Simple Italian Pizza Dough
We use this pizza dough recipe every time we want a homemade pizza. This is the best Italian pizza dough in my opinion and is easy and simple. It produces great results and we use it for both thin and thick pizza recipes.
Ingredients
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 1/2 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp yeast
- 3 cups flour all purpose is fine
- 1 cup Grated Italian cheese Romano, Parmesan and/or Mozzarella
Instructions
-
Dissolve the sugar and salt in the water
-
Add in the olive oil and yeast and set aside to ferment
-
Meanwhile, oil a medium bowl for the dough to rise in and set aside
-
When the yeast has begun to ferment after about 10 minutes, add in the flour 1 cup at a time
-
Knead the dough until a smooth ball can be formed, about 5-8 minutes. If using a kitchenaid, it would take about 2-3 minutes.
-
Transfer to the oiled bowl and cover with a damp cloth and let it rise in a warm area such as a preheated (and turned off) oven of 170F or a warm area of the house.
-
The dough should rise and have had time to rest.
-
Meanwhile, liberally oil your pizza pans.
-
Press dough in the pan and push up on the sides to form a crust if you want
-
Top with sauce and your toppings except cheese (see post notes for some tips)
-
Bake at 375F for 15 minutes on a middle rack and then add cheese and bake for 5 more minutes
Recipe Notes
- See my notes in the post itself but you'll basically want about 7 oz or more of sauce per pizza
- Cook down high water content toppings in a pan and then add to pizza prior to cooking. the vegetable texture will be different but still nice flavors.
- Slice hard vegetables such as onions and peppers thinly to help cook quicker if not cooking them down ahead of time
- For a thick pizza check out my article here but basically you'd want it to rise three times - first in the bowl, then in the pizza pan and then after adding toppings.
- For the cheese, use what you want. I prefer Romano, but if you like a stringy cheesy pizza then use mozzarella. I also add it at the end even if using toppings so the cheese does not turn hard. This most likely won't be an issue if using Romano grated cheese.
- Experiment and have fun
- You can freeze the dough in it's ball form before rising, after rising, after being rolled out, or even after baking just the dough and store it for later when you can add toppings and pop in the oven.