August 17, 2012 - 9:56am
Pizza Dough
I have never made homemade pizza dough. I am looking for a recipe that uses active dry yeast and bread flour as that's what I have on hand. I have read several posts on here about using the above ingrediants. However, I have not found any that use both. I plan to make the pizza tonight. Therefore, if I get some info soon I will have about 6 hours to let the dough sit in fridge if needed. I notice some say let it sit in fridge and some say let it rise on counter while others say roll it right out and cook. Wow! I am confused by all the information! Please help!!!
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I forgot to add that I like a crust that is somewhere between thin and thick. Not cracker thin but not deep either.
For a basic and quick to prepare pizza dough, I use the following. This is pretty basic American pizzaeria style dough and makes enough for 4 10" pizzas.
5 cups bread flour
1T sugar
3t coarse salt
1t yeast
2T olive oil
2 cups room temp water
Mix, rest 5 minutes to hydrate, and then knead 5 minutes adding flour as needed.
Divide into 4 balls (oil and freeze any unneeded dough balls). Rise dough balls about 1 hour. Form 10" pizza crusts, add toppings and bake.
This is a good one, Nancy Silverton's Mozza pizza dough recipe. It's pretty quick, can be made within your timeframe:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/nancy-silvertons-pizza-dough-recipe.html
Pizza dough usually tastes better after a night in the fridge. You can let it come back up to temp for an hour, or use it cold. I have done both, and personally haven't noticed a huge difference in results. The trick with refrigerating pizza dough is to find a recipe that calls for it; if the recipe doesn't call for it, you can convert it to a refrigerator pizza dough recipe by doing both of the following:
Depending on the recipe, dough balls made this way can keep for 2 days in the fridge easily, possibly longer. For longer storage, you can also freeze the dough balls right after shaping, and defrost them in the fridge the day before using.
On the right hand list of Favorite Recipes...the Pizza Primer is a recipe.
Sylvia
The go-to place for pizza is http://www.pizzamaking.com
Click on "pizza recipes" and it'll take you to a bunch of dough recipes. Pick what you like, they're all good. I use the New York Style dough recipe myself, it's never failed me.