The perfect pizza dough

For quite some time I've been trying to get the perfect pizza dough to be thin and crispy, just like in a real Italian pizza parlour. Finally, I think I've found the right recipe. The dough is quite simple to make, don't be intimidated by the presence of yeast in the ingredients as this is a no-bake yeast dough and it's quite difficult to do anything wrong here, all the ingredients are simply mixed together.

 

As with all Italian recipes, the key to a perfect pizza base is quality ingredients. Take clean drinking water, you don't need to use chlorinated tap water, take quality extra virgin flour, and of course I wouldn't substitute olive oil for sunflower oil. As always, it's up to you to make the final decision; I'm only suggesting how to make it better, in my opinion.

 

The given amount of ingredients makes 3 pizza bases, each about 30-32 cm in diameter, just the maximum size that fits on my baking tray. If you only need one base, divide all the ingredients by 3, if two, remember your school maths lessons. The pizza dough can be stored in the freezer, but fresh is much tastier.

 

  1. 🍕Ingredients🍕

water 250 ml

500 g flour

25 g live yeast (or 7 g dried)

olive oil 20 g

sugar 5 g (1/2 teaspoon)

salt 5 g (1/2 tsp.)

Preparation

Prepare all the ingredients for the pizza dough.

In a large wide container, in which it will be convenient to knead the dough, pour warm water (about 30 ° C, 250 ml), the water should not be cold, but it must not be hot, because at 50 ° C yeast stops its activity. Put the yeast (25g or 7g of dry) into the water and stir until it has dissolved.

 

Add sugar (1/2 tsp) and salt (1/2 tsp).

 

Pour in the olive oil and stir until the salt and sugar have dissolved.

 

Sift the flour (500 g) through a sieve, this will not only help avoid unnecessary impurities in the dough, but also enrich the flour with oxygen, which will undoubtedly improve our dough. Also be careful, you may need a little more or a little less flour than indicated in the ingredients, unfortunately you can't say for sure, because different flours have different properties.

 

Now the most important thing is to knead our dough well. This usually takes about 10 minutes. As a result, the dough should stop sticking to your hands and bowl completely, but remain soft and elastic. If you've been kneading for quite a while and the dough is still very sticky to your hands, you may need to add a little more flour, if the opposite is true - the dough has become very stiff, add a little water and knead well again.

Now, divide the dough into three equal parts, if you have a scale - weigh it, I have each part weighs about 270g, one part is one pizza base. Roll each part into a ball, put it in a plastic bag and leave it in a warm place for half an hour. If you're not planning to make 3 pizzas at once, then put the dough into the fridge, it will rise there too, just not as fast. During this time you can make the pizza sauce, and prepare the rest of the ingredients for your pizza.

After half an hour, take the dough out of the bag, it has increased in volume a bit. I usually roll out the dough on parchment, sprinkled with flour, and bake on it, because it's very difficult to transfer the dough to the baking tray without deforming, you need a big pizza spatula, like in pizzerias, but I don't have one.

Now a little more about rolling out the dough. Of course, Italians will tell you that pizza dough should never be rolled out with a rolling pin, it should be stretched by hand without touching the edges of the dough, so it forms a pizza crust. You should also twist the dough in your hands and turn it in different ways, including over your head, and then, of course, it will turn out perfect. If you want to try stretching the dough with your hands, try it. I've experimented a lot with this and I've found that to stretch the dough to a good size with your hands, so that it's even in thickness, you have to do it every day several times a day while working in a pizza parlor. If you're good at it, you're a pizza master; for me, it takes too long and the result isn't perfect. So I roll out the dough with a rolling pin, but let's not tell Italians that.

So, we put a little flour on the parchment.

We roll out the dough 2-3 mm thick, making sure it is evenly rolled out and round. If you are not able to roll out an even circle, put a large plate or dish and simply cut out the irregularities on it. But I don't like to do it that way, because I don't know where to put the scraps and where to get such a big plate. So we just try to roll out an even circle - it's not very difficult.

For my baking tray, I roll out a circle of 34-36 cm. We fold the edges 2-3 cm inwards and seal them well, so that they do not stick out when baking - so we make a side for our pizza, I saw this method in one of the pizzerias. We end up with a pizza that is 30-32 cm in diameter.

We put the sauce that you like on the base

Spread the sauce evenly on the base. Drizzle a little olive oil on top.

Together with the parchment, transfer the dough to the baking tray. Preheat the oven to the maximum temperature (250-270°C) and bake for 5-10 minutes until nicely browned on the bottom.

We bake the crust separately so that the dough is crispy and well baked. After all, if we put the filling on the raw dough and send it to the oven, the cheese will already start to brown, and the dough will not yet be toasted to a crispy crust. Also, the sauce will stay liquid inside and the toppings might slide off the finished pizza, and we don't want that, do we? If you still doubt that the pizza base should be baked in advance, remember that pizzas are baked in ovens at 350-400 ° C, and no oven will not give us such a temperature, so we have to twist.

On the baked base, put the ingredients as you wish or the recipe and bake, now on the top level of the oven. So there you have it, the perfect base for your perfect pizza! Using this base you can make Margarita pizzas, 4-cheese pizzas, pesto pizzas or any other pizza to your liking🍕

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