Recipe: Pizza Dough

Ever tried making pizza dough from scratch? Here's your chance to try it out! No more waiting for delivery or quibbling over pizza toppings. Homemade pizza  is simple to make -- and you can load the crust up with all the toppings you want! (It's also a pretty good way to get kids involved in preparing meals.)

This recipe is from our Easy Bread Making workshop last month, facilitated by Scott Bernstein.

Pizza Dough
(Yield: 4 thin-crust pizzas)

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Ingredients

1 3/4 cups lukewarm water (about 100 F)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour**

**Note:  You can substitute up to 1 cup of all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour.

Source: Favorite Family Recipes

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, mix together the water, oil, salt, yeast, and sugar.
2. Add the flour in to the yeast mixture and stir well to combine. The dough will be quite wet. No kneading is necessary. 
3. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic, leaving a small gap to allow air to escape. Allow the dough to rise for 2 hours at room temperature. The dough will fully expand and may begin to collapse during this time. Do not punch down the dough.
4. Refrigerate the dough for at least 3 hours before using.

Baking

1. Preheat the oven and pizza stone (if you use one) to 550 F.
2. Lightly dust a clean counter with flour and pull off a piece of dough the size of an orange. Repeat to create 4 balls of dough of similar size. Shape the dough into balls and cover with plastic and let rest for 30 minutes.
3. Stretch the dough into a circle about 12 inches in diameter.
4. If using a pizza stone, put some corn meal on the baking peel and lay the pizza on top. If using a baking sheet, simply place the round of dough on top.
5. Layer your pizza ingredients of choice on the pizza crust.
6. If using a pizza stone, bake for 8 to 10 minutes. If using a baking sheet, bake for 13 to 15 minutes.

Storing

1. The dough will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or in the freezer for up to 3 weeks.
2. If storing the dough in the fridge, cover it tightly after 2 days to ensure the surface of the dough does not dry out.
3. If using from frozen, leave the dough balls out overnight until they are thawed and ready for use.