Homemade Pizza Dough is easy to make by hand or in a stand mixer. This makes 4, 12 inch pizzas. You can also freeze this pizza dough recipe.
Making your own pizza dough at home is easy and delicious. You can add your own favorite toppings or even use it for more than just pizza!
We recommend using a pizza stone, pizza steel, or an indoor pizza oven for the best pizza. You’ll also need a pizza peel or a flat cutting board to transfer your pizza to the cooking surface. You could also use a perforated pizza pan.
Ingredients:
- Flour – You can use bread flour, all-purpose flour, or a mix of bread flour and 00 flour is what we use.
- Warm Water – You’ll need warm water to activate the yeast.
- Salt – We add salt to give the dough flavor.
- Olive Oil – To get a nice browning we use a bit of oil in the dough, not too much though.
How to make pizza dough
Combine the dry ingredients aside from the yeast in a bowl. In another bowl combine the yeast and the warm water. Let the yeast bloom for 5-10 minutes. Once bloomed add the yeast mixture plus 1 teaspoon of olive oil into the dry mixture.
Knead the dough by hand for about 10 minutes. You can also use a stand mixer, but you’ll need to follow your stand mixers guidelines for kneading dough. After kneading place the dough into an oiled bowl and cover with a clean cloth. Allow the dough to rest and rise for around an hour.
After the dough is rested you can divided it into 4 dough balls. Place the dough balls into oiled air tight containers and refrigerate for at least 24 hours.
When you’re ready to make pizza remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 2 hours loosely covered. This allows the dough to relax and makes it easy to stretch.
How to stretch pizza dough
To stretch pizza dough you want to define where the edge crust is going to be. Once you have the crust formed you can start to use your fingertips to push the dough from the center outwards towards the crust. Pop any air bubbles that may form. Rotate the pizza dough turning it and just spreading the dough outwards from the middle towards the crust. Use gravity with your knuckles hanging the dough if needed.
You want to make sure your dough is room temperature, you will take it out of the refrigerator and let it rise and sit at room temperature for about 1-2 hours. After this second rise you can begin to stretch the pizza dough. If you try stretching the dough too soon it will snap back just like a rubber band. The pizza dough will be too tough if you try to stretch it while it’s cold due to the proteins and gluten in the flour. Once the pizza dough warms up to room temperature it will loosen up and be more pliable.
Recipe Tips and Alterations:
- Use unbleached flour. We mix bread flour with 00 pizza flour, but you could also use all-purpose.
- The longer you let the dough cold ferment the tastier the crust will be.
How to store, reheat, or freeze:
- Refrigerate: Pizza dough can be refrigerated for up to 3-4 days. We typically freeze if we don’t finish it within 3 days.
- Freezing Pizza Dough: After refrigerating the dough balls for one day you can then freeze in a freezer-safe container and use it within 3 months
How to use pizza dough:
Pizza dough isn’t just for pizza. You can use it to make zeppoles, calzone, soft pretzels, crackers, dinner rolls, baguettes, pita bread, breadsticks, donuts, Stromboli, cinnamon rolls, dumplings, pigs in a blanket, and don’t forget garlic knots!
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, for a crispy pizza crust, use all-purpose flour; for a chewy pizza crust, use bread flour. We go with 75-80% bread flour and 25-20% 00 flour.
You want to let the dough rest and ferment a little so we do a cold ferment for at least 24 hours. You’ll get more air pockets, a higher rise, and stronger dough.
If you don’t mind the “crunch” from the resulting cornmeal on the bottom of your pizza, sure. We aren’t a fan and opt for a small amount of flour or you could use semolina flour with the bread flour for your work surface. It works well for us.
Let the pizza dough fully rise before freezing. We recommend dividing it into portions before freezing instead of freezing the whole batch as well.
Room temperature dough will stretch much better, making it easier to make your pizza. Otherwise it will be difficult to stretch and spring back like a rubber band.
This is 61% hydration pizza dough. This is a good hydration for a dough that will stretch easily and give you a comparable to NY style pizza slice.
Making pizza is pretty precise if you want a good stretch, we find that measuring in grams gives the best result.
You’ll notice it will spring back lightly when you gently push in on the dough. This means you’ve developed a nice beginning structure and you can proceed to the next step.
Per KitchenAid they recommend knead for 2 minutes as it’s equivalent to kneading by hand for 10-12 minutes. They also recommend you do not exceed speed 2 for more than 2 minutes when kneading dough and the total time mixing and kneading shouldn’t exceed 4-6 minutes. Read more here.
We use our Kitchenaid stand mixer almost daily. For the longevity and life of your mixer we recommend that you follow their instructions. For dough we need to knead longer we will do it by hand or use our Ankarsrum mixer.
More bread recipes
Homemade Pizza Dough
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Print Pin SaveIngredients
- 500 grams bread flour about 4 cups, you can also use all-purpose
- 109 grams 00 flour about 1 cup, or use all bread flour or all-purpose
- 18 grams salt 1 tablespoon
- 371 g warm water about 1 1/2 cups, at around 110 degrees F
- 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
- 1 tablespoon olive oil divided
Instructions
- In a large bowl combine all of the dry ingredients. In another bowl combine the yeast with the water and let sit for 5-10 minutes.
- Add the wet mix to the dry mix along with 1 teaspoon of olive oil.
- Hand knead the dough for about 10 minutes or use your KitchenAid Stand mixer at level 2 with the dough hook for 2 minutes. If you have a mixer that can knead for a longer period go for 6-8 minutes.
- Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a clean kitchen cloth. Allow the dough to rest for about an hour.
- Form 4 dough balls and then place them oiled into a container. Refrigerate for 24-48 hours.
- Remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 2 hours loosely covered.
- Preheat your oven to 550 degrees F with your pizza stone or steel inside. Let it heat up for an hour. Do this before the dough is finished resting.
- Once rested shape the dough into your desired pizza shape.
- Place the pizza dough onto a pizza peel dusted with flour and then add your desired toppings.
- Slide the pizza onto your pizza stone or steel and bake for 3 minutes and then rotate. Cook for another 3 minutes or until the toppings are done and crust is nicely browned on the edges.
- Pull the pizza out using your pizza peel and a pair of tongs. Allow to cool on a cooling rack.
- Slice, serve, and enjoy your homemade pizza.
Notes
Nutrition
The nutritional information is automatically calculated and can vary based ingredients and products used. If the nutrition numbers are important for you we recommend calculating them yourself.
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