around!
Awwww yay, thank you, Cindy! Thanks so much 🙂 🙂 🙂
I have been trying my hand at homemade pizza for several months now and each time the crust was “good” but I just wasn’t over the moon about it. I finally found my new go to pizza crust recipe! It was light and airy and absolutely delicious! Oh and did I mention it was the easiest recipe of them all! Thanks so much for sharing this recipe and all the tips with us:)
So wonderful to hear this, Marisa! Thanks so much for writing 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
I have made this pizza dough hundreds of times. Great recipe. I freeze it regularly, taking it out in the morning for an evening pizza. Thanks.
So nice to hear this, Abi! Thanks for writing and for sharing your freezing/thawing notes — so helpful for others!
What type of flour are you using? Often when I troubleshoot with people in the UK, they have to cut back the water significantly bc the flours are so different.
Also: did you weigh the water? Not that it would make a difference, but for future reference, it’s good to have the exact weight of water so you know precisely by how much you should cut the water back by in the future.
Hi Alexandra,
Love your sourdough recipe, but ran into some problems with this one.
First off, do you have gram measurements for this recipe?
For example, the yeast amount is in teaspoon (flat, packed, heaping?)
Also for the water, you mention 2 cups (456 g), which according to google is 473 grams.
I tried to approx your measurement and ended up using the following amounts:
Water: 473 grams
Flour: 512 grams
Salt: 7 grams
Yeast: 3 grams
During the bulk ferment, I noticed the dough get to almost 2.5 to 3x bigger, which seemed like a whole lot. After splitting into 3 balls, put them into the fridge overnight and prepped for pizza the next day. The dough needed a fair amount of time to warm up, but still tore a bit. Not a huge deal.
After baking the pizza, the dough didn’t really have that much flavor. Additionally, the base of the crust felt pretty tough and almost rubbery, but not quite.
Do you think it would have been better to add more salt, cut down the yeast by a bit and let sit in the fridge for 2 nights? Any idea why the base of the crust came out so rough?
Visually looked great, but felt like the crust should have been softer and more flavorful.
See here for pics of the ‘za!
https://imgur.com/a/nKb3ewC
Extra info to above post:
Flour Used: Central Milling Tony Gemignani’s “California Artisan” Type 00 Pizza Flour
Yeast Used: Antimo Caputo Lievito Active Dry Yeast 3.5
Altitude: 4200 ft.
—- Previous Post —
Hi Alexandra,
Love your sourdough recipe, but ran into some problems with this one.
First off, do you have gram measurements for this recipe?
For example, the yeast amount is in teaspoon (flat, packed, heaping?)
Also for the water, you mention 2 cups (456 g), which according to google is 473 grams.
I tried to approx your measurement and ended up using the following amounts:
Water: 473 grams
Flour: 512 grams
Salt: 7 grams
Yeast: 3 grams
During the bulk ferment, I noticed the dough get to almost 2.5 to 3x bigger, which seemed like a whole lot. After splitting into 3 balls, put them into the fridge overnight and prepped for pizza the next day. The dough needed a fair amount of time to warm up, but still tore a bit. Not a huge deal.
After baking the pizza, the dough didn’t really have that much flavor. Additionally, the base of the crust felt pretty tough and almost rubbery, but not quite.
Do you think it would have been better to add more salt, cut down the yeast by a bit and let sit in the fridge for 2 nights? Any idea why the base of the crust came out so rough?
Visually looked great, but felt like the crust should have been softer and more flavorful.
See here for pics of the ‘za!
https://imgur.com/a/nKb3ewC
Hi Nikhil!
I just added gram measurements for the yeast, but I had already included gram measurements for everything else. I do use 456 g water. Everyone has their own calculation for what a cup of water weighs, and for me, it’s 228 grams. What google says is different from what King Arthur Flour says which is different for what anybody else says, so I always recommend following the gram measurement of whatever recipe you are following.
I think 7 grams of salt is not enough, which is maybe why it doesn’t have much flavor. I would use the recommended 11 grams of salt next time.
