The perfect pizza dough - how to make it yourself

Today, pizza is served in almost every cafe and restaurant, but many people like to cook this dish at home. And if the choice of filling is never an issue, then difficulties with preparing the base arise quite often. In our article you will learn recipes for the perfect pizza dough. They are quite easy to prepare, and most importantly - very exciting!

Pizza base on water

Homemade water pizza dough is considered one of the most popular. It turns out incredibly thin with a golden crispy crust, like in a real pizzeria in Italy. The main thing to remember is that quality ingredients will be the key to your success.

You will need:

• 250 ml of purified water (not from the tap);
• 500 grams of flour;
• 25 grams of live yeast or 7 grams of dry yeast;
• 20 g olive oil;
• 5 grams (1⁄2 teaspoon) salt;
• 5 grams (1⁄2 teaspoon) sugar.

From these products, the output will be 3 bases about 30-32 cm in diameter. This homemade pizza dough can be stored in the freezer, but it tastes much better fresh.

Cooking method:

• Pour warm water (about 30-36 degrees) into a large container, then put the yeast there and dissolve it.
• Add sugar, olive oil, salt and stir.
• Gradually add the sifted flour to the resulting mass. Depending on the brand and type of flour, different amounts may be required.
• Knead the pizza dough with your own hands thoroughly. It should not be sticky, but soft and elastic.
• Divide equally into three parts and form each into a ball. Then, wrap it in cling film and leave the pieces in a warm place for about half an hour. During this time, you can cut ingredients for filling or mix sauce.
• Roll out the dough with a rolling pin on floured parchment or gently stretch it with your fingers. The base should be 2-3 mm thick.
• We bend the sides 2-3 cm and seal them tightly.
• Then, distribute the sauce over the base and transfer it on parchment directly to a baking sheet. Bake for 5-10 minutes, then take it out, add the filling and finish baking on the top level.

If the dough with water according to this recipe seems too bland to you, then use milk instead. This will make it more tender.

Cooking recipes

Today, pizza is one of the most popular and favorite dishes all over the world. It captivates with its ease of preparation, all sorts of recipe variations and amazing combination of flavors. And, of course, the fact that you can eat it with your hands: this is customary in Italy, the homeland of pizza.

By the way, Italians prefer to make a thin base. And this makes sense! Unlike pizza with a fluffy crust, a dish with a thin crust is baked faster and turns out more tasty (balance of dough and filling). There are several classic pizza dough recipes, we invite you to evaluate them.

Thin yeast dough

For pizza lovers, a recipe that produces real Italian pizza, with crispy edges and a thin center, will come in handy. For this recipe, it is best to use real extra virgin olive oil. The remaining ingredients are completely ordinary and can be found in any housewife’s kitchen.

Ingredients:

• 300–400 g flour,
• 10 g dry yeast,
• 2 tbsp. spoons of olive oil,
• a pinch of sugar
• a pinch of salt,
• 200 g of water.

General information:

• Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes
• Servings: 4 servings

Cooking step by step:

1. Add salt, sugar, dry yeast to the sifted flour and mix. Heat the water a little and pour into the flour. Add olive oil and, stirring gently, knead the dough to a uniform consistency.
2. Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let it rest for about 1 hour until it rises. The pizza dough should approximately double in size.
3. Divide the dough into 4-5 parts, depending on the number of servings, and roll each part into a thin circle. If the cakes turn out too thin, don't worry - the yeast dough will still work a little.
4. Next, place the pizza dough on a greased baking sheet or frying pan. Don’t rush to bake the pizza right away, let the dough rise a little, and only then you can grease it with sauce and put the chosen filling on it, sprinkle with cheese and put it in the oven.
5. Since the pizza dough in this recipe is thin, it is better to choose a small, drier filling option so that the pizza does not become soggy and does not bake for long.
6. Pizza made from thin yeast dough is baked at a temperature of 200–250°C for about 20 minutes.

Thin yeast-free dough

This recipe is so versatile that it can become a real lifesaver for you at any moment - whether you have unexpected guests on the doorstep or just want delicious pizza and don’t have the time or variety of ingredients for the dough. This dough takes just a couple of minutes to prepare and is very inexpensive in terms of the cost of its components. However, it turns out invariably elastic, and after baking - thin, crispy and tasty!

Ingredients:

• Wheat flour - 400 g
• Water – 200 ml
• Chicken egg - 1 pc.
• Vegetable oil - 3 tbsp. l.
• Salt - 1 tsp.
• Sugar - 1 tsp.
• Baking powder - 1 tsp.

