How to Make Homemade Pizza, Part 1: The Dough

Pizza dough can be as easy or as complicated as you want it to be. I've made pizza dough in 5 minutes and I've made pizza dough over a few hours. You can really use any bread recipe you like as your pizza dough. Just shorten or skip the rise unless you like a thicker, breadier crust, then by all means let that baby rise!

I think the easiest way to make pizza dough is just to use a hunk of Artisan Bread in 5 minutes A Day Master Recipe. I almost always have this dough in my fridge and in a pinch, I scoop out a hunk, roll it out and go. The crust is FABULOUS!

My current favorite dough is Camille's (nope, not me!) Best Ever Bread Dough. While this dough requires a few more ingredients and steps than most pizza doughs I've used, it is truly impossible to mess up. It also has a magnificent flavor. I love that there is no need to let the dough rise. At all. I make 4 pizzas out the recipe.

The basic pizza dough recipe below is the one that started it all for us. We still use this recipe on a regular basis and I love it.

The best thing about pizza dough is that you can freeze it! I always make a double batch (or in the Best Ever Bread Dough, I just freeze half that single batch) and freeze. I wrap the dough in plastic wrap and tuck it way back in the freezer so that it freezes quickly. I then put the frozen dough in a freezer bag. I'm not perfect at thawing it and I'm trying to pin down a precise thawing process. I like to give it enough time to thaw and warm up and rise just a bit so I know the yeast is good to go. How long that takes just depends on the time of year. But I usually let it sit out on the counter all day long.

Basic Pizza Dough
1 cup warm water
1 package dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 Tablespoons oil (I like olive oil)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups all purpose flour (you can substitute some whole wheat)

In a bowl, mix yeast, sugar, and water. Add in olive oil, salt and 1 1/2 cups of flour. Mix to combine. Keeping adding flour by 1/4 cups until the dough is smooth and tacky, but not too sticky. Bread dough should almost always have a little annoying stick to it. Let dough rest for 5 minutes, covered, up to 2 hours.

Do you have a favorite pizza dough? I'd love to try it out!