The only pizza dough recipe you need
Seems like pizza is enjoying a moment of late, I'm not sure it ever went away, but I seem to be seeing a lot of social media about pizza.
( it’s probably just the various algorithms serving me up what I truly care about - but let’s put that aside for the sake of this story - ok )
Let’s be clear, I've eaten a lot of pizza in a lot of places and I've also made a few in my time when we were in the food business, and yes I also have a pizza oven at the workshop ( just for emergencies though). So I thought now’s a good time to share my go-to pizza dough recipe.
It’s not the quick way, and it’s not overly easy - but, it is good
1kg Double zero Flour ( if you didn't know “double zero” refers to the grind size of the flour - the finest.)
7 grams yeast - dry ( fresh yeast is better but hard to find non-commercial quantities)
21 grams olive oil
40 grams salt flakes
1300 ml warm water
Makes about 10 pizzas, so ring your mates.
Add the salt to the 00 flour and mix through - yes it’s a lot of salt, but to get a good long fermentation in weak flour you need mucho salt.
Mix the yeast and olive oil together in a small amount of warm water in a separate bowl and wait until it bubbles up.
I didn't mention that you're probably going to need a stand mixer with a dough hook to get the best results. I remember we broke our commercial mixer making big batches of pizza dough one day and had to knead the dough by hand for a week or so until the parts came in to fix the mixer - it’s not fun.
To start with, you can set the mixer to a low speed while you’re adding the yeast mixture and some of the water. Once you have the dough combined add the rest of the water and speed up the mixer to about halfway, let it run for a good 10 minutes.
You can check the dough by pinching it between your fingers and stretching it out, you want a stretchy dough that doesn't break - keep going with the mixer for another 5 minutes or so, until you’re happy.
Time to rise - set aside the bowl in a warm spot and let it rise until doubles in size.
After about an hour or so, turn out the dough into another bowl or tray that will fit into the fridge.
Leave the dough in the fridge for 24 hours. This should produce some yeasty ,stretchy dough that will crisp up nicely when cooked.
I usually let the dough come back to room temp before portioning out into pizza-size balls - the size of the ball varies, I work on a ball size of 400 grams to make a 15-inch pizza. Might take a little trial and error the first time round ( mmm - sorry)
The pizza dough is going to last in the fridge for maybe another 24 hours, at a stretch ( sorry again) 48 so best to plan on using it pretty soon after you have made it.
I’ve used this dough for a long time and tried it many ways in terms of cooking it will work in a wood, gas and electric pizza oven, works great in a gozney roccbox and if you don't have a pizza you can use a cast-iron skillet - here’s how.
Heat up your oven as hot as it can get - oil your cast iron skillet and roll out your dough to the size of the skillet, press the dough into the skillet and up the sides.
Place your toppings onto the dough, this is kind of a deep-dish pizza, so use a decent amount of cheese and then you want to first cook the base by cooking over the hotplate or gas burners, when your about ¾ of the way cooked ( slightly brown ) put the whole thing into the oven the cook to finish the pizza, keep an eye on it but shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.
Now, all you need to think about is how delicious it’s going to be.
