Best-Ever Pizza Dough Recipe (No Knead) - Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to good pizza dough? ›

There are many tricks to achieving a tasty, homemade pizza dough that rises into a beautiful pizza crust, such as making sure your ingredients are at right temperature, using half bread flour for a stronger dough and half all-purpose flour for a nice rise, substituting honey for sugar to help caramelize the crust and ...

Kneading the dough actually plays a role in the texture of the crumb. So if you knead heavily, like I do in homemade sandwich bread, you'll end up with a closed texture (no bubbles), which is not what we want with pizza dough. So just knead until it's elastic, soft, and sticky.

If you're keen to intensify its flavor even more, enhance the dough further – either with infused oil brushed over top, cheese woven into its edges or a combination of herbs and spices kneaded into it or sprinkled on it.

You can use a few methods to help pizza dough rise faster. One is to use baking soda and a warm water mixture. Another is to use a warm environment, such as an oven with a light or microwave. Finally, adding yeast and sugar can help the dough rise.

When you under-knead bread or pizza dough, the dough will not pass the windowpane test. This will cause the final product to not turn out with the texture that you are looking for. You will know when the gluten is fully developed by stretching a small amount of dough between your fingers without it tearing.

What would happen if we forgot to add salt to the dough? The result would be sticky and weak dough, difficult to work, with a poor consistency and development, an absent caramelization and an excessive fermentation.

The advisable temperature for pizza dough is from 22° to 26° C. It seems evident the importance of reaching a specific dough temperature in order to obtain a balanced management of leavening.

Instant milk powder makes bread dough super soft and fluffy and also helps to give it a good rise. It also contributes to the dough staying nice and soft after baking for a little longer than a recipe that does not use milk powder. I use full fat milk powder but if you can only find non-fat or skim that works too.

Pizza dough needs time to relax and rise, but you don't want it to over-rise. That's where aeration comes in. You introduce air without overworking the gluten by shaking or folding the dough. This makes for a more relaxed dough yielding a light and airy crust.

A slow fermentation gives our pizza dough its chewy-crispy texture and depth of flavor. It starts with your choice of sourdough starter (aka levain) or a simple mixture of flour, water, and active dry yeast (poolish) left to ferment for 12 hours. Both options start fermentation and build flavor in the dough overnight.

What can you add to pizza dough to make it better? ›

My favorite thing to add is lemon zest. You can also add herbs like thyme or oregano - fresh or dried. You might add chopped olives, or chopped sun-dried tomatoes.

The top chefs all agree that the best pizzas are all about the crust, so salt in the dough should never be sacrificed at the altar of salty toppings. “Building a pizza is like building anything else – you have to make compromises and consider the whole when choosing the parts.

While it may seem counterintuitive, adding more water can actually make your pizza dough crispier.