There are hundreds (thousands?) of ways to make pizza dough, but this recipe is a favorite of mine. It has just 4 ingredients, and maybe 5 minutes of hands on time. It needs only 1 minute of kneading and can accommodate a relatively flexible schedule. The only real downside to making this recipe (and your own pizza dough in general) is that it’s not great for instant gratification. If you want to make last minute pizza, you can get dough from grocery stores or some pizza shops. But if you want the reward of making your own pizza dough, and you want it to taste as good as the crust from a nice pizza place, you should really try this recipe! It’s a perfect all purpose type pizza dough. It can be stretched thin and bakes up with a pillowy edge (technical term cornicione).
The method is quite simple, and you’ll see some similarities in the technique to my overnight artisan walnut bread (there’s a video over there where you can watch some of the techniques I describe in the recipe if you’d like. Specifically the pinching, folding, and shaping techniques). The recipe is adapted from The Elements of Pizza by Ken Forkish, who, if you’ve been following me for awhile, you might have noticed I’m a big fan of. I love the more science-y approach he has to baking. There’s certainly an art to making your own bread and pizza, and a lot of it is done by feel and experience, but I find it helpful to understand the whys behind it.
Professional pizza ovens typically bake pizzas in just 1-3 minutes at 700 to over 1000 ºF, while in my home oven it takes a minimum of 6 minutes for a smaller pizza on the hottest setting my oven goes to. A typical 10-12″ pizza takes closer to 8-10 minutes in a well pre-heated oven at 550ºF. Because of this, the best doughs in a professional kitchen are not going to be the best dough in a home kitchen. More water will evaporate while baking at home due to the longer bake time. That’s why when you bake your pizzas at 425 ºF (which is what I see in a lot of recipes) for like 20 minutes, you’ll get a much stiffer and drier result.
To imitate a professional oven you want your home oven to get as hot as possible. That’s usually somewhere between 500 and 550 ºF. You also want to preheat your oven for an hour. Your oven may say that it’s preheated well before an hour is up, but, you need the heat to absorb into the walls of the oven. That way, when you open your oven door to slip in your pizza, you won’t lose as much heat. It doesn’t matter if you have a fancy Wolf or Viking oven or if you have a cheap one, this is just a matter of heat transfer and it takes time. Luckily, an hour happens to be the time it takes for the pizza dough to come up to room temperature and for the gluten to relax before you shape and top your dough.
As far as the dough itself is concerned, we use a slightly higher hydration (or a wetter) dough than most professional recipes to account for this additional evaporation. This recipe has a 70% hydration, which allows for a softer and doughier crust. The dough also uses a high percentage of salt. Salt not only provides flavor in the final product, but it also acts to retard the growth of the yeast. And, as I’ve said before and I’m sure will say again, a slow and cold fermentation leads to a tastier result, as it gives the yeast time to create those delicious flavor molecules as it processes the carbohydrates in the flour. Speaking of yeast, only a small amount is used to allow for the long and slow fermentation. I tend to use all purpose flour (and the recipe is written as such), but make sure to use a high quality (and higher protein one), like King Arthur Flour or Bob’s Red Mill. I find my bread and pizzas are a lot better when I use these high quality flours. You can use Italian 00 flour instead in this recipe, but I am pretty happy with the way my all purpose flour doughs come out, so don’t usually bother to source the more expensive imported flour.
Lastly, I want to talk about how to bake your pizza. We’ve already talked temperature, but what you bake on is equally important. For years I used a pizza stone, and that makes pizza way better than using a thin metal pizza baking sheet. But my pizza stone broke after 7 years and I switched over to a baking steel about 1 year ago and that took my pizza to the next level. Steel is a better conductor of heat than a ceramic pizza stone, so it is able to absorb more heat for a faster bake as well as more evenly for a more evenly baked result. It’s a bit of a pricey investment though, and a stone does work very well. Just make sure if you are using a ceramic pizza stone that it is safe to use at least to 550 ºF.
The other tool that’s useful for making pizzas is a pizza peel. To successfully use a peel, I’ve found a few helpful tips (out of a lot of trial and error).
