For years I have searched. I have tried dozens of recipes. At long last, I have found the perfect homemade pizza crust. This really is the best pizza crust recipe I have ever made, and I’ve made a lot of them!
We love to make pizza almost every week with the kids, they get to pick the toppings and often times roll out the crust themselves. It’s a lot of fun and great memories with the kids, and they love picking their own toppings!
I wish I could take the credit for the recipe itself, but I found it at Annie’s Eats. Be sure to visit that link for some step by step photos that really help. I’ve included the recipe here with a few suggestions:
- You can use active dry yeast if you don’t have instant yeast, just don’t use bread machine or rapid rise yeast
- I use a warmer drawer and the doubling only took about an hour
- Don’t substitute regular flour for bread flour! If you don’t have bread flour, get some and then make it!
- Get a scale if you can to weigh out the flour, it really helps. I had to add about 4 1/4 cup flour to make it doughy enough
- If you don’t have a pizza stone, don’t even bother making this until you do!!!
- The parchment paper trick is really awesome and convenient, you can just prep the pizza right on it and then bake it on the parchment paper on the stone!
- I love this recipe because it can be frozen! I’m going to have to double it every time I make it so every other time I can just pull the dough out of the freezer!
Perfect Pizza Dough
Yield: enough dough for 2 medium pizzas or 4 calzones
Ingredients:
½ cup warm water
2¼ tsp. instant yeast (or active dry yeast)
4 cups (22 oz.) bread flour, plus more for dusting
1½ tsp. salt
1¼ cup water, at room temperature
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
Directions:
Measure the 1/2 cup warm water into a 2-cup liquid measuring cup. Sprinkle the yeast over the top. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the bread flour and salt, mixing briefly to blend. Measure the room temperature water into the measuring cup with the yeast-water mixture. With the mixer on low speed, pour in the yeast-water mixture as well as the olive oil. Mix until a cohesive dough is formed. Switch to the dough hook. Knead on low speed until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, turning once to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, 1½-2 hours.
Press down the dough to deflate it. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Divide the dough into two equal pieces. Form each piece of dough into a smooth, round ball. (If freezing the dough, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze at this point.) Cover with a damp cloth. Let the dough relax for at least 10 minutes but no longer than 30 minutes.
To bake, preheat the oven and pizza stone to 500˚ F for at least 30 minutes. Transfer the dough to your shaping surface, lightly sprinkled with cornmeal. Shape the dough with lightly floured hands. Brush the outer edge lightly with olive oil. Top as desired. Bake until the crust is golden brown, and cheese is bubbling, 8-12 minutes.
