The Goldilocks of Pizza Doughs | Pizza Dough Recipe | Pizza series

A pizza dough so good that it falls into the Goldilocks Zone: just the right amount of everything! I've worked on this dough for over 3 years, tweaking and modifying all the variables. It's not done, as a recipe is never truly 'done', but I can' t find anything I would change at the moment and it's in an excellent state in order to make amazing pizza, especially wood-fired pizza.
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- Table of Contents -
00:00 Intro
03:09 Flour selection
04:47 Combining ingredients
06:35 Autolysis
07:54 Kneading and first fermentation
10:50 Stretch and fold
11:57 Shaping and final fermentation
14:38 Final fermentation timing
15:37 Keys to success | Outro
Pizza Dough recipe:
Note: If you want to make the dough quicker, use more yeast (~4g) and don’t put it in the fridge for either fermentation period. You can have it ready to roll out into pizza dough within 2-3 hours, depending upon the ambient temperature of your kitchen.
-680g flour, Tipo 00 or all-purpose (100%)
-425g water, room temperature (62.5%)
-40g olive oil (6%)
Place all ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl. Using the dough hook attachment, a dough whisk or a wooden spoon, mix all the ingredients until you have created a shaggy, loose dough and there are no dry spots in the bottom of the bowl. Cover the bowl with a lid and let rest for 20 minutes before proceeding.
-13g salt, fine grain (2%)
-13g sugar, caster or granulated (2%)
-1.5g yeast, instant (see note) (0.2%)
While the dough is resting, mix these dry ingredients together in a small bowl or ramekin. Once the dough has rested for 20 minutes, sprinkle the dry mix over the top of the dough. Place the bowl into your stand mixer and mix on medium low speed for 4-5 minutes The dough ball should clear the sides of the bowl but will most likely still stick to the bottom. Alternatively, turn the dough out onto a floured work surface, sprinkle the dry ingredients over the top and knead by hand for 4-5 minutes. Dough will remain fairly sticky. Don’t overwork it. Once kneaded, place a cover over the bowl and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
After resting for half an hour, perform a series of stretch and folds on the dough. To do this, wet your fingers slightly, grab a handful of dough and gently stretch it up and fold it over the main mass. Continue in a circle around the bowl, taking 4-5 turns to stretch and fold sections of dough until complete. Cover again and place into the fridge for another 30 minutes.
Once the dough has rested again and cooled down, it’s time to shape. The first step is to prepare your work surface. I lightly wet my work surfaces with water, like I do with my hands. Just wet your fingertips and rub your surface or spray it a few times with a water sprayer. I find this is enough to keep the dough from sticking too much. It will stick a bit, but I don’t like to change the hydration of my dough by adding extra flour. Alternatively, if you still feel more comfortable working with flour, simply sprinkle as much flour as you need to keep your dough from sticking. It won’t matter too much. The system you feel most comfortable with is the best one:-)
Either way, once you have prepared your surface, you want to portion out your dough balls. I use scissors by cutting sections off of the dough directly from the bowl. But you can turn it out onto your surface and cut with a bench knife or regular knife. I generally make 3 large pizzas with ~385g sized dough balls, but you can make 4 medium pizzas @ ~300g each. And yes, you have to use a scale. Don’t try to eyeball it! Kidding, you do you:-) Place each portion of dough onto your work surface.
Working one by one, gently form the dough lumps into dough balls by tightening the skin with your palms and pushing the dough up into itself from the bottom with your (wet) fingertips. See my video or search CZcams for dough ball forming for an explanation of this technique. Place your rolled dough balls into a proving box or deep tray that has a lid. Place into the fridge and let ferment for at least 8 hours with a maximum of 12 hours for best results. If you prefer a chewier and stronger tasting dough, let the dough balls ferment for up to 3 days.
When ready to make pizza, carefully and as gently as possible form into pizza shape by pushing, pulling and stretching. Top, cook and eat!
Substitutions:
I highly recommend that you use the 00 flour if you can get it. The olive oil can be swapped for any oil. The sweetener can be brown sugar, honey or any sweetener that you have. If you don’t have instant yeast, active-dry yeast can be used as a 1 for 1 replacement. Fresh yeast can be used too, but needs to have the amount converted.

[@charitytycer7442]

I made your dough. It was excellent! Truly just right.

[@maker_food]

I'm glad you liked it. I'd love to hear your suggestions if you think there is anything that can be improved..? I tweaked the yeast amounts just recently. It's an ongoing process of refinement and it's great to get data points from other people's experiences. We're all in this together:-)

[@ki2009ki]

you had me at pizza dough!!! =) but, and I stand to be corrected, the OO standard where I come from refers to the size of the milled grain, not the gluten content. This means a T45 (40?) or lower other would as well, assuming the same level of gluten... I admit I need to look into this but from what my granny taught me, this is what I was lead to believe. please prove me wrong.
excellent content, keep it up =)

[@maker_food]

I think you are absolutely correct. All of my research indicates that the numbers refer to the milling size, not the gluten content specifically. Thanks for the clarification. It just so happens that most the 00 flours that I have encountered here fall into that 10-11% protein, so I can kind of get away with equating that number standard to the gluten amount. Right, haha??! Thanks for watching. Glad you enjoyed it:-)