Complete Guide To Making Pizza Dough

When it comes to pizza, the most important thing is the crust. Sauce, cheese and the toppings are important.

They however mean nothing if the crust is not very good.

In order to get a good crust, it all starts with the pizza dough.

This guide is going to show you everything you need to make the best pizza dough. Showing you all the best ingredients, tools, methods and also techniques.

Pizza Dough Recipes

Below you will find articles and guides on what makes the perfect pizza dough. First of all I wanted to share my go to recipes.

If you are in a hurry, these will help you get the very best pizza dough without the stress or hassle.

Pizza Flour and Why Its Essential For Making The Best Pizza Dough

Want to know the most important ingredient to make pizza dough? Yep, that’s right, the flour you use.

The type of flour can make a massive difference.

‘00’ Pizza Flour

The best flour to use for your pizza dough is Italian ‘00’. The flour is finer and has a much higher gluten content. This gluten is essential to help stretch the dough.

Strong Bread Flour

As an alternative to ‘00’ flour, you could use strong bread flour. It doesn’t have the same gluten content but does have more than standard flour so you can still make a tasty pizza dough. (Ignore the pureists that say you MUST use ‘00’)

Yeast

After flour the next essential ingredient is the yeast. If you didn’t have yeast then your pizza dough won’t rise.

The yeast basically eats the sugar within the flour and turns this into CO2. This is known as fermentation. It is the CO2 that causes the dough to get bigger and create air bubbles within the crust. (This is what gives it the great flavour and light taste.)

Now the type of yeast you use and the amount will impact the end result of your dough. Too much yeast and it rises too quickly, too little and it takes longer.

There are typically 3 types of yeast

Fresh
Active Dried
Instant Acting Yeast

How To Make Your Pizza Dough Better

There are 4 steps that go into making the best pizza dough. As already mentioned you need the right flour and a decent yeast. (You don’t need to go fresh, I personally use Instant yeast all the time.)

The next step is the hydration percentage, followed by kneading and then finally the last step is proofing.

Below I’m going to walk you through each of these steps. You will also see a number of articles to take your pizza dough making skills to the next level.

Dough Hydration

Knowing what Dough Hydration is and how it impacts the pizza dough can really help you develop an amazing pizza base. It’s basically the percentage of water you have in your dough.

The more water in your dough (or higher the hydration %), the thinner and crispier your dough becomes.

Understanding hydration levels can be a game changer when it comes to pizza making. Well worth reading the below articles.

Complete Guide On Pizza Dough Hydration

Kneading/Gluten Development

If you have made any bread in the past then you will know what kneading is. (A damn good arm workout, that’s what!)

Do you know why we Knead dough?

It’s all about the gluten and what’s known as guten development.

Gluten is very important when it comes to pizza dough. Its what helps to make your dough stretchy.

When we knead the dough, the gluten starts to stretch and form strands. Helping you to stretch out the dough to the perfect shape and keep that shape.

As well as these strands the gluten also creates pockets of CO2 in the dough. Its these pockets of air that help make the dough light and puffs up.

How To Knead Pizza Dough

Proofing/Rising

Like with any type of dough, you need to give it time to rise. For Neapolitan pizza this is very important.

It is this proofing time that produces an amazing texture and gives it a great depth of flavour.

There are some excellent recipes that only require you to leave the dough to rise for 2 hours. However, leaving it 8-48 hours will produce some incredible pizza dough.