Pizza Dough

This is a short post documenting a pizza recipe that I found through an elaborate process of experimenting at home and researching various sources.

Pictures will follow but for now:

Ingredients for one oven tray

  • 400g of Flour (Italian Type 00 ideally)
  • 1/2 cube (22g) of Yeast
  • Tea Spoon of Salt
  • Table Spoon of Olive Oil
  • Pinch of Sugar
  • 180ml of water

Instructions

Put the flour in a big bowl. In a smaller bowl put the yeast with some lukewarm water, dissolve the yeast and add salt, oil and sugar.

Then add the yeast to the flour and use an electric kitchen mixer to slowly mix the dough. Add water as needed. The dough should be moist and smooth.

Once the dough is one big lump, put away the mixer and use your hands for the final kneading and form a nice ball of dough. Let it rest for 2-3 hours in a nice an warm spot. Sunny window works great.

After that, the dough should be roughly double the size. Now spread it out with your hands or a rolling pin. People claim that with a rolling pin, the dough is less fluffy but for me gentle rolling pin application works just fine and is faster.

Now add sauce (more on that later) and your other toppings.

Get your household oven to 230ºC and bake the pizza for 12-16 minutes. You will know when it looks ready. I’m using heat from the bottom for 2/3 of the time and the last 1/3 from above to properly melt any cheese that has not melted by then.

Pictures and ideas for toppings will follow.

10 thoughts on "Pizza Dough"

  1. Kai says:

    I can attest that the recipe posted by phlp is excellent.

    If you cannot be bothered with three different types of flour I suggest the following:

    – 500g Pizza flour (I use Caputo cuoco)
    – 25g fresh beer yeast or the dried equivalent
    – 2 tsp. sugar
    – 10g salt

    Kneed the dough for 10-15 minutes, let it rise at room temperature for about an hour and then let it ferment in the refrigerator for at least a day.

    1. Kai says:

      I forgot to include 300ml of water in the list of ingredients.

  2. Dr. Pink says:

    A really entertaining french cooking nerd, on his odyssey for the best home made pizza: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURsDaOr8hWV_M3AUhvpEwTcE9865Uwk1

  3. Holger says:

    thanks for sharing. If you are interested in understanding recipes for yeast-based doughs, Baker’s percentage (Teigausbeute) is something to read up on.

    Roughly, if we “normalize” recipes for yeast-based doughs on 1kg of flour, there are 2 degrees of freedom in recipes: (1) the amount of water (2) the kind of flour being used and especially the amount of protein (gluten is the glue of the dough and more protein makes the dough stick together better).

    With 180g Water for 400 g flour, the baker’s percentage (Teigausbeute) 145 is fairly on the “dry” side. Since the pizza is topped with wet stuff, this usually is okay and makes handling of the dough easier. Using Tipo 00 flour is of course authentic, yet in Germany, DIN Type 405 is a suitable alternative, as it is comparable in protein content. If you want to experiment with higher protein content, you might want to use speltflour (Dinkelmehl) or manually add some gluten.

    The most important aspect (if you have an acceptable dough) for tasty pizza is in the baking. What I do is what my oven’s manual suggests: Maximum heat from the bottom and above and sliding in the pizza in the lowest slot. I then bake it till the top looks good (cheese melted and roasted to my taste) by that time, the bottom of the pizza is also great.

    1. hukl says:

      Thank you very much for the info!

  4. Christian says:

    Danke für das leckere Rezept! Ich habe es gestern endlich mal ausprobiert. Aus Gewohnheit habe ich 200°C/Umluft gemacht. Bei den nächsten Versuchen gehe ich mal auf Ober/Unterhitze.

    1. hukl says:

      Ich hoffe es gelingt!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *