Pizza Dough

Thin crust style, high temp bake on a stone.

TL;DR

  1. Flour, water, yeast, salt, sugar, oil knead together.
  2. Rest 24h. Divide it up, then rest another 24h.
  3. Bake it on a stone at as high of heat as possible.

Notes

Equipment

Hydration

Hydration (percent) means amount (by weight) of water or water-like stuff divided by amount (by weight) of flour. Different flour types can affect the amount of hydration that's ideal. I've been told that flours with more protein (like bread flour) are more thirsty. That is, to get the same consistency, you need to use more water with bread flour than you do with all-purpose.

The Recipe

Multiply it by the number of pizzas you want to make.

Ingredients (Per pie) for 12 inch diameter.

With this list, that's 73 percent hydration. (200g water / 275g flour) - Depending on variations in flour or your preference, you will probably want to adjust that. Kneading in more flour is way easier than kneading in water, so err on the side of higher hydration.

To make larger pies, or for thicker crust, just keep the same ratios but scale everything up:

Ingredients (per pie) for 15-16 inch diameter.

Method

Make the dough

  1. Whisk lukewarm water and sugar to dissolve. Then sprinkle yeast. It should smell and get foamy after a couple mins. If not, your water is too hot or the yeast is dead.
  2. Write down all the amounts of ingreds you plan to use, so you can adjust next time.
  3. Dump everything else in there and mix with a rubber scraper in the bowl until it makes kind of a chunky, dusty mixture. Then tip it onto the counter and knead for a few minutes into an elastic ball of dough. Dust with as much flour as necessary, but as little as possible - to keep from sticking to your hands and the counter.
  4. Leave the dough ball on the counter, clean out the bowl you used, and dry it. Drizzle a bit of oil in it and then put the dough ball in. Gently rotate and flip the dough with your hand to coat it all in oil. Cover with plastic wrap.
  5. Leave in the fridge for 8-24 hours. (Ideally 20-24)

Divide the dough

  1. Tare your scale with dough in bowl. Then tip the dough out onto dusted counter and knead very briefly to get back into a ball. Put the bowl back on the scale to get the weight of the removed dough. Divide by number of pies for a target separated dough ball weight.
  2. Use a counter scraper blade thing to chop as best you can into even pieces. Weigh each and add or subtract a little to get each one the same mass, plus or minus perhaps 5g.
  3. Put into separate airtight containers, keep in mind they'll rise a bunch so choose containers that give them plenty of space. If your containers are completely sealed and leak-proof, unlatch one latch or something to give air a tiny release path. You don't want them to really pressurize - just want to keep the moisture in.
  4. Leave in the fridge another 8-24 hours. (Ideally 20-24)

Make the Pizza

  1. Take a dough ball out of its container and give it a very brief knead into a ball, as round as possible!! I've found that the rounder you can get the initial ball, the better the odds of having a nice circular pizza. Leave it on the counter under a towel or something.
  2. Put stone in oven. Regardless of oven type, blast it to the max. (550F for kitchen, 740F for Blackstone, 900? for ooni.) Then give it 15 mins or so for everything to build up as much heat as possible.
  3. Roll out, stretch out, turn out pizza dough into a circle. Dust peel in semolina flour (or cornmeal) and put it on there. Now, the clock is ticking. Quickly put sauce and toppings on there and slide it onto stone. (The longer you leave it on the peel, the higher the odds of a sticky launch sequence failure disaster)
  4. Bake it and serve. :)