How to Make Pizza Dough at Home — Simple and Easy
Does your family enjoy pizza night?
So do we.
Pizza is a fun way to kick off the weekend. But it’s Friday night. You’re ready to relax and enjoy a meal with your family — without the hassle of cooking.
I get it!
Before you place your delivery order, consider making your own pizza dough.
It only takes about 20 minutes total (half the time of delivery) with this 5 Minute Pizza Dough recipe. It’s healthier because you know what ingredients you’re adding. And it’s fun to prep dinner as a family and catch up on everyone’s day.
Everybody wins.
Let’s get started.
Pizza Dough v. Bread Dough
Both pizza and bread dough use the same ingredients. The biggest difference between the two is the amount of each ingredient. Pizza dough usually rises once while bread dough rises, gets punched down, and rises again.
Oil is the secret ingredient to pizza dough. It makes the dough easy to work with. Oil helps your pizza dough be more elastic so you can stretch the dough to form your pizza crust. When you knead pizza dough, the oil, gluten, water, and grains from the flour, create the perfect pizza crust texture.
Now, let’s form the pizza crust.
How To Form Pizza Dough
I don’t know about you. But I’ve made all kinds of shapes with pizza dough. Sometimes on purpose (sometimes not). Although tossing your pizza dough in the air looks fun and impressive, let’s start with an easier method.
First, grab your pizza dough and place it on a well-floured surface. I use my countertop. Use the palm of your hands to make a flat, circular disk. It should still be pretty small and thick, no stretching yet.
Next, use your fingertips to gently press the dough from the center, toward the edges of your pizza dough. Continue working with the dough until it’s the size that you want.
How To Stretch Pizza Dough
If you’re ready to try stretching your pizza dough, start by holding the edge of your dough with both hands. Gently rotate the dough between your hands, in the same direction. The trick with stretching pizza dough is to let gravity do the work. So all you’re doing is rotate the dough between your hands while gravity stretches it for you.
Want to learn how to stretch your pizza dough by tossing it into the air?
Practice “tossing” a dry washcloth in the air. Then try tossing a wet washcloth in the air. When you can toss a wet washcloth and catch it in the same position that you threw it into the air, you can graduate to tossing your pizza dough.
Remeber, your pizza crust doesn’t have to be perfect. If you start to see thin parts or holes forming in the dough — no worries!
Use the extra doughy spots to patch up any holes or thin patches. Your favorite toppings will hide any imperfections.
All anyone needs to know is how soft and chewy your crust is on the inside, with the perfect crunch on the outside.
(It’ll be our secret.)
The pizza dough…
is too sticky.
There’s probably more water to flour ratio than there should be. The easiest way to fix this is to slowly add small amounts of flour to your pizza dough. Keep kneading and adding flour until the dough stops sticking to your hands and the surface you’re working on.
is too dry.
Again, the ratio of water to flour is probably off. But this time, there isn’t enough water. You may have added too much flour when you kneaded your dough. Add one or two teaspoons of water to your pizza dough, then knead it again. It should fix the issue.
isn’t rising.
Yeast is what makes your dough rise. Be sure to use warm water to activate the yeast in your dough. Since this is a 5 Minute Pizza Dough Recipe, we aren’t giving the dough time to sit around and rise. It’s important that you use warm water — at least room temperature or a little warmer — so the yeast “wakes up” and makes the dough rise the way it’s supposed to.
Let’s make 5 Minute Pizza Dough!
Pizza Dough
Equipment
- Standing mixer with bread hook optional
- Dough Scraper/Cutter
- spatula
- Medium Mixing Bowl
Ingredients
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 1/4 tsp dry yeast
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 tsp garlic salt or powder optional
Instructions
- Pour warm water into a medium mixing bowl. The water shouldn't be warmer than 110° F.
- Spinkle in the sugar and yeast. Use a spoon (or the spoon handle) to mix the sugar and yeast together. This should only take a few stirs.
- Let the yeast stand for 2-3 minutes. The yeast is ready when it has a foamy layer on top.
- Add the flour, salt and olive oil. You can mix it by hand or with a stand mixer. If you use your stand mixer, use the bread hook attachment. Mix until the ingredietns are well combined and the texture becomes smooth. Use a spatula to scrape the sides in between mixing so all fo the ingredients mis evenly.
- Flour your workspace. Place the dough on the countertop or where you're working. Then sprinkle more flour on top of your pizza dough.
- Fold or lightly knead the dough, incorporating some of the sprinkled flour into yoru pizza dough. This prevents the dough from becomin sticky, making it easier to work with.
- Use one hand to knead the pizza dough outwards and fold the dough underneath itself. Turn teh dough slightly clockwise in between kneading and folding, to form a smooth ball.
- Use the dough for pizza immediatley or you can store it in teh fridge or freezer to use later on.
- Use a dough scraper to cut the dough in half for two large pizzas or use all of the pizza dough for an X-large pizza.
- When you're ready, bake your pizza dough at 425° F for about 10-15 minutes. Enjoy!