Making Pizza Dough

Making pizza dough is fun and easy if you have a great pizza dough recipe, understand the basics, and use the proper ingredients, tools and techniques.

Homemade dough is what will separate your pizzas from all of the store bought products, whether from a pizzeria or grocery store, and is what makes the process so rewarding. Getting your hands dirty…literally, connects you to your food.

With a bit of learning and a little practice you will become one of the best pizza makers in your town. Whether you are cooking for one or many… you will amaze yourself, and your friends and family, with your dough making skills.

Why the Confusion?

The pizza crust is the most important component to creating a great pizza…and the element that gives people the biggest challenge making pizza dough. In fact, while we were building our website our friends and family kept telling us that if we could teach them how to make a great pizza crust...they would visit once a week. Ok, so our friends and family are prone to making us feel good...but the point is that a lot of people find making pizza dough confusing and mysterious.

My wife is the baker in the family, and I handle more of the cooking duties. I am pretty good at throwing stuff into a pan, and like the creative process of combining flavors and textures. Baking on the other hand requires exact measurements for success…this tests my patience and attention span.

Making pizza dough combines both the skills and science of baking with the creativity of cooking. I think this is both what draws people to wanting to make homemade pizza, but also creates frustration. Help is on the way…

Never perfect!

Most of us can follow a dough recipe that will result in a good pizza. If you are in this camp then give yourself some credit! You will find recipes, information, and techniques at Homemade-Pizza-Made-Easy that will allow you to improve your pizza making.

I want to share a secret with you…most bread bakeries and pizza shops rarely get it perfect! If a score of 10 is perfect, most bakeries operate at a 6 or 7 day in and day out…sometimes even lower.

Let me ask you a question to prove my point. Have you every purchased a loaf of bread from the store and when you got it home there was something wrong with it? Was the bread shorter than usual? Did it have holes in the middle of it? Was the crumb dry? Did the top pull apart? Did it fall apart when you tried to spread peanut butter on it? All of these are signs of problems with the bread and the preceding baking process. The baker did not get it perfect!

Granted, bread baking is more difficult than pizza making. But the same thing holds true for pizza shops…they are never perfect! You will have successes and failures as well…that is part of the process. I choose to take my not so perfect dough’s in stride; they are part of the learning process, just part of learning to make pizza dough

Many Variables

Flour, water, salt, and yeast…

Four simple ingredients are the foundation for bread and pizza. For those of us that are not professional bakers, it is intuitive to think that it should be pretty easy to mix these ingredients together and get a useable final product. Looks can be deceiving, however.

Besides these ingredients, temperature and humidity are variables that can affect your pizza dough. A dough that comes out perfect one day may not another day because of changes in your kitchens temperature and humidity.

Now back to those ingredients…while they may seem uncomplicated, they in fact can greatly affect making pizza dough. Commercial flour is actually a blend of several types of flour. The flour is blended to try and create a consistent final product, because the characteristics of wheat vary significantly from field to field.

The type of flour used is an important element in the success of the final product. The most common types of flour used are: All Purpose, Bread, and High Gluten. The home chef is most familiar with All Purpose flour, but most pizzerias use some type of High Gluten flour. If you are trying to create a pizza crust that is similar to your neighborhood pizza shop, using the High Gluten flour is the way to go…

Yeast is an active, living microorganism. While the process of making yeast has improved dramatically in the past decade, there is still variability within the yeast. Yeast can get old and can in fact die.

Good quality, fresh yeast is another important element to the success of your pizza crust. If you have a packet of yeast in your pantry that is older than your school aged children, throw it out and shop for fresh yeast. The process of Activating Yeast will tell you whether you have dead yeast, there is also an expiration date stamped on the package.Good quality, fresh yeast is another important element to the success of your pizza crust. If you have a packet of yeast in your pantry that is older than your school aged children, throw it out and shop for fresh yeast. The process of Activating Yeast will tell you whether you have dead yeast, there is also an expiration date stamped on the package.

Whether you know it or not the water coming out of your tap changes all of the time. In addition, in some parts of the country the water is softer than other areas where the water is harder. This difference in water will have an impact on your baking.

So, there are many variables affecting the success or failure of each dough you make. Some of them are in your control, but many of them are not. I encourage you to begin by making pizza dough by hand so that you can develop a feel for what works and what doesn’t. By getting your hands dirty you will feel the changes and can make changes to counteract those variables.

Mixing the Dough

High Gluten Flour

Commercial pizza made at your favorite pizzeria probably uses a blend of flours that are made specifically for pizza.

This blend has a higher gluten level than the all-purpose flour most home cooks are using.

If you like a crispier crust, use flour with a gluten level between 11.5% to 12.5%

There are three (3) primary methods of mixing the dough. Using a Bread Machine, a Kitchen Mixer, or by Hand. There are many opinions about which method is best; my experience is that the finished product is very different depending on the method you use. Your personal preference will ultimately determine which method is right for you and your family?try all of them and choose which works best for you.

For complete instructions for all three methods see Dough Mixing. Learning to mix dough by hand will build your personal understanding of what the dough should feel and look like, I would encourage you to give this a try and learn the basics. I guarantee that you will develop a sense of pride and accomplishment as you learn?and will have a ton of fun making pizza dough along the way!

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