Pizza Dough: an awesome simple pizza dough that will work.
updated on 5/24/2025
With an eye on showing that home-made pizza is easy and practical, we have separated the process of pizza creation into logical, discrete parts.
Episode 1 dealt with the “Composition” part of pizza creation, actually adding the layers of prepared toppings onto an already existing store-bought pizza dough, and putting the pizza in the oven.
In this episode we will actually create the pizza dough we bought from the store in the first post, and then follow the recipe from that post to compose upon the pizza dough we will make today.
We will start with a batch of two pizza doughs today, one for immediate use and one to put in the freezer. Once you get the hang of making the dough, you may want to have multiple frozen pizza doughs at your disposal. The dough will last several months in the freezer.
Towards our theme of pizza as ultra-practical, our goal is to prepare this dough today so it’s ready to compose upon, in less than five minutes, minus the time in the stand mixer. We may not hit our goal exactly, but we will surely be close.
Let’s get right to it!
EQUIPMENT
stand mixer
glass measuring cup
1 cup measure
1/3 cup measure
1/2 tsp measure
1/4 tsp measure
cast iron pan
pan to warm liquid
butter knife level flour in 1 cup measure
INGREDIENTS per pizza dough
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup + 1/2 tsp warm water
1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 olive oil
PREPARATION
add 1 cup flour to stand mixer bowl
add yeast to glass measure
add sugar or honey to glass measure
heat water until warm
add warm liquid to glass measure and stir
wait 5 minutes or until mixture bubbles
add salt, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil to glass measure and stir
add liquid to stand mixer bowl mix on lowest setting for 6 minutes
dough should pull away from the sides
dough should stick to dough paddle but be easily removed with a minimum of sticking
form dough into a loaf and cut into pieces as needed form each piece of dough into ball and lightly coat with olive oil
if freezing, put into freezer bag
remove air from freezer bag
put any dough not using being used immediately into the freezer you may want put the date and time or a batch number on each freezer bag for easy identification
if using immediately, place in airtight container in warm spot
cover and let sit for 30 minutes
add some flour to your cast iron pan and spread it around with your fingers
place dough into the cast iron pan
generously sprinkle flour over dough
flip dough over
generously sprinkle flour over other side
pick up the dough so its resting on the back of your hand
put other hand under dough
move hands apart once or twice to stretch the dough
THIS IS THE TRICKY PART AND WILL REQUIRE REPETITIONS
put the dough back into the pan
push dough with fingers to form to the pan as needed
VIOLA!
In episode 1 we dealt with pizza Composition, the last step before the pizza goes into the oven. But we need something to compose upon, a pizza dough. That’s what we learned today.
It can be very intimidating to do any kind of baking or dough preparation, but as we saw today it’s actually very easy when you have a proper set of steps to follow. The way we prepared the dough today, letting it knead for 6 minutes, and letting it rise for 30 minutes, assured us of a very pliable dough which would turn into a proper pizza crust, even in a pinch, by simply stretching it in place with our fingers. We did stretch the dough with the back of our hands, but that was not necessary to form the crust exactly as we want it.
Stay tuned as we learn the other steps of captaincastiron pizza creation. We learned to compose a pizza with an existing dough, and then today we learned how to make the dough to compose upon. Next we will learn how to process our raw ingredients and turn them into the prepared toppings (Long Prep). Then we will create a set of toppings before-hand for an individual pizza composition (Short Prep) later that day or the next.
Thanks and see you next time!