Best-Ever Pizza Dough Recipe (No Knead) - Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making good pizza dough? ›

There are many tricks to achieving a tasty, homemade pizza dough that rises into a beautiful pizza crust, such as making sure your ingredients are at right temperature, using half bread flour for a stronger dough and half all-purpose flour for a nice rise, substituting honey for sugar to help caramelize the crust and ...

Too little yeast and your dough won't rise enough, and the pizza base will taste bland. Use too much yeast and your dough may over-ferment. Tell-tale signs are your dough expanding too much or tasting and smelling a bit sour, with an almost alcoholic aftertaste (the yeast produces alcohol as it ferments).

The five key ingredients for making the best pizza dough are flour, yeast, salt, water, and olive oil. These ingredients work together to create a dough that is perfectly textured, flavorful, and easy to work with. When making pizza dough, it's important to use high-quality ingredients and not overwork the dough.

Add sugar and oil to the dough

So what two ingredients set New York-style pizza crust apart? It's a combination of oil and sugar that gets added to the usual suspects of flour, yeast, water, and salt. When oil is added to pizza dough, it adds flavor, but more importantly, it coats individual grains of flour.

Active Dried Yeast - Most Common

Active dry yeast is the most commonly used type of yeast for making baked goods. It is yeast that has been dried out so that it has a longer shelf-life.

“A few days' rise is fine and will enhance the taste of the crust, but any more than three days and the yeast will start to eat up all the sugar in the dough and convert it into alcohol, which will adversely affect crust flavor,” Schwartz said. Over-proofing is another consequence of resting your dough for too long.

The key to really good pizza dough is to use as little yeast as possible (about 1% - 1.5% of the weight of the flour) and to let the dough ferment in the fridge for at least 24 hours, preferably 48, and even as much as 72.

Originally Answered: Should you poke holes in the bottom of a pie crust? Yes! It's a technique called “docking” pastry, and it helps let steam escape the crust when baking so that it doesn't puff up.

Adding milk to a homemade pizza dough recipe can change the texture and taste of the dough. Milk contains fat and protein, which can make the dough more flavorful and tender. The fat in milk can also help to create a softer and more pliable dough, which can make it easier to stretch and shape.

How long should pizza dough sit before stretching? ›

If your pizza dough is quickly snapping back or difficult to stretch, your dough is too tight. Cover your dough with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. After a bit of rest, the gluten in the dough will relax, making the process of stretching much easier.

“Walk away and let the dough rest for 15 minutes, longer if necessary,” Clara says. This breather allows the tight gluten strands to relax and settle into their new shape, making them more accommodating when you return.

Salt: Salt adds necessary flavor. Sugar: 1 Tablespoon of sugar increases the yeast's activity and tenderizes the dough, especially when paired with a little olive oil. Cornmeal: Cornmeal isn't in the dough, but it's used to dust the pizza pan. Cornmeal gives the pizza crust a little extra flavor and crisp.

Pizza dough loves warmth, so if you can find a way to add some extra heat, your dough will rise faster. One way to do this is to preheat your oven to the lowest setting (usually around 200 degrees Fahrenheit) and then turn it off. Place your pizza dough in the warm oven for 10-15 minutes until it begins to rise.

Nail the sweet spot — warm enough to rise at a decent rate, yet cool enough to develop flavor — and you're golden. Studies have shown that the optimum temperature for yeast to grow and flavor to develop is 75°F to 78°F.

Although oil in pizza dough is not required, it may be helpful. The oil improves the dough's stretchability while also keeping it hydrated. When you bake the dough, you can see how this process works, and the oil keeps the dough supple even after cooking.