Rustic Italian Pizza Dough Recipe Video (2024)

FAQs

What flour is best for pizza dough? ›

The best flour for making Deep-Dish Pizza Dough is all-purpose flour. In bakeries and pizzerias, Pizza Flour is often used because it is a high-protein flour that produces a light and airy crust. However, all-purpose flour will also work well for Deep-Dish Pizza Dough.

The secret to making pizza crust thinner is by rolling out as thin as you can without tearing the dough. This can be achieved by using a rolling pin and about ½ to ¾ of 1 dough ball for this recipe.

Italian pizza dough is flattened out thinly to form a thin crust. American pizza dough is made with all-purpose flour or bread flour which are high in gluten. Resting time for the dough is typically a few hours. The dough is kneaded for a longer time than Italian pizza to give it a more bready texture.

The five key ingredients for making the best pizza dough are flour, yeast, salt, water, and olive oil. These ingredients work together to create a dough that is perfectly textured, flavorful, and easy to work with. When making pizza dough, it's important to use high-quality ingredients and not overwork the dough.

Pizza flour, sometimes referred to as tipo 00 flour, is high quality, finely milled wheat. Its fluffy, light texture is baby-powder soft and has a low absorption rate, meaning it requires less water than regular all-purpose flour.

If you are a total beginner, we would recommend you to use either the instant dry yeast or the active dried yeast. They are both fairly easy to find and use, guaranteeing a great pizza dough.

So if you're looking for a light and airy crust with lots of air pockets, then you should go with Tipo 00 flour. If you're after a crust with a little less crunch and more chewiness, opt for bread flour.

When building a pan pizza, it's important to apply a liberal coating of olive oil to the bottom of the cold pan before adding your dough. This not only prevents sticking, but further helps the caramelization of the bottom crust, creating that delicious crunch.

Under-proofed pizza dough is hard to stretch and dense. An over-proofed dough will stretch too thin and won't spring up when you put it in the oven. Warm-up your dough: Cold dough is hard to stretch and more prone to tearing. Let your dough warm up to at least room temperature before stretching for best results.

What cheese do Italians use on pizza? ›

The Champion: Mozzarella

While other Italian cheeses can often be either too fatty or too dry, when combined with mozzarella, they can add their unique flavours to the aroma and texture of a pizza. For a 100% Italian pizza, the best partners alongside mozzarella are: Provolone – another stretched-curd cheese.

Use Tipo 0 or Tipo 00 flour. Tipo is a grading of flour on the Italian flour scale. And these flours have just the right amount of protein content - around 12.5% for pizza baking.

The Secret to the Best Pizza Crust

The pizza bosses of the world know the secret to an incredible dough is to let it rest and give it time to rise in the slow/ cold fermentation step. This process makes the dough much easier to work with and forms the coveted texture, rise, and bubbles at the edges.

If you're keen to intensify its flavor even more, enhance the dough further – either with infused oil brushed over top, cheese woven into its edges or a combination of herbs and spices kneaded into it or sprinkled on it.