With only four ingredients - flour, salt, water and yeast, this classic pizza dough recipe yields airy, perfectly flavored crusts that pizza dreams are made of.
Using this recipe you can easily make pizza dough in your very own kitchen in under 3 hours - it just doesn't get any simpler!
Recipe Video
Ingredients
Makes 4 x 250g dough balls for 12 inch pizzas, or 3 x 330g dough balls for 16 inch pizzas.
- 365g cold water
- 18g salt
- 9g active dried yeast or 7g instant dried yeast or 20g fresh yeast
- 610g flour (preferably type 00 flour)
All ingredients are available on Pizza Pro - delivered from Italy right to your door!
Directions
Our classic pizza dough recipe has only 3 easy steps: mixing, proofing and stretching.
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Mixing: Boil one third of the water, then add it to the cold water in a bowl. This creates the correct temperature for activating yeast. Mix the salt and yeast into the water.
Place the flour in a large bowl and pour the yeast mixture into it. Stir with a spoon until a dough starts to form. Continue mixing by hand until the pizza dough comes together and forms a ball. Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead with both hands for about 10 minutes, until it is firm and stretchy. Return the dough to the bowl. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 2 hours or until doubled in size.
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Proofing: When the dough has roughly doubled in size, divide it into 3 or 4 equal pieces, depending on what size you want your pizzas to be (12 inches or 16 inches). Place each ball of dough in a separate bowl, cover and leave to rise for another 30 - 60 minutes, or until doubled in size.
Note: It’s also possible to 'cold-prove' your pizza dough, a technique that allows the the dough to develop a deeper flavor. To do this, use half the amount of yeast listed in the ingredients, and leave the dough to rise in the fridge for 24-72 hours. When you are ready to use the dough, keep it outside the fridge for at least 3-5 hours, until it is up to room temperature.
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Stretching: Start with a rounded ball of pizza dough as this makes it easier to shape the base into a circle. Place the ball on a lightly floured surface, flour your hands and use your fingertips to press the dough into a small, flat disc. Working from the center, push the dough outwards while spreading your fingers, making the disc slightly bigger. Keep doing this till you have a roughly 12 or 16 inch pizza base. Neapolitan-style pizza bases are very thin, so you should be able to see through the base when you hold it up to the light. Take care when doing this – you don’t want it to tear.
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Once the pizza dough is stretched, lightly dust flour on your pizza peel and pull the base onto it. If you see any small holes in the dough, gently pinch them back together. Once you’re happy with the base, add your toppings and bake in your pizza oven for pizza in 60 seconds! We recommend starting with our Margherita Pizza recipe!