General information:

• Cooking time: 20 minutes
• Servings: 4 servings

Cooking step by step:

1. Add salt, sugar and baking powder to the sifted flour. Mix.
2. We make a depression in the center. Add egg and water to it. Knead the dough first with a spoon. As soon as the flour absorbs all the moisture, add 2 tbsp. l. vegetable or olive oil.
3. After this, knead the dough with your hands for half a minute. It turns out quite sticky, but we don’t add any more flour.
4. Add 1 more tbsp. l. vegetable oil and lightly knead the dough, helping to distribute the oil over the entire surface. Literally a few movements and that's it! The dough is ready!
5. The dough for this recipe makes 3 pizzas with a diameter of 28 cm. You can make any filling.

Puff thin pizza dough

It is this structure, like puff pastry, that will give pizza its unique taste. After all, you always want to try something new. If you think that you need to tinker with such a test, then this is not so.

Ingredients:

• One glass of ice water;
• 50 grams of margarine;
• One teaspoon of salt;
• Half a kilogram of flour.

General information:

• Cooking time: 15–20 minutes
• Servings: 4 servings

Cooking step by step:

1. The flour must be sifted onto a wooden board;
2. Pour salt into a glass of ice water and stir. Then pour into the flour;
3. Knead until smooth;
4. Roll the resulting mass into a ball and place in the refrigerator for an hour and a half;
5. Take it out of the refrigerator, form a bun and put chilled margarine in the middle;
6. Roll out vertically, then fold in half and roll out again. Cool again for an hour.

Lean thin dough

The best lean pizza dough is optimal for making thin and crispy pizza in the tradition of Northern Italian pizza makers.

Ingredients:

• Wheat flour - 500 g
• Water – 250 ml
• Salt - 1 tsp.
• Vegetable oil - 4 tbsp. l.
• Dry granulated yeast - 7 g

General information:

• Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes
• Servings: 4 servings

Preparation:

To prepare, you don’t need any baking knowledge or skills! We simply and brutally connect all the components. In any order. And the temperature of the water - as long as it is not completely hot and not icy.

Since flour comes in different moisture contents, we warn you that the resulting dough should be dense rather than flabby. If you feel that it is a little liquid, add more flour until the dough accepts it.

From the moment the dough forms into a ball, you need to knead it for 10 minutes. After kneading, the dough should be allowed to rise. It fits absolutely calmly even without heat, at room temperature. It is important to keep the surface of the dough covered and not dry out. You can use a damp cloth for this - if the dough does not have enough liquid, it gets it from the cloth. After about twice rising (about an hour), it is ready for further use.

As you can see, it is possible to roll out lean pizza dough to an extremely thin thickness - and after that it will still hold the shape of the piece. And under the weight of the ingredients it will too. They bake it at the maximum available temperature, and roll it out (or stretch it) without flour, because it contains enough butter.

Thin dough with kefir

Very light thin dough for pizza or pie. First of all, do it very quickly. Secondly, it is non-greasy and light. It makes baked goods airy. The indicated amount yields approximately 2 pizzas on small sheets.

Ingredients:

• 500 ml kefir (I take milk mushroom kefir);
• 900 grams of flour;
• 2 medium eggs;
• 2 tablespoons of odorless vegetable oil;
• 0.5 teaspoon with a small hill of soda;
• 0.5 teaspoon with a small hill of salt.

General information:

• Cooking time: 10 minutes
• Servings: 1 serving

Cooking step by step:

Pour kefir into a cup with wide edges. Add salt, eggs, vegetable oil and mix well. Add baking soda and stir lightly (the kefir will begin to bubble). Sift the flour. We begin to gradually pour flour into the kefir.

It is recommended to add approximately 2/3 and mix well. Then add slowly, without ceasing to stir. The dough turns out smooth, sticks a little to your hands - this is good, with flour it is better to under-add than over-add, otherwise the baking will be heavy.

Roll it into a bun and put it in a bag. You don’t have to put it in the refrigerator, because it turns out tastier and softer. Immediately make the filling. Then take it out of the bag and roll it out. If there are leftovers, we put them in the refrigerator. The next time you bake, take the bag out of the refrigerator and put it in a warm place for half an hour. Then start doing.

Thin crust (like Pizza Hut)

To make the dough thin, you need to heat two baking sheets in the oven. Moreover, they should be heated in different places: one baking sheet on the top shelf, the other on the bottom. This is necessary for proper baking of the dough - when you place it in the oven on the top baking sheet, the bottom one will collect heat and transfer it upward. This way your dough will bake much faster.

Ingredients:

• Flour - 330 gr
• Milk – 200 ml
• Olive oil - 2 tbsp.
• Yeast (dry) – 7 g
• Salt - 0.5 tsp.
• Sugar - 2 tsp.