I don’t think you need to cut back the yeast, but I am a fan of a cold proof. I think 48 hours in the fridge at least makes a big difference.
It looks beautiful!!
Thanks for the reply!!
I added a bit more salt this go around so we’ll see what happens. And I’m with you on the 48 hour minimum. The 24 hour was due to a rush pizza request.
But, what do you think might have caused the harder bottom crust? Maybe more moisture evaporated, maybe I used too much dusting flour? In other words, do you think the hardness came from a moisture concern or possibly something else?
I ask, since northern nevada is really really dry and at altitude.
Thank you for the reply and thank you for sharing your recipes!! I’ll post née pics of the pizzas when they’re done.
Hi Ali,
Whenever I use the parchment paper in baking process, the final baked dough always sticks to it no matter what. Any idea how I can solve this problem?
Thanks a lot in advance 🙂
So interesting! What brand of parchment are you using? And are you using a Baking Steel or stone or are you using a sheet pan?
Appreciating your quick response Ali!
Well concerning the brand of parchment paper, since I’m living in Iran I’m using the one available here; however it’s been working fine with other baking recipes so I don’t think that could be the problem. I’m using a baking stone. Thanks again 🙂
Ok, one thing you can try is baking it for just 2 minutes on the parchment; then open the oven and try to pull the parchment out. If this doesn’t work, I would stop using parchment. Use cornmeal or flour or something else on the peel to prevent the dough from sticking.
Hi Alexandra,
Thanks for the recipe.
Unfortunately my dough doesn’t come together. With those measurements comes out to liquid. I been reading the comments and nobody mention this. Maybe the water was too hot. Do you have any advise?
Thanks
Hi Miryam! Questions for you: did you use a scale? What type of flour are you using? Where are you located? Humid or dry climate? Thanks!
I don’t think it’s a matter of the water being too hot. But I do think it’s a matter of you simply using too much water given the flour you are using and your environment. If you are using a scale, next time hold back 50 grams. Then add water back in slowly. Reference the video for dough texture.
Hi Alexandra,
Thank you fro your email. Yes I use and scale and measure everything. I use 00 flour. I am locate in London when I did the recipe was April was still cold.
I will try again using your tip.
Thank you 🙂
Sounds good! And now reading this, I would hold back even more water: try holding back 100 grams and add it back in slowly if necessary.
Oh! I will try this week 🙂
Have a lovely week.
This is our go-to kitchen-oven crust recipe. I use Peter Reinhart’s Napoletana recipe for our outdoor pizza oven, but I find yours works so much better in the kitchen. (I use a a pizza steel on top of a baking stone, preheat at the highest setting for an hour. Cook 3-4 minutes, then switch to broil for the last minute.) This recipe is so forgiving. I can decide the night before, morning of, or even a few hours before dinner to get started, always with varying levels of greatness.
Also: I’ve tried *so* many pizza white-sauce recipes, and none of them ever hit the spot. Just using crème fraîche? What an epiphany! SO good and so easy. Our favourites:
– crème fraîche/sour cream, kale, bacon, parmesan, olive oil, fancy salt; and
– simple pizza sauce (San Marzano tomatoes/olive oil/salt), BBQ chicken, roasted red peppers, mozzarella, parmesan, olive oil, fancy salt.
Thank you so much for making our oven pizzas so much easier, tastier and just plain ol’ better!
I made this a couple of weeks ago. It tasted delicious but I sucked at shaping the dough. I found it really hard working with such a wet dough. I cooked it in a Gozney Roccbox, so found it hard getting it off the peel into the oven because of the hydration level. I definitely needed to use more flour. I’m trying again this week, fingers crossed!
Angela, hi! Definitely cut back on the water. It is such a high hydration dough, and reducing the water won’t harm it, and it will make the dough easier to manage. What type of flour are you using? And do you live in a humid environment? I think you could get away with using anywhere between 375 grams and 400 grams of water.
