How To Make Pizza Dough

How To Make Pizza Dough

Strong white flour is best (in some countries this flour is marked as bread flour). Although plain flour can be used as well, it does not have the same high gluten content and therefore the finished pizza dough will not be as stretchy. Watching a pizza chef doing acrobatics with the dough is proof enough how elastic the dough should be, they throw it in the air and catch it with their fingers without it leaving a dent in the dough. This shows that the gluten has done its work and the pizza dough is robust and flexible.

Whilst it is technically possible to get the pizza dough to rise faster by placing the dough in a warm place, experts tend to agree that the finished pizza dough is best left to rise naturally, whatever the pizza dough recipe. After kneading the dough should be left to double in size naturally. This should be a process that is completed by the eye and not the clock. It can take anything between 1 hour and 2 hours depending on the temperature and the amount of draught.

Pay attention to the kneading process: it eliminates excess gas produced by the yeast and quite literally knocks the air out of the pizza dough. Many people find the action of kneading the dough very therapeutic and chefs are often asked how you can tell when the dough is kneaded sufficiently. The answer is: you can feel it in your hands (practice makes perfect).

Pizza dough keeps in the refrigerator for several days and frozen pizza dough can be kept for several months. I always have frozen pizza dough in the freezer for emergencies, and I find that if it is frozen in pieces the size of golf balls then it is defrosted in ten minutes.

When you come to baking your pizza dough, the chances are that you are using a conventional oven rather than one fired from the volcanic rocks of Vesuvius. The baking time is always intense and short and the temperature should be 220°C or 425°F. The pizza dough should always be placed on the upper shelves, and whilst you can cook more than one pizza base at once, they should never be placed at less than the middle. This is because heat rises and you cannot get the best heat at the bottom of an oven.