General information:

• Cooking time: 50 minutes
• Servings: 4 servings

Preparation

First, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm milk and let stand for about 10 minutes. If you make it in a bread machine, then you need to sift the flour, pour in the milk with yeast, butter, salt and put it on the “Pizza” mode - two 10-minute kneading, interspersed with two 10-minute rises.

If you do it manually, sift the salt with the flour, add the liquid mixture, and finally add the oil. Knead for 5 minutes until you get a smooth dough. Grease the rising container with oil, roll the dough into a ball and place in the container in a warm place for half an hour. Cover the container with film.

Divide the finished dough in half and stretch it with your hands into 2 thin circles (you can roll it out). Place the filling, it should be completely cooked, not raw. Heat the oven to 250-270 degrees - the higher the temperature, the crispier the base will be. Heat the baking tray too.

Remove the baking sheet and brush with olive oil (so that the bottom crisps after baking). Place the semi-finished pizza product on a baking sheet and turn on the oven fan. Bake until sides are golden brown or however you like, about 15 minutes.

Quick yogurt dough

You will get a small pizza with the most delicate thin dough if you add yogurt as the main ingredient.

• Flour - 1 glass;
• Baking powder - 1.5 teaspoons;
• Salt and spices to taste;
• Greek yogurt - 1 cup.

How to cook?

Mix yogurt and flour, add spices. Then, knead the dough in a convenient way and transfer it to the table or baking sheet, having first sprinkled the surface with flour. Roll out the base with a rolling pin or stretch it with your fingers, add the remaining ingredients. Bake in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for about a quarter of an hour (15 minutes).

Yeast-free kefir dough

A fairly simple pizza dough recipe. The result is not a very fluffy crispy base. You can use sour cream with a low fat content instead of kefir.

• Flour - 1.5 cups;
• Kefir - 1 glass;
• Eggs - 2 pieces;
• Salt and soda 1⁄4 teaspoon each;
• Olive oil 40 grams;
• Vinegar or boiling water to extinguish soda.

How to prepare dough with kefir?

• In a bowl, beat eggs with salt.
• We extinguish the soda with vinegar or boiling water, mix it with kefir.
• Pour the eggs into the kefir and add the flour little by little.
• Stir thoroughly.
• Grease a baking sheet and pour the dough into it.
• Place the dough in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes.
• Place the filling on the semi-finished base and bake until fully cooked.

The advantage of this dough is that it does not need to be rolled out (depending on the amount of flour added), but it cannot be called traditional either.

This is interesting: 6 pilaf recipes from different countries

Mayonnaise pizza base

Another recipe for delicious pizza dough that cooks very quickly. It can be baked either in the oven or in a frying pan under a lid to make a quick dish.

You will need:

• 4 tablespoons of sour cream;
• 10 tablespoons of flour;
• 2 eggs;
• 5 tablespoons of mayonnaise;
• 1 pinch of salt.

Anything can be used as a filling: tomatoes, mushrooms, pickles, sausage or chicken, frankfurters, etc., as well as any sauce (ketchup, cheese, pesto sauce, etc.).

Step-by-step recipe for pizza dough with mayonnaise

• In a bowl, beat the eggs with salt, either by hand or with a mixer.
• Add sour cream and mayonnaise, mix well.
• Add flour. Its amount depends on the fat content of sour cream and mayonnaise, so we do it gradually so as not to add too much at once. The consistency of the dough should be similar to that from which pancakes are baked.
• Grease the mold with oil and slowly pour in the dough. If the container is small, then you can divide the prepared mass into several parts.
• Spread the sauce on the base without pre-baking, then add the vegetables and meat filling. Sprinkle with cheese.
• Bake in the oven for about ten minutes at a temperature of 200-220 degrees or in a frying pan with a lid until cooked.

Secrets of making thin pizza in the oven

To prepare thin crust pizza, like in a pizzeria, but at home, you should remember the basic rules and secrets:

— The most important thing is to observe the cooking temperature. Ideally, bake at 450-550 degrees. You can't reach that temperature in the oven, but 300 degrees is quite possible.

— To make pizza on a thin base, use lean yeast dough. The dough should swell once, after which it is immediately stretched to the desired size.

— The baking sheet should be sprinkled with flour, only then lay out the dough cake.

— Grease the dough with olive oil, but only the side on which the filling will lie. This will prevent the dough from absorbing unnecessary moisture from the filling.

— In order for thin-crust pizza to bake in a short time, you should not put too much toppings and distribute the cheese in small piles.