We have had pizza night every Friday since we’ve gotten married. Our 10 year anniversary is in July, so you can say that I’ve made my fair share of pizza dough! About 2 years ago I went fully gluten free (to help with my allergies and eczema) but that hasn’t stopped the Friday night tradition of pizza night.
The recipe that I had used for years and years was one by Giada De Laurentiis. It was really good, the pizza was more of a thin crust style which is what we liked for a long time. Over the years we tried other recipes, but kept coming back to the original one.
A year ago I decided that it was time to start trying different type of pizza dough recipes to see what my family, mainly my husband enjoyed most. I was looking for a dough that was light, airy, and needed to produce a crispy crust.
I tried so many different recipes, and they were all delicious according to my taste testers. Even though I wasn’t actually consuming the dough, I could tell if it was going to be “it” or not. There were so many fails, but also so much knowledge was gained. I made notes about which recipes we liked and what we liked about them. This gave me a great starting point to create our own recipe.
After testing so many I knew that a “wet” dough was what I was going for. The sticky dough gave me that airy but light crust while still holding up well in the oven. When working with this pizza dough beware that it is very, very sticky. I try and not add too much flour when I’m handling it so we keep that lightness.
I’m so happy that I finally perfected this crust enough to share with all of you! A few quick notes, I like to preheat my oven for close to an hour before putting our pizza on the stone. If you don’t have a pizza stone I highly recommend buying one. This is a stone that is similar to the one we use. I like the rectangular shape because sometimes our pizzas aren’t perfectly round! Using a peel makes getting the pizza dough onto the the stone a breeze, here is one that’s similar to what I use! Pizza dough is a great way to get into baking homemade bread.
Remember, if you make any of the recipes I want to see them! Tag me on instagram @therelishedmeal and use the hashtag #therelisedmeal so I can see what y’all are cooking up in your kitchen!
Pizza dough
Ingredients
- 2 ½ c water
- 3 tsp yeast
- ¼ c sugar
- ¼ c extra light olive oil
- 6 c all purpose flour
- 2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Whisk the warm water, yeast, and sugar together in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook.
- Let rest until the mixture bubbles (about 5 minutes). If you don’t have a stand mixer you can use a large mixing bowl and mix the dough with a wooden spoon.
- Add in the olive, and the salt.
- With the mixer on low speed add in the flour to the bowl a half a cup at a time. This is a very sticky dough so you maybe need a bit more or less than the 6 cups *For this particular time I used 5.5 cups of flour.
- Once dough is fully mixed knead the dough in the mixer on low speed for 3-4 minutes. Dough should be sticking to the sides of the bowl.
- Grease a large bowl and scrape dough into bowl.
- Turn dough to coat in oil and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise in a warm area until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
- Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and separate into 3 dough balls. Shape into balls and cover with plastic wrap and let rest 20-30 minutes.
- While the dough is resting preheat oven to 500º.
- Roll out the dough with a floured rolling pin and place on a floured (or cornmeal) baking peel (if using a pizza stone in the oven) or a prepared pan.
- Brush the top of your rolled-out dough lightly with olive oil. Use a fork to poke holes in the center of the dough.
- We like to cook the dough a bit in the oven until lightly browned before putting the toppings on. You can put the toppings directly on the raw dough and cook, or brown the dough in the oven, take out and place toppings on and back in the oven to melt the cheese.
- Slice hot pizza and serve immediately.
