How to make the perfect pizza dough at home: Ooni's foolproof recipe
With so many options out there, you just need a reliable, foolproof method. This is it
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Like most people, I spend a lot of time thinking about pizza. I think about eating it, making it, topping it… and back round to eating it.
One of my lockdown discoveries was that making your own pizza at home is unbelievably satisfying, but also devastating if it doesn’t turn out quite how you’d planned.
I tried a different dough recipe every time. It’s crazy how many combinations of flour, salt, water and yeast there are out there in the world.
Some weren’t all that great (too short a prove, too ‘bready’ tasting, wrong texture,), and I know I definitely made a few mistakes myself along the way.
The biggest mistake is that a regular oven at home is never going to get hot enough to make pizzeria quality pizza. But apart from that, I also tried recipes with the wrong flour, or used one with a strange ratio of ingredients. I also now realised I made the huge error of using hot tomato sauce on my dough, rather than room temperature, for instance. But cooking is all about learning.
Like quite a few things in the food world, it seems there’s a bit of snobbiness around pizza dough. If you’re not using a 48-hour proved rare sourdough dough infused with fresh yeast from Outer Mongolia, are you even making pizza?!
For 99% of people though, you just want to make a decent pizza at home with an easy, foolproof dough you don’t have to spend 12 hours kneading by hand while playing Wagner to gently encourage the gluten.
And this is it. This is the dough recipe. It’s simple, foolproof and the first ever time using my Ooni Fyra, I managed to make two whole pizzas that I would have paid for in a restaurant. It felt like a massive achievement, but it was so easy. My only concern now is that I’m going to eat pizza for every meal, every day...
Get a pizza this...
Ingredients
- 1.25 cups/300ml water
- 2 tsp/10g salt
- 7g fresh yeast (or 1/2tsp (3g) active dried yeast, or 1/3tsp (2g) instant dried yeast)
- 500g '00' flour, plus extra for dusting
Instructions
Making the dough
- Place two-thirds of the water in a large bowl. In a saucepan or microwave, bring the other third of water to boil, then add it to the cold water in the bowl. This creates the correct temperature for activating yeast. Whisk the salt and yeast into the warm water.
If mixing by hand, like I did:
- Place the flour in a large bowl and pour the yeast mixture into it. Stir with a wooden spoon until a dough starts to form. Continue mixing by hand until the dough comes together in a ball. Turn it onto a lightly floured surface and knead with both hands for about 10 minutes, until it is firm and stretchy. Return the dough to the bowl. Cover with cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours.
If you're using a mixer:
- Fit the mixer with the dough hook and place the flour in the mixer bowl. Turn the machine on at a low speed and gradually add the yeast mixture to the flour. Once combined, leave the dough to keep mixing to at the same speed for 5-10 minutes, or until the dough is firm and stretchy. Cover the dough with cling film and leave to rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours.
After proving...
- When the dough has roughly doubled in size, divide it into 3 or 5 equal pieces, depending on what size you want your pizzas to be (either 12 inches or 16 inches wide). Place each piece of dough in a separate bowl or tray, cover with cling film and leave to rise for another 20 minutes, or until doubled in size.
Kneading and stretching the dough:
- Ooni's top tip is always to start with a perfectly rounded ball of dough as this helps to keep the shape of the pizza base circular during the stretching process. Place the ball on a lightly floured surface, flour your hands and use your fingertips to press the dough into a small, flat disc. Working from the centre, push the dough outwards while spreading your fingers, making the disc slightly bigger. Pick up the dough and gently pinch it all around the edge, allowing gravity to pull it downwards into a 12-inch (30cm) circle. Neapolitan-style pizza bases are very thin, so you should be able to see through the base when you hold it up to the light. Take care when doing this – you don’t want it to tear.
- Once the dough is fully stretched, lightly flour your pizza peel and lay the base on it. If at this point you see any small holes in the dough, gently pinch them back together. Once you’re happy with the base, add your toppings and bake in your your Ooni pizza oven..
Recipe by
Ooni
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Comments (12)
I tried making pizza dough one time, but i ended up slapping people with it. 🙄😆
Definitely putting this recipe to the test! 😋
Love making Pizza! Jut need to get my hands on an Ooni!!!
Thanks for this recipe as I have been wanting a same day one. Tried it last night but found the dough very difficult to stretch, did not have much elasticity and wonder where I went wrong. I let the dough rise initially for about 3/4 hours, then when shaped into balls about 20 minutes. I mixed by hand. Also, would it make any difference if one started with the water, yeast and salt, then added the flour? Zillions of recipes out there, some start with water, some with flour. Thank you.
Looks like my recipe, as well ( I use one I found many years ago in the Trattoria cookbook by Biba Caggiano. There was a typo in the recipe in the book (made for too much salt), so it had to be dialed back to your levels. Basic dough is the best!