The most important trick for making a delicious pizza is to let the dough age for long enough. The basic idea is to make the dough, then put it in the fridge overnight. For many people this is actually more convenient than making dough the same day, as you can just pull your premade dough out of the fridge and start making pizza!
When the dough is left overnight before using, the difference in flavour is incredible. The base will have a sweet, nutty/buttery flavour, so good that you’d be happy to eat the base with no toppings at all!
For those interested in a bit of the science, the flavour develops in this way because enzymes in the flour start to break down the starch molecules, converting them to complex sugars. These sugars give the dough a natural sweetness and help the crust caramelise to a golden brown. Incidentally, this is why there is no sugar in this dough – when other recipes call for added sugar they are in part mimicing the effect that we get by just leaving the dough be.
By leaving the dough overnight we lengthen the process of freeing up these natural sugars, further improving the flavour and colour in the base when cooked. We keep the dough cold in the fridge because the low temperatures slow down the yeast, preventing the dough from raising so much that it collapses. The low temperatures also keep the yeast from consuming all of te sugars in the dough! It is a complex topic – if you would like to read more on this, author and baker Peter Reinhart has a lot of excellent, detailed information In his book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Peter also has a great blog about his books for those interested in bread and other baking.
There is one other important benefit from the overnight rest, which is the greatly reduced kneading time. In a standard recipe the dough must be kneaded for up to 10 minutes to develop the gluten, which gives the dough strength and allows it to be shaped without tearing. But when dough is left to rest for longer, the gluten starts to develop on its own and just a few seconds of kneading is enough to shape a useable dough. The reduced handling also improves flavour and colour by reducing oxidation.
HOWEVER – you don’t have to know any of this to make the dough, so let’s jump in and get started!
This recipe makes enough dough for 2 medium-thin crust pizzas. You can scale up the quantities to make as many or few as you like. It’s important to use good quality flour, but you can experiment with different brands to find one that works for you. Look for an unbleached flour with around 11% protein and you can’t go wrong, although you may have to use a tiny bit more or less water as every flour absorbs water a little differently. If you can find a good one, the traditional flour used in Italian pizza is ‘00′ grade flour. 00 flour is a little finer than normal flour, and the texture and flavour is wonderful.
It’s important to weigh the ingredients when making dough, and weights are given here in grams. Kitchen scales that measure grams are ok for the yeast and salt if you don’t mind guesstimating a bit, but scales that measure fractions of a gram are a nice luxury as well. However, I have given approximate measurements in volume for those who don’t have scales.
Ingredients
- 300gm White flour (1.5 cups)
- 200ml Water (4/5 of a cup)
- 6g Sea salt (1 heaped tsp)
- 3 g Instant dried yeast (1 slightly heaped tsp)
- 15ml Olive oil (1 tbsp)
NOTE: The olive oil is not truly traditional but it is added here to make the dough slightly more tender since we will be cooking it for longer than in a wood fired oven. If making this dough for a wood fired oven, you can omit the oil.
Method
- Weigh out the flour, yeast and salt and mix them together in a large mixing bowl.
- Add the water and stir with a spoon just until the mixture starts to form a rough lump. This should only take 10 seconds of vigorous stirring. If there are stray crumbs of flour left in the bottom of the bowl, add another half a tablespoon of water and mix again.
- Pour the olive oil over the dough.
- Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave to stand for 10 minutes.
- Sprinkle some flour on a large board or clean bench top, and turn out the dough. Sprinkle a little flour over the top, just enough to make it easy to handle without sticking to your hands.
- Knead the dough for 8-10 strokes, just until the olive oil is mixed in and the dough feels silky and smooth.
- Put the dough back in your mixing bowl, cover, and leave to rest for another 10 minutes.
- The dough is now ready to divide into pieces. This recipe makes 2 x 250g pizza bases, so use your scales to make 2 even lumps.
- Shape each piece into a dough ball, roll each ball in flour to coat well, and put them in the fridge overnight or for at least 6-8 hours. You can put them in a baking tray or plate covered loosely with glad wrap, or a large sealable plastic container. Make sure you leave room for the balls to expand – they may grow up to double in size while in the fridge.
- Remove the dough balls from the fridge about 1 hour before you want to start cooking, around the same time you start preheating your pizza stone in the oven. Once the oven is ready, shape your base, add toppings of your choice, and use your peel to slide the pizza into the oven!
I followed this recipe. Not too hard to do, and certainly convenient to have the dough ready in my fridge.
I make homemade pizza fairly regularly – complete with dough. But am not quite satisfied with it sometimes – always looking to improve. I think I shall just have to try your recipe and techniques here. Thank you!!
Recipe calls for too much water. Also, recipe doesn’t result in enough dough for two pizzas – this makes enough for one large (16in) pizza.
Hey Dave, thanks for the comments. The amount of water used in a recipe depends very much on the flour you use. Flours with higher protein content will generally require more water. I use this amount of water or more in a flour around 12% protein.
Having said that, with pizza dough the wetter you make the dough the better. It’s a fine balance between making it too wet to handle, and too dry to be light, fluffy and chewy! Hope your pizzas were nice anyway.
Hello, is it OK to freeze this pizze dough?
Sure is! Follow the recipe up until the start of step 10, but instead of taking the dough out of the fridge to warm up, pop it straight in the freezer wrapped in plastic wrap or in a zip lock bag. These should keep for up to a few months. Allow to thaw in the fridge before re-use.