Let's talk dough, one of my favorite things to work with. Pizza dough is one of those things, when done correctly can be such a rewarding process. From the kneading of the dough, until it becomes soft and velvety, to working with it, to the most rewarding part, biting into a slice of the soft, flavorful pizza.
My process of making pizza dough is so simple, and just contains basic ingredients.
With my recipe and process, you can use this dough for an amazing thin crust pizza. It holds up so well under all of that goodness, the tomatoes sauce, cheese and toppings of your choice.
Pineapples on pizza, yay or nay? It doesn't matter here because all we will focusing on is the wonderful dough.
Even though the ingredients are basic and simple, I feel the process of how it's mixed together is what makes this super special.
When making our dough, we will be adding all our dry ingredients to a mixing bowl, and then add our wet. However we will be leaving out the "fat" in our recipe right until the end.
Incorporating this right at the very end, working it into the dough, is one of the ways that makes this dough stand out.
After mixing our dough we will be fermenting it, leaving it to rise for several hours. Fermenting our dough a little enhances the dough, giving it a wonderful and robust flavor.
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4 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour
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1 tsp salt
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1 and 3/4 cup water
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1/4 cup pure cane sugar
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1 packet (1/4 oz or 2 and 1/4 tsp) active dry, or instant yeast
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2 tbsp olive oil
As I mentioned above, one of the ways of enhancing this dough was incorporating the oil at the very end. However, throughout this entire recipe there are a several things I do to make this dough the best it can be.
1. Firstly, we are going to add our water to a heat safe/microwavable bowl. Heat up your water, then add in sugar.
2. You want to dissolve your sugar completely into the hot water and let it cool a little.
3. After water and sugar has cooled to touch, (you still want it to be warm), add in your yeast and give everything a mix until that yeast is thoroughly combined.
4. Let mixture sit for a couple minutes until yeast starts to bloom.
5. Add flour and salt into a mixing bowl and mix well until all that salt is incorportated.
6. Add in bloomed yeast mixture to your flour and salt.
7. On a stand mixer with your dough hook on speed 1, or 2 (low, medium low) start to mix your ingredients until it comes together.
8. Knead for about 4 to 5 minutes with your dough hook on low to medium low speed.
9. After dough had come together and have been worked with for about 5 minutes, add in your oil.
10. Knead the oil in lastly for another 2 minutes until you get a smooth dough.
11. Remove from mixer. Form into a dough ball, sprinkle some corn flour all around, place back into bowl, cover with towel and let rest for at least 3 hours.
12. Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. This is an important step as well. You want your oven to be preheated for at least 15 minutes before baking your pizza.
12. Divide dough into two equal pieces.
13. Roll out one dough piece to your likeness for thickness, making sure the ends have a thicker piece for crust. Place pizza sauce on top, cheese, toppings you desire and place in oven (on pizza pan or pizza stone) to make for 12-15 minutes.
14. After 12 -15 minutes, place oven on broil and broil for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Check often since each broiler is different.
15. Remove from and brush butter all along the crust of the pizza. This softens it up and adds wonderful buttery flavor.
16. Optional, you can sprinkle grated parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning on pizza and crust.
Enjoy this delicious homemade pizza, nice and warm. This is a staple in our home and I hope it can become one of yours as well.
Our favorite meat toppings are meatballs cut up into pieces, salami, and roast beef.