Basic Pizza Dough

My family loves pizza. It's hard to believe that just six ingredients can turn into something so delicious. This dough is very versatile. I have made foccacia, pull apart cinnamon buns, stuffed buns and many other things. It provides a blank canvass on which you can express your culinary creativity.

I use a large heavy duty kitchen machine to mix my dough. This volume of dough would fit into a kitchen aid-type machine.
These are heavy duty dough hooks that do a good job of kneading the dough and developing the gluten. This is what makes a stretchy, easy to work with dough.





Thoughts About Gluten
Gluten has been given a bad wrap recently. I agree that there are some people that should definitely
not eat foods containing gluten. Those people have celiacs disease, which means that there bodies are not able to process the gluten. When people with celiacs disease eat gluten, their bodies have a kind
of 'allergic' reaction to the gluten which makes them sick. It can be diagnosed with a blood test, but is commonly diagnosed by lay people based on symptoms. The actual  incidence of celiac disease is quite low.

Proofing the yeast. 

Combine one cup of warm water(ideally 105-115 degrees, about the same temperature as a warm shower), yeast, and sugar. Mix well and let it sit at room temperature. The yeast will grow and create air bubbles. After 5-10 minutes, a layer of bubbles will develop and sit on the surface of the water. This is called a sponge.

Add the mixture to the flour in the bowl.

Combine most of the flour (4 of the 5 cups), water/yeast mixture, additional water, oil, salt
and sugar it the bowl. Begin mixing. If the dough looks too wet, add more flour in quarter cup increments until it is still a bit sticky.

The amount of flour that you need to add will vary slightly depending on the humidity in the
air. If the air is humid, you will add slightly more flour than if the air is dry.
At first the mixture looks lumpy.

After ten minutes of kneading it looks smooth and elastic. This is what gluten does. The kneading process develops the gluten fibers making the dough become stretchy and elastic.


Notice that it does not stick to the bowl.

Put the dough into a greased pan. oil the top of the dough and cover it with cling film.

To make really good pizza, with a flavourful
crust that has great texture, I like to leave the dough to rise in the fridge for 24 hours.

The cold temperature of the fridge will slow the
division of the yeast.
You can also let the dough sit covered at room
temperature for about one hour or until doubled.

The dough looks like this when it has doubled.
It is light and fluffy.

When it looks like this, you are ready to make your pizza

Watch me make it on Youtube.






Yeast dough can be difficult for the beginner. Don't give up! If it doesn't turn out, try again. My first efforts were not successful. I think my family played hockey with my buns! My family is happy that I have now mastered the task of making a light and fluffy dough. If I can do it, so can you. It's not rocket science after all.

Enough dough for two 10x15 inch pizzas. Stay tuned for pepperoni pizza and Indian inspired curry pizza.

Basic Pizza Dough

1 tbsp dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar

5-6 cups flour
1 cup water
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil

Combine the first three ingredients in a two cup measuring cup or medium sized bowl. Leave yeast mixture at room temperature for 5-10 minutes. A layer of foam will develop on the top of the water.
In a large mixing bowl combine five cups of flour, water, sugar, salt, yeast mixture and oil. Mix with dough hook attachment, adding remaining flour in 1/4 cup increments until a soft dough is obtained. Mix for 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

If you would like to make dough for one pizza, divide all the ingredients by half all except the yeast.