Hi — the recommended pizza steel is currently unavailable on amazon. Is there another one that you could recommend? Thanks.
Hi! I recommend the Original Baking Steel: https://bakingsteel.com/collections/steels You can order directly through them 🙂
Hi Ali! I just got an Ooni Koda pizza oven and am now obsessively searching for “the one” dough LOL. Your recipe looks so good and I am definitely going to give it a try! Just a couple of questions for you. If you shape the dough into balls and then put them into the plastic quart containers to go into the fridge, will it come out as a sticky mass of dough that needs to be reshaped? Just curious why we need to shape it into a ball in the first place and why we wouldn’t just throw it into the quarts to proof and rise. Always looking for shortcuts here 😉 Thank you!
Hi Dawn! Yay! I have an Ooni Koda as well, and I haven’t tried it yet! Mine is the one that hooks up to a gas tank … waiting for warmer weather (it snowed here last night!)
OK, a few things: be sure to read the notes about water/flour, etc., and adjust the recipe as needed. It’s a wet dough, but the wet dough does make for some glorious air bubbles.
Shaping is important because that initial shape — getting it into a tight ball — is the first step to making sure your final dough will be round. If you get it into a tight ball before you transfer it to your quart containers, you won’t have to do much when you remove the dough balls to ensure they stay round.
Good luck!!
Hi!! I have no idea what I did wrong! I live in Chicago. I used a mixer to make this and the dough was practically soup there was so much water. I ended up having to pour an extra 1-2 cups of flour into it and crossing my fingers it works. It’s currently rising for 1.5 hours.
Hi Claudia! It definitely is a wet, sticky dough … there are notes above the recipe regarding flour and water bc it is such high hydration.
Questions: what type of flour are you using? And are you using a scale?
Bread flour and yes to the scale for the flour but not the water! I ended up adding a lot more flour and checked it this morning and it has risen!
Sounds wonderful… will try but what is the baking steel you mention? A cookie sheet?
Hi Vicki! This is the Baking Steel I love: https://bakingsteel.com/
Thanks, perfect dough after 2 days ref fermentation. Crunchy, chewy and soft which I prefer most. I substituted kale with 2 layers spinach, watery but next time should try kale instead.
I have used 2 cups bread flour and 2 cups wheat flour… turned really perfect.
Wonderful to hear this, Marietta! Thanks so much for writing 🙂 🙂 🙂
I was excited to find this recipe. Been trying various recipes for the past few years, but I’m excited about this one because I make bread this way. I found that with the bread, you can just kind of tell when you have enough water in the mix. And it makes the best bread! (Though I proof it overnight). I’m really excited to see how this turns out. I like to make several at at time, put them in the fridge for 2-3 days, then put them in the freezer. So…I won’t bake one of these for a few days, but am looking forward to it. If I can find Kale (I live in MX), I’ll try that as well. Any substitutions for Creme Fresh?
Hi Becki! So nice to hear this. I hope you enjoy the pizza. I love doing a cold fridge ferment as well.
Sour cream is probably the best substitute for creme fraiche, though I’ve never actually tried baking it … I imagine it will be just fine.
Can’t stop making this! Although I own BTC, it was your blog posts that inspired me to try this pizza dough recipe. Your instructions and visuals are so clear and helpful. The only downside is now my husband will only eat fresh baked bread!
Oh yay! Anna, so nice to hear this. Thanks so much for writing. And I know: once you start baking homemade bread regularly, it’s impossible to go back. Happy Friday!
This has been my go to pizza dough recipe for the past year and it never disappoints. It is so easy and so delicious! I can’t believe I was buying premade pizza dough from the supermarket for so many years. I want to try the sourdough recipe next!
So nice to hear this, Hadley! Thanks so much for writing 🙂 The sourdough one is great, too. And if you can handle this dough (very high hydration), you can definitely handle the sourdough one, which is lower hydration. Good luck!
I’ve been on the hunt to find a perfect pizza dough recipe and this is it! I made the full recipe keeping 2 dough balls in the fridge for a couple days and froze 2 balls of dough and they have thawed perfectly.
