My Pizza Dough Recipe

Well, I guess it's about time that I post the dough recipe that I use. I don't take credit for this dough recipe (but honestly who can take credit for one nowadays). I've followed the basic food processor method from Kenji at Slice but halved it and changed it around oh so slightly.

This is an epic post so if you don't pay attention to any of the others, I recommend at least this one.

So, where to begin.

A caveat is that this recipe is written with measures by weight at the moment. I hope to post a good measure by volume recipe soon. A kitchen scale is a good investment for any budding home chef.

The first note that I have is that this recipe is meant to be a cold fermented dough, meaning it will need at least 24 hrs of refrigeration before baking, but 48 to 72 is even better.

Also, I use Active Dry Yeast (ADY) not Instant Dry Yeast (IDY). I guess I am old fashioned or just not as lazy but I don't trust instant yeast, I want to see the yeast come to life when proofed.

As far as flour is concerned, I recommend King Arthur Bread Flour (should be pretty easy to find, even Wal-Mart stocks it), it has a higher protein content than regular all purpose or even other "bread flours" (I have an order of King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour on order at the moment, which has an even higher protein content and I will let you know how my tests go with that, although I believe it won't make a huge difference).

I also believe that honey is a better source of sugars than regular table sugar. So with these changes in mind here is my adapted recipe.

This recipe is enough to make two 8-10 inch pizza's depending on how thin you stretch them.

Start with the yeast. Take 1 tsp. of ADY and mix it with 7.5 oz of water (bottled or filtered please) at 105-110 degrees, whisk together the yeast and 1tbsp of honey (any kind) and let proof for 10 minutes. It should get foamy and frothy as the yeast and sugars activate. If it does not, you either have old yeast, or water that is not in the right temperature range and has not activated. You need to start again.

Proofed Yeast:

Once the yeast is proofed we can start putting the dough together.

In a food processor (mine is 7 1/2 cups) add 11.25oz of King Arthur Bread Flour, 1 and 1/2 tsp of salt, 1 and 1/2 tbsp olive oil and the yeast mixture. Pulse until a dough ball forms. Pulse.

Once dough is formed, divide into 2 portions and store in dough boxes or ziploc containers for at least a day,the dough will be good for about 6 days. 

Then, Make Pizza's.