An easy, homemade pizza dough recipe that is perfect for everyone, even if you’ve never made your own dough.
Cooking More Recipes from Scratch
While trying to follow a more Mediterranean diet and lifestyle, one goal is to try making more things from scratch. Rather than buying the store bought versions.
I recently tried my and at making homemade pizza dough and after trying numerous recipes, tips and tricks, we created this easy and fool-proof method.
Homemade Pizza Dough Ingredients
The beauty of cooking pizza dough is that you don’t need many ingredients. You simply need flour, water, olive oil, salt, sugar and yeast.
This recipe calls for plain all purpose flour, but you could definitely try it with whole wheat flour or even bread flour. If you change the flour, the water needed may vary though.
We also used a bit of corn meal during the baking process, it adds a nice flavor and texture to the finished product. It isn’t needed though if you want to skip or don’t have it on hand.
Tips for Getting the Perfect Dough
Making your own dough can be intimidating but we’ve discovered a few tips along the way that can help put your mind at ease.
- Warm Water is needed to activate the yeast. You don’t want your water to be too cold or too hot, otherwise the yeast won’t work properly and your crust won’t rise correctly when cooked. We simply let the tap run a bit until the water felt warm to the touch but not hot and not room temperature.
- Make sure your yeast is fresh. We keep a small jar of yeast in the fridge but you can use the individual packets as well. Just make sure your yeast isn’t expired.
- Set a timer when it comes time to kneading the dough. The recipe calls for the dough to be kneaded for 5 minutes. The first few times we made this recipe we assumed it had been five minutes but we under estimated the time and the dough didn’t turn out correctly. Trust us when we say it has to be kneaded for 5 minutes.
- This recipe makes 2 standard size pizzas. You can split the dough into two and freeze one for later if you only need one dough. We simply oiled a plastic bag, placed the dough inside and stored in the freezer. When we wanted to use the frozen dough, we placed it in the fridge overnight to thaw.
Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe
Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe for Beginners
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/3 cup warm water (water should be warm to touch, not hot and not room temp)
- 2 and 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (divided, not used all at once)
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 3.5 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup cornmeal (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 100 degrees F
- In a large bowl, add the water, yeast and sugar. Whisk together lightly
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for 5 minutes. During this time, yeast should bubble and start to create a brownish film on top of the water
- Remove plastic wrap and add 2 tbsp olive oil, salt and flour to bowl
- Using a wooden spoon, gently stir together until a dough and sticky and mostly combined (a little bit of loose flour is ok but try to incorporate most into dough)
- Sprinkle a bit of flour onto a workstation and add dough
- Set a timer for 5 minutes and gently knead dough for full 5 minutes. Dough should become less sticky and surface should smooth out once completed.
- Troubleshooting – if dough remains too sticky, slowly add 1 tbsp of flour at time and incorporate. Be careful of adding too much flour as this will dry out dough.
- Once dough is smooth and formed into one ball, it's ready to rise. Gently use remaining olive oil to lightly grease the same large bowl you mixed the dough in.
- Add dough to bowl and turn it gently a few times to coat all sides.
- Cover dough with plastic wrap and place in preheated oven, immediately turn oven off and close the door
- Allow bread to rise for 60-70 minutes, until doubled in size
- Once doubled in size, remove from oven. Remove plastic wrap and gently punch dough to release any air.
- Gently divide dough in half to form two equal size pizza doughs.
- Your dough is now ready to use to create a pizza or you can freeze for later. To freeze, simple form dough into a ball and lightly coat inside of plastic bag with olive oil. Place dough inside, seal tightly and place in freezer. Once ready to use, simply defrost dough in fridge overnight before use.
- To use dough immediately, use rolling pin to roll out Into standard round pizza shape. Sprinkle baking sheet with cornmeal and place dough on top. Top with desired toppings and bake in oven at 425 degrees for 10-15 minutes.