Wonderful to hear this, Alexis!! Thanks so much for writing 🙂 🙂 🙂
Made the dough before my kids came home from school and left to rest. We then divided, and added toppings one person at a time while the last pizza was cooking, as each pizza took just ten minutes. The whole recipe worked perfectly, no tweaking necessary. Tasted like the pizzas we had in Naples, absolutely delicious! Will definitely use again and have shared already.
So nice to hear all of this, Amie!! Thanks so much for writing. Happy Friday! Pizza night here tonight. Can’t wait 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
I have just begun to make pizzas and I was lucky to find your site. The recipe, the tips and suggestions resulted in a fabulous pizza. the crust was just like the photos in your description of the recipe. I used active dried yeast so I used a bit of the water to bloom it and I added 1 tsp of olive oil to the yeast solution before adding it to the flour. I put the dough in the fridge over night. I baked it in a small portable wood fired pizza oven at 940F for 60 seconds, turning once.
Thank you for sharing this recipe and your expertise Alexandra.
Oh yay! Wonderful to hear this, Mike. I bought an Ooni last November but I have yet to break it out. Your comment is encouraging me to give it a go. Thanks so much for writing!
Can this dough be used in a ooni pizza oven? It has a stone can the parchment paper go in it as well.
Hi Tiffany! I have yet to practice with my Ooni pizza oven, but the answer is yes, definitely. However: no to the parchment paper with that high heat. It will catch on fire. I would use cornmeal or semolina flour or something to make a nonstick barrier between the dough and the peel. You may also want to consider reducing the water slightly, to make the dough more manageable.
Would this dough work for the chez panisse calzone recipe you also have posted?
This is currently in our meal rotations since it’s such a snap to whip up!
Hi Anna! Great to hear. And yes, it would. I might consider holding back some of the water — even just 50 grams or — to help make the dough a little more manageable to work with. It’s such a high hydration dough, and I would hate for the folding process to be a struggle. I think cutting back the water will do the trick!
Great recipe, best homemade pizza I have tried!
Could you use wholemeal bread flour?
So nice to hear this, Sarah! Yes, you can use wholemeal bread flour, but the texture will come out a little denser. I think you could use 25% wholemeal flour without the texture being affected adversely, but much more than that, and I think you’ll notice a difference in the airiness.
Hi Alex , just got my pizza stone. do you know what would be the best substitute for kale. in the north of France kale is just not a thing you can find easily :/ thank you
Hi Amy! Exciting! Hope you love your stone.
Apologies for the delay here. What sort of dark leafy greens are you able to get? I feel like mustard greens or escarole or spinach might work — with each of these, you might want to very briefly sauté them first due to their water content.
Omg best pizza dough recipe ever! Thank you. I’m currently feeling extremely full and in pain as I ate a whole pizza it was that good. 😂
Oh yay! So nice to hear this, Vanessa 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’ve had a few uncomfortably full pizza nights myself recently… worth it!!
Hello from france what is the correct equivelent to bread flour i used type 55 here in france and it very white and thick – help
Hi Amy! I’m not familiar with type 55 flour. When you say white and thick, are you referring to the dough? Also: are you using a scale to measure the flour and water? If so, I think it might just take a bit of trial and error to get right. I would look at the video to give you reference for how the dough should look.
Hello, Yes we followed the video and recipe. the dough was very watery and needed a lot more extra flour. when the baking was done the pizza was not golden just plain white and it took 2 to 3 times longer than 6 minutes to cook. the dough after being cooked was very dense and heavy like not pizza but more like serious heavy bread. lol. im not exactly sure what flour to be using …… in France the numbers range from T45 to T110 ….. i use t55 usually to make cake….
Hi Amy! Apologies for the delay here. I wonder if t55 is bleached? That would explain the pizza being white as opposed to golden. I would ask someone what the equivalent of bread flour is in France. I’m guessing it’s probably closer to the T110 end of the spectrum.