You can make simple pizza dough in an hour or two before you want to make pizza, but that is a pale imitation of the great pizza dough this recipe makes. It’s no more work: you just start earlier and stick the dough in the fridge for 3 days to let it rise slowly and ferment a bit. The result is a smooth cohesive dough as the gluten opens up and tangles together, that is springy, lighter and tastier.
This just means that you mix up your pizza dough Monday night or Tuesday morning and put it in the fridge, to have pizza on Friday or Saturday. The work is about the same otherwise.
I got this recipe from my friend (and old IBM Instruments colleague) Sue Egan. Her recipe is all in grams, and is really simple to weigh out. I give you the full recipe, which makes 4 pizzas, the half recipe and approximate conversions to English measures. But it is simpler and more accurate to use a cheap kitchen scale. If you don’t have one, put it on your holiday gift request list!
In this recipe, we use King Arthur general purpose flour. Other flours made have slightly different densities. We suggest using Kosher salt, and measuring it by weight is easiest. The density of Diamond crystal salt and Morton’s kosher salt are quite different because of different crystal shapes. Morton’s is nearly twice as dense, so you measure half as much by volume, but of course by weight you just weigh the salt.
We mixed up the dough using a stand mixer. The dough is not so heavy that you need the dough hook beater: the normal beater will work fine. You can also mix it in a food processor or by hand.
• 932 g King Arthur flour
• 560 g lukewarm water
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 16 g kosher salt
• 8 g sugar
• 1 Tb olive oil
Half recipe
• 466 g flour (3 ½ cups)
• 280 g lukewarm water (1 ¼ cups, scant)
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 8 g kosher salt (1 Tb plus 1 tsp if using Diamond)
• 4 g sugar (2 tsp)
• ½ Tb olive oil
1. Weigh out the flour, sugar and salt and add to the mixer bowl.
2. Weigh out the water, and add the yeast to it. Add to the mixer bowl
3. Add the olive oil to the mixer bowl.
4. Mix until well combined. The dough will be a bit sticky.
5. Place the dough into a covered plastic container with room for 100% expansion, and place in the refrigerator for 72 hours.
Pizza day
On pizza day, take the dough out of the fridge 3-4 hours before you want to use it, so it warms up to room temperature.
1. Put a pizza stone in the oven and heat it to 475˚ F for an hour or so.
2. Prepare the pizza sauce. We use one 6 oz can of tomato paste, one can of water, and 1/4 to 1/3 cup homemade tomato sauce. Put them in a blender and mix in 2 cloves of minced garlic, along with basil, rosemary and oregano. If the sauce seems sour, add a pinch of sugar.
3. Empty the dough onto a floured board, and weigh it in a small, tared bowl.
4. If you use the half recipe, divide the dough into two pieces weighing about the same. In our case we had 744 g of dough and divided it into two pieces weighing 372 g each. Check the weight of both pieces to make sure it is evenly divided. The weight will vary depending on how much flour the dough picks up.
5. Pick up one dough portion and begin tucking the dough ends into the middle. Continue this until you have made a smooth, round ball. Repeat with the remaining dough.
6. Flatten one of the dough balls on the floured board with your hands. While you may be tempted to roll the dough out with a rolling pin, you will get lighter dough if you don’t press all the bubbles out, but instead stretch the dough by hand. You can freeze the remaining balls for another day if you wish. We stored ours in a Ziplock freezer bag.
7. To stretch the dough, pick it up and stretch the top of the disk and then rotate the disk. Keep rotating the disk and stretching until it is close to the final size.
8. Here is a good example video on stretching the dough. If the dough tears, lay it down and patch the dough by pulling a little over the tear. You can finish your stretching with the dough on the floured counter top, rotating it as you stretch. Resist the temptation to toss the spinning dough into the air unless your kitchen floor is scrupulously clean!
9. Lift the dough and sprinkle a little cornmeal under it to make sure it doesn’t stick to the counter, and slide the dough disk onto a pizza peel. Sticking to the counter is less likely than with 1-hour dough, since the dough is much more cohesive.
10. Pour some of your tomato sauce onto the dough and spread it out, and then add slices of fresh mozzarella. Top with whatever you like.
11. Slide the pizza onto the hot pizza stone in the oven and bake for about 18 minutes.
And now, you have a delicious pizza with a crust you can be proud of!
Addendum a week later
We made another pizza from the frozen dough ball. It was even more cohesive and easier to stretch. The resulting pizza crust was tenderer and a bit more flavorful.