06 Feb Homemade Pizza Dough
To celebrate National Pizza Day... or just Friday!
We are big pizza fans. It’s easily Adam and my favorite food. However, it’s only our favorite if done right and well and it starts and ends with the crust.
We like a super thin crust pizza. And, that is super hard to achieve at home. We just have an oven. Not a fancy pizza oven. (Although, if we ever found ourselves with massive cash to burn, a legit pizza oven would be one of the first things we purchase.)
So, after many years of attempts and fails (fortunately pizza fails rarely are true fails…) we think we have it down.
We use this dough recipe all the time and love to top it with everything from the traditional to the truly wild.
From the farm, we have found that the ground pork sausage works really well on pizza. We cook it in a skillet and top a red sauce or pesto pizza with it with plenty of mozzerella.
Shredded chicken also makes for great traditional white pizza or you can put a spin on it going for BBQ. And, one of our wackiest (but really good spins) has been using ground beef and making a taco pizza!
Here are a few things that make this dough recipe work:
- Bread flour will make the crust crispy (all purpose makes it chewy)
- Cornmeal adds a neat texture and flavor to the dough as it cooks
- High temperatures is the goal here. A real pizza oven is upwards of 900-1000 degrees. We feel good at 450, but you may have to play around and see what you oven can do and where you feel comfortable.
- 3½ to 4 cups bread flour, plus more for rolling
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 envelope instant dry yeast
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1½ cups water, 110 degrees F
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus 2 teaspoons
- Combine the bread flour, sugar, yeast and kosher salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and combine.
- While the mixer is running, add the water and 2 tablespoons of the oil and beat until the dough forms into a ball. If the dough is sticky, add additional flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together in a solid ball. If the dough is too dry, add additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
- Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead into a smooth, firm ball.
- Grease a large bowl with the remaining 2 teaspoons olive oil, add the dough, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in a warm area to let it double in size, about 1 hour.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 2 equal pieces.
- Cover each with a clean kitchen towel or plastic wrap and let them rest for 10 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 450.
- On an ungreased baking sheet, sprinkle cornmeal. Roll out dough until very thin and place onto baking sheet. Top with your favorite toppings and cook for 12-15 minutes. Keep an eye on it for desired brownness of crust.
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