Pizza Dough Recipe for Grilled Pizza
How to make pizza dough
The best pizza dough (for pizzas that aren’t deep-dish, like Detroit style) is made with bread flour. Bread flour has a higher protein (gluten) content and can, therefore, create a crust that is chewier and more pliable. Chewy crust is one of the most sought-after characteristics of a pizza crust, and pliability is necessary if you want to fold a slice in half without it crumbling like a biscuit. Use a good quality bread four for your pizza dough.
Note: Some people will tell you to use only Italian Tipo-00 flour for your pizza. This is good advice, except that it doesn’t necessarily refer to high-protein flour. Tipo-00 refers to the largest granule size of the flour, not its protein content. You can find All-purpose flour of this fineness, if you look, and it could even be pastry flour. Go ahead and use Tipo-00 if you can find/afford it, but make sure it’s high-protein flour for pizza our pasta.
After flour selection, the rest of the ingredients for pizza dough are simple: water, yeast, a little sugar if you like, salt, and a nice helping of good olive oil. There is no mystery to the ingredients. It’s all in how you put them together.
There are two important factors that will affect the outcome of your dough:
- temperature and
- kneading.
Critical temperatures for pizza dough, also kneading
The temperature of the water that you add to the dough is of critical importance to the success of your pizza dough.
If it’s too cold, your yeast won’t rise quickly enough. If it’s too hot, you can actually kill the yeast and it will never rise. Not only will your dough be flat and hard to manage if that happens, but it will also taste flat and uninteresting. (We’ve written about the importance of temperature in making bread before. Read more about it there!) If the water is far too hot, you can even denature the proteins in the flour before you get a chance to develop the gluten.
The ideal temperature for the water in your dough is 105–120°F (41–49°C), which will activate the yeast without overheating it. Using a fast and accurate Thermapen ONE will help you get the environment for your yeast just right. Be sure to take extra care to get the water temperature just right before adding it.
With everything combined at the proper temperature, it’s time to knead.
To get the classic chew of a pizza crust, you need major gluten development, and that means major kneading. Kneading the dough increases the gluten connectivity and makes stretchy and elastic. Knead the dough until you can take a small piece of it and stretch it out into a very thin membrane. This “window pane” test is used by professional bakers to make sure their bread is ready for rising.
Be warned, this may take up to 10 minutes of kneading. Be strong (or use a mixer with a dough hook).
Once you’ve combined the ingredients and kneaded them together, you’ll want your dough to be in a comfortable temperature range. Check it again with your Thermapen so you can know what to expect from the rise. If your dough temp is in the 80’s °F (30’s °C) you can expect a quick rise. If your flour was cold and your dough finishes the kneading cycle in the 70’s °F (20’s °C) you can expect a longer rise time.
After kneading very well, you need to let the dough rise for a while. A barely warm oven is a great way to proof your dough (proofing is what bakers call allowing dough to rise), as is a cooler with some warm water in the bottom. Yeast rises best when the air temperature is 85°F (29°C), so try to get an ambient temperature as close to that as is possible.
Let the dough rise until its volume doubles before shaping the dough to make your pies. You can even try tossing it in the air, if you feel so inclined.
Pizza Dough Recipe for Grilled or Neapolitan-style Pizza
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 C warm water 105–115 °F as measured with Thermapen ONE
- 1 Tbsp active dry yeast
- 3 3/4 C 490 g bread flour
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
Instructions
- In a mixer or a large bowl, combine dry ingredients.1 Tbsp active dry yeast, 3 3/4 C 490 g bread flour, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar
- Make sure the water temp is correct, then add the water and the olive oil. Use your Thermapen ONE to make sure the water is at the right tmep!1 1/2 C warm water, 2 Tbsp olive oil
- Mix to form a shaggy dough mass. If using a mixer, switch to a dough hook at this point.
- Knead the dough for 7-10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic.
- Check the temperature with a Thermapen.
- Place the dough ball in a bowl greased with olive oil, cover and allow to rise, optimally in a location that is 85°F (29°C).
- Once the dough has risen to double its size, punch it down and divide into 8-oz chunks.
- Roll out or hand-shape each crust to an 8-12" oval as you need it, making the pizzas in turn.
- The crusts can be ugly shapes, perfect roundness is not necessary.