- Dust the peel with flour, then brush the flour around to create a super thin layer over the entire peel. You’ll lose a lot of flour but that’s ok. The flour works as miniature ball bearings, so for a nice smooth roll you want a single layer of balls, not uneven layering.
- Top your pizza dough while it’s on the peel (unless you have great skills to transfer a topped dough, but I don’t recommend it unless it’s something you already do) BUT don’t prepare your pizza until you’re just a minute or two away from sticking it in the oven. If you leave the pizza dough on the peel it will absorb that thin layer of flour you just coated the peel with and then stick to the peel.
- Gently shake the peel and watch the pizza slide around the peel before opening the oven.
- If you end up leaving the pizza on the peel too long and it’s not able to slide around on the peel, lift the dough up in sections and add a little extra flour underneath, then blow air underneath the dough, essentially resettling the flour into a thin layer. Work in a round until you’ve loosened the dough from the peel.
- To transfer the pizza to the oven make sure the dough is loose and able to slide from your gentle shaking of the peel. Then open your oven and place the peel towards the back of your pizza steel or stone. Using short back-and-forth jerky movements slide the pizza towards the end of the peel and off of it, moving the peel out of the oven slowly as the pizza comes off of it and onto the steel/stone. Once the pizza is fully off the peel close the oven door and let it bake!
So, that’s pretty much how you make pizza dough and bake pizzas. I hope you guys try this dough, and then one of my many pizza recipes! If you have any questions please feel free to ask, or if you try it, let me know how it turns out for you! Leave a comment and/or rate the recipe below, tag me on Instagram (or #thecuriouschickpea), or share with me on Facebook! Happy pizza eating everyone!
Easy Overnight Pizza Dough
Ingredients
Instructions
Leyanne says
… have you ever used active sourdough starter in this pizza dough and can I use bread flower I also have double zero from Italy that’s actually made for pizza have a great night..!!?????
thecuriouschickpea says
You can absolutely use 00 flour! And I have used sourdough starter in similar pizza dough. Sourdough starters can have different hydration and then how much you use affects your dough hydration, but if you’re comfortable working with dough you can definitely play around with it!
Leyanne says
..FLOUR…LOL?
John says
1/4 tsp of instant yeast? Seems very low. No sugar?
thecuriouschickpea says
Hi John, yes just 1/4 tsp of yeast. This dough has a long and slow rise which is why I use such a small amount of yeast. This leads to a better flavor in the final dough. And no sugar is necessary! The flour is enough for the yeast to proliferate.
Candace says
I rarely review recipes, but I made this on Tuesday night, so that Wednesday evening I’d have a simple meal ready to go. I loved this crust, and mind you I did not follow the recipe perfectly, nor did I have the peel nor the stone. I just used a square small baking sheet, oiled it up, topped it and baked it. The crust was nicely crisped, with lovely coloring and such a nice flavor. I’ve made a lot of pizza dough recipes, but this one worked great with the limitations I had. AND THANK YOU for posting grams. I much prefer to make dough by weight instead of volume.
Also can I just mention how much I love pizza for using up the scraps? I had a cup of homemade spaghetti sauce left, which turned into pizza sauce. Some leftover shredded chicken, from the stock I had made for chicken noodle soup. And some languishing spinach in my fridge. One pizza was turned into bbq chicken + pineapple pizza. The other was spinach and anchovy.
thecuriouschickpea says
Hi Candace, I’m so glad you enjoyed the pizza dough! I sometimes don’t divide the dough and instead use all of it to make one big pan pizza (using a half sheet pan) instead. And I agree, I love using things up on pizza 🙂 . I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment, thank you!
Hassan Ali says
Great recipe? Have you tried using bread flour?
thecuriouschickpea says
Hi Hassan, I have made pizza dough with bread flour before as well as 00 flour. Both turn out with slightly different results (also good, just different). Bread flour absorbs more water (thanks to the higher protein content), so you will have a stiffer dough. You may want to sprinkle on just a bit more water to compensate, but that just depends on what result you are looking for! Pizza dough made with bread flour is more chewy.