Homemade Pizza Dough

Friends – it has been far too long!!! My last post was 15 months ago, and it was a highly depressing post about how much 2016 bit! I’m so embarrassed that that’s how I left The Spicy Ginger for over a year! Please excuse my silent absence! Life then got extremely busy and overwhelming (but definitively better than 2016, thankfully!), and I decided I needed to simplify my life and relieve some self-inflicted stress – which meant letting some things go. Things like keeping my house as clean as I’d like, cooking a legit meal every night, and – yes, much to my chagrine – blogging. :(… So much has happened in our lives since then (that’s a post for another time), and I’ve been itching to get back to sharing my love of food with you all! I thought one of our very most requested, most frequently made, most tried-and-true recipes would be appropriate for my “reemergence” post – our homemade pizza dough recipe!

As far back as I can remember, my Friday nights growing up consisted of gathering with my 4 siblings and parents in our family room, spreading our picnic blanket on the floor, making our classic homemade pizza (or ordering Pizza Hut), and spending the evening devouring 2 large pizzas and watching TGIF (please tell me there are other TGIF fans out there!). Even after all of us kids moved out, I’d come home to visit my parents on a Friday evening and walk into a house smelling of freshly made pizza.

Of course, as I went off to college, I did not carry on the tradition for myself. I mean, making a full homemade pizza for just myself was kind of overkill, especially as I entered my “health nut” phase after college. So the tradition was lost.

Until I started dating Nick. I was calling my parents one Friday evening when he came over. They mentioned they were doing “pizza night” for dinner. He said, “Umm, why are YOU not doing this?!” And the tradition was immediately reinstated. Our 4-year-old has dubbed it “Pizza Family Movie Night”, and it is definitely an expectation each Friday from both kids!

We started out using my mom’s traditional pizza dough and pizza sauce recipes, until that fateful day in grad school when we went to a mouth-watering artisan pizza restaurant (Pizzeria 712 in Orem, Utah). Our lives will never be the same. We were mesmerized by the beyond-perfection brick oven-cooked crust – chewy yet soft and airy on the inside with these massive air bubbles, toasted and crusty on the outside. We were so obsessed that we asked to speak to the chef about how to achieve that type of crust. To which he subsequently invited us to “come mix dough” with him some morning. We were like tweens being invited to come watch Justin Beiber rehearse. What?!?

So – we did. And it was amazing. We learned a ton about bread-making from “The Dough Master”, as we now affectionately refer to him, and specifically pizza crust. We immediately started experimenting at home. Today, I share with you the “recipe” we’ve settled on. It’s originally based on my mom’s recipe, then modified to get as close as we can to the artisanal brick oven crusts we dream of in our sleep. Literally.

I say “recipe” in quotes because some steps in the process are based on how it “feels” or “sounds” (yes, really – sound), so I’ll do my best to describe it accurately. It’s pretty simple, just takes a bit of time. The secrets to our recipe lie in a couple key elements: not adding too much flour; mixing to the right consistency; and cooking at the highest temperature possible and on a pizza stone. Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to get quite as perfectly crispy of a crust as the brick/stone oven restaurants do. Apparently that comes from the super high temperatures of those ovens (can be upwards of 800 degrees Fahrenheit!). Our oven only goes to 550 degrees Fahrenheit, but using a pizza stone and giving it enough preheating time can go a long way to achieve the ideal crust. (Look at the air bubbles in that crust!)

The beauty of pizza crust is that it’s highly customizeable, so we can please almost any palate (except GF…sorry, friends…). We generally make plain old boring pepperoni pizza (cause kids), but we also have some favorite specialties I’ll share with you later on. We even have a white chocolate dessert pizza that’s absolutely ridiculous. As in “it shouldn’t be that hard to stop eating something” ridiculous.

“Recipe” and instructions are below. Please see additional notes on nuances, as the instructions are somewhat “squishy” (ie. not a fine science, and depend on sight, feel, and even sound).

Notes:

• If you’re not familiar with using yeast, make sure your water temperature is right. If it’s too hot, it will kill the yeast and your dough won’t rise. If it’s too cold, it won’t activate and your dough won’t rise. I generally fill my measuring cup with warm tap water and stick my finger in; it should feel warm, but not hot. Like moderate bath water. If you’re new at it, you might want to double-check temperature – it should be between 105 – 110 degrees fahrenheit.
• Getting the right water-to-flour ratio is key to getting this light yet chewy crust. The dough will be a lot stickier, softer, and even “runnier” than you’re used to. This is NOT the kind of dough you can roll out with a rolling pin! If you hold it in your fingers, it will kind of flow through them. It may take a couple tries to get it right, but I promise the end result is worth it! Here’s how to get there:
  • When doing the first mixing of the flour/yeast/water (step #3 below), you want to achieve a consistency of a sticky dough that sticks to both the dough hook and the bottom of the bowl. When you turn off the mixer, the dough should mostly fall and rest in the bottom of the bowl, but should still stick to the hook. You’re going for one cohesive, sticky, slightly flowy blob. If you feel like it’s too runny, you can add flour a few tablespoons at a time until you’re comfortable with the consistency. It’s a tricky balance.
  • In the 2nd mixing (steps 5 & 6 below), your dough is theoretically already at the right water-to-flour balance, so you’re just “kneading” it to build up the strong gluten structure you need for those epic air pockets in the crust. If you have the right balance of ingredients, when turned onto a high speed, the dough should mostly stick to the dough hook in one cohesive ball, but you’ll have a little “tail” coming off of it that “slaps” the side of the bowl on every rotation. (You’ll hear a rhythmic “slap, slap, slap!”) I know that sounds odd, but that’s how we know we’ve gotten it right! If any dough is sticking to the bowl at this point, add more flour a bit at a time, mix at a slow speed, then turn the speed up and try again. If the dough is sticking to the hook but you can’t get that slapping tail, you may need to turn the speed down and add a little more water.
  • You won’t be able to roll out this dough. Handle it gently, and simply & carefully “push” it out with your hands until it reaches the desired size/shape. You don’t need to build up a “crust”. It’s soft enough that the toppings will weigh down the middle and you’ll still have a border around the edge.
• Trust me – turn your oven onto the highest temp possible. And I really suggest using a pizza stone. If you preheat it as suggested below, the initial heat from the stone gives a good kick-start to puffing up the crust, and helps it achieve the nice crisp you’re looking for. We usually try to take the parchment paper out from under the pizza (using the paddle) a couple minutes into cooking so the pizza cooks directly on the stone for most of the time; this helps both with the flavor and achieving a crispier crust. Oh! And pro tip: if you take the whole stone out of the oven (careful!) and serve it from that instead of using the paddle, the pizza stays warm and super crispy until the very last bite!