If you’ve never made homemade pizza before, then you are missing out! My favorite pizza dough recipe comes from a combination of my mom’s pizza dough and the “Perfect Pizza Dough” recipe from The Bread Bible (Rose Levy Beranbaum) — a “must have” book for anyone who loves fresh bread!
Since I like to add a healthy twist to recipes when I can, I add whole wheat flour to my pizza dough, but you can make this dough entirely from white pastry flour if whole wheat doesn’t rock your boat.
Four Cheese Homemade Pizza
Best Pizza Dough (Adapted from The Bread Bible)
3/4 Cup Plus 1 Tablespoon of Wheat Flour
3/4 Cup Plus 1 Tablespoon of White Pastry Flour
1 Tsp. Instant Yeast
1 Tsp. Sugar
1 Tsp. Salt
2/3 Cup Warm Water
5 Tsp. Olive Oil
To Make:
Mix together the flours, yeast, and sugar. Then, mix in the salt. Using your hands, make a small hold in the flour and yeast mixture, and pour the water into the well. Next, using a wooden spoon, mix the dough until it comes together, but don’t be tempted to over-mix the dough.
Rise:
Place 1/2 of the olive oil in a small bowl, and add the dough to the oil to coat. Allow the dough to rise until doubled.
Shape:
Roll out the dough on a floured surface until you reach the desired size (you can make pizza on a cookie sheet, baking stone, or in a special pizza pan).
Preheat:
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
Rise Again:
Let the dough rise one more time until it becomes puffy (you can cover it with a piece of plastic wrap to speed up the process). Once the dough reaches the desired height, brush the dough with the remaining olive oil.
Bake:
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the outside of the dough becomes slightly browned and hard. If your oven is temperamental, check the dough after 15 minutes.
Toppings:
You can add anything to pizza from homemade sauce (the best) with simple splotches of mozzarella to pepperoni with goat cheese — whatever you have in your fridge will work!
Tomorrow is supposed to be a cold one here, so I’m currently looking through my collection of cookbooks for a nice hearty stew — who knows what I’ll find?
2 Comments
For some reason, I only ever try to make pizza dough when it’s freezing in my house and can never find somewhere warm to let it rise.
I think your pizza looks great – I like when it’s easy on the cheese. Whenever I see Pizza Hut commercials where they brag about having 400 pounds of cheese with a ring of cheese baked into the cheese that’s been infused with the essence of cheese and dipped in the sacred cheese volcano filled on the island of cheese off the cheese peninsula I die a little inside in Cheesystan.
Anyway, looking forward to stew discussion – I could listen to people talk about stew all day long.
I wish I could write like you as Margaret Laurence once said “When I say “work” I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.”
Sent from my Android phoneI wish I could write like you as Margaret Laurence once said “When I say “work” I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.”
Sent from my Android phone
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