A Good Pizza Dough Recipe

Here is a new pizza dough recipe that I’ve added to my rotation. I had meant to post one with the stromboli recipe, but then was lazy. And now I had a request for this dough recipe, so thought that I’d post it here.

This dough works for pizza cooked in the oven, on the grill, for stromboli and for fried dough.  It rises quickly and is easy to roll out.

I use my stand mixer, but you could mix it with a spoon and knead it by hand easily. It’s been fine when I’ve refrigerated leftover dough and then pulled the dough out a few days for something else.  As well as the cooked food leftovers are good for a few days without the dough being stale. And I’d guess that would go for freezing this dough as well. In fact, maybe I’ll do that sometime to have on hand.

Pizza Dough

Loosely adapted from Joyful Homemaking

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 tablespoon of active dry yeast (I like Red Star and keep a jar in the fridge)
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 6 to 6 1/2 cups flour

Directions:

1. Add the water, sugar, salt and oil into the bowl of a mixer and stir until dissolved. Sprinkle the yeast on top. Let it sit until the yeast activates and it becomes frothy, about 10 minutes.
2. Add in 6 cups of flour and mix until combined. Let the dough rest for a few minutes. Then knead the dough for 5-10 minutes (by hand or with the mixer on medium-low). You may want (or need) to sprinkle more flour into the mixture if it is too wet/sticky.
3. Turn the dough out into an oiled bowl (I have a bigger stand mixer, so I’ll often ball up the dough, drizzle some olive oil in the used mixing bowl, and set the dough back in). Cover the bowl with a clean cloth or plastic wrap. You may want to oil the plastic wrap. Place the bowl in a warm draft free place (like the microwave or oven turned off – sometimes I’ll warm these up very slightly before putting the dough in).
4. Let the dough rise for an hour and half or until doubled in size. The dough is ready to use.  This isn’t necessary, but for pizza or stromboli, separate the dough into smaller balls depending on the size of your pizza/stromboli – this splits nicely into 2-4 balls, then let the dough balls sit covered for about hour to rise again before use.