A General Guide to Pizza (and Dough)

Pulling together methods and techniques I’ve found work well for preparing dough and cooking pizzas in home kitchens.

Choosing dough

In general, pizzas should be around 60% - 75% hydration. On the higher end, you get pizza crusts that are very open and airy but crisp on the outside like in Neapolitan style pizzas:

Achieving this exact effect/texture isn’t the easiest in a home oven though and ideally requires a high heat pizza oven. These high hydration doughs can also be messy and more difficult to work with, so there’s a case for using lower hydration when making at home just due to ease.

65% is a good middle ground where the dough is fairly easy to handle, and still has a fairly light texture that cooks well in lower power home ovens. But in general I now tend to decide what hydration to use based on what effect I want to achieve and how much effort I want to put into managing the dough.

Here is a general ingredients list I now use to make batches of pizza dough (but can obviously be used for other things as well):

For 4 x ~12inch pizzas (or 8 x ~12inch super thin pizzas)

• Poolish/pre-ferment (200g any type flour, 200g water, 8g sachet yeast, 6g honey)
• 500g further high-protein flour (manitoba, bread)
• Enough water to bring to your desired hydration (remember there is 700g flour in total)
• 20g salt

Required for preparing and working with the dough

• Extra virign olive oil
• Fine semolina flour

Toppings

• Good quality crushed tomatoes - found that cheap ones are very watery and make pizzas too wet
• Firm mozzarella - lots of people say shouldn’t buy pre-grated because it doesn’t melt well, I think it works fine if it’s the only thing you can find.
• Grated parmesan (optional)
• Garlic powder
• Chilli flakes
• Salt and black pepper
• Italian dried herb seasoning
• Extra virgin olive oil

Additional equipment

• Pizza stone or steel
• Pizza peel (or can bring the steel out the oven and create pizza directly on it)
• Bench scraper

Directions

1. Mix together ingredients for poolish/pre-ferment up to 24 hours in advance (e.g. the night before) and store in fridge. Alternatively, you could just make the whole dough in advance (this would probably improve the flavour). I just like making the poolish in advance because it’s very quick and doesn’t take up much room in the fridge, and then means I can focus on making the dough on the day of cooking.

2. In the morning you want to cook, take the poolish out the fridge to let it come to room temperature.

3. Once poolish is roughly room temp (don’t have to be too strict here), combine it with the remaining flour, water and salt. Mix together in a large bowl using a spoon (silicon spoons are useful here) until it’s well incorporated and the dough is shaggy. There shouldn’t be any raw flour remaining.

4. Dump it onto a clean work surface (don’t use silicon mat, because it will just stick). Scrape it up so it’s roughly in one ball, rub a small amount of oil on hands and rub on top surface on dough. Cover and leave for ~20 mins.

5. The dough kneading stage will be harder the more hydrated/sticky your dough. I generally prefer kneading by hand because it saves using/washing up any food processor and I can feel when the dough is ready better. Start performing ‘slap and folds’ on the dough and rotating each time. The oil on the surface should help with sticking, but it may still feel very messy. Here are some general tips:

   • Always remember which side is the top and keep this on top.
   • Try to be confident and quick in handling it. Some may stick to your hands as you release the dough and this is fine.
   • If it feels way too sticky, add more oil to your hand. Can also leave to rest longer and it will develop and become easier to handle.
   • If things become messy, scrape everything into a ball and start again

6. Once it feels like it’s developed slightly, cover and rest for another ~20 minutes. Then add some more oil to hands, and gently fold into a ball (using the same sort of motion as the slap and folds and by also dragging across bench to form tension). The oil should hopefully prevent from sticking.

7. Cover and rest for an hour, until roughly doubled in size.

8. Line a tray with some semolina flour. Split dough into 4 (or 8 for thin and crispy style) pieces with bench scraper. Oil hands, and form into balls (remember to keep top on top and form tension over the top). Place each ball on the semolina lined tray and cover with a tea towel. Can lightly brush tops of balls with oil to prevent towel from sticking.

9. Leave to prove for another hour or so (they should rise some more).

10. An hour before you want to cook, place pizza stone/steel in oven and pre-heat to highest temp.

11. Mix together crushed tomatoes, garlic powder, chilli flakes, italian dried herbs, salt and pepper. I normally use an uncooked sauce, but can also cook on a hob for a thicker sauce.

12. Prepare the cheese and place aside. Make sure all your toppings and sauce are ready to be quickly placed on the pizza bases.

13. Dump a pile of semolina on the surface. Scrape a dough ball up and place in semolina. To stretch the dough:

    • Turn over the dough to coat in semolina and remember which side is the top.
    • Brush the semolina pile aside and push dough ball down to push air to crust and flatten into circular disk.
    • Place both hands on top end and spread hands across to stretch. A YouTuber called Massimo Nocerino has good videos on how to do this.
    • Once its about 12inches, confirm that it has enough semolina on it and that it’s not sticking to surface. You don’t want there to be too much semolina on surface, so brush off any excess.
    • If you want a traditional style, then there should be a puffy crust around the edge.
    • If you want a super thin style, you can use a rolling pin to flatten. However, you will want to use smaller dough balls for this in order to keep to 12 inches.
    • Once shaped and not sticking, spread sauce and add toppings. Top with dried italian herbs.
    • Add some more semolina to pizza peel, confidently lift the pizza crust and pull onto the peel. Shake more to confirm it’s not sticking.
    • Brush some oil onto the crust to help it become crisp on the outside.
    • Open oven and shake onto pizza stone/steel

14. Cook until the cheese has browned (roughly 10 mins). Remove and leave to rest for a few mins before slicing.