This is most fun when you are making pizza with someone else.
Do not let the length of the recipe intimidate you. Take it step by step. This recipe contains a lot of explanation for the beginning pizza maker.
Basic Pizza Crust
Who doesn't love pizza? Everyone loves pizza! This is a foolproof recipe for making your own crust.
Equipment
- pizza stone and peel or a pizza pan
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup lukewarm water
- 1 tsp active-dry yeast
- 10 oz all-purpose Flour
- 1 1/2 tsp Kosher salt
Instructions
- Place pizza stone on lower middle rack if you have one, otherwise, set out a pizza pan for use. Preheat oven to 500° F.
- Combine and stir water and yeast in a mixing bowl ensuring yeast is dissolved in water. Let stand until bubbles/foam starts to appear. This tells you your yeast is working. May take about 10 minutes.
- Whisk together flour and salt. Pour water-yeast combination into flour and mix until dough just comes together. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface.
- Knead the dough until the flour is incorporated, about 5 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic. The dough should be moist and slightly tacky. (If it’s sticky, add in more flour 1 tablespoon at a time until smooth or just flour your hands.)
- Evenly divide dough in half and refrigerated one half for another time or double the topping recipe to make two 10 inch pizzas. If you would rather make individual pizza pies, portion the dough into as many round balls as you want pies. Once the portions have been formed, cover and let the dough sit for 5 to 10 minutes to allow the gluten to relax before rolling the dough out.
- Lightly grease a sheet of parchment paper with olive oil. Or, you can use cornmeal to dust the surface of your work area to keep the dough from sticking.
- Transfer ball of dough to parchment. Stretch out dough by hand as much as possible, then lightly brush with olive oil, cover with another piece of parchment. Another approach is to pound the dough down with your fist or the palm of your hand--this is just a preliminary shaping, to form the dough ball into a disc.
- Rolling out the dough: Use a rolling pin and work from the middle of the dough outward to flatten dough to ¼ inch thickness. For those of you that like a thicker crust, roll the dough to your desired thickness. Using a rolling pin (rather than your fingers) will help maintain a consistent thickness. Peel off top parchment paper and place on the pizza pan or a flour-dusted peel.
- Hand method for rolling out the dough: Dust your hands with flour to keep the dough from sticking. Gently stretch the dough using the back of your floured hands, letting the weight of the dough pull the dough thinner. Use the backs of your fingers to push the dough out wider. Start in the middle of the dough with both hands close together, and slowly pull your hands apart, allowing the dough to glide above your hands. Turn the dough about 15 degrees on your hands and repeat this step until the dough is thinner, wider, and consistent throughout the entire circumference of the crust. Or even better, try spinning the dough in the air. This is certainly not required, but it's a lot of fun! It also helps to make the dough more round.
- Once that's done, you're ready to get busy and have some fun with pizza toppings.
Notes
- A peel is a large wooden paddle for sliding the pizza into the oven and onto the pizza stone. To keep your pizza from sticking, dust it with a little flour. Do not wash your peel. When done working with it, just dust it off.
- A pizza stone is not essential for making good pizza crust but it helps. A pizza stone helps to evenly distribute the heat so that your entire pizza crust cooks at the same time. Generally, you will find these in kitchen shops.
- Both a peel and a pizza stone come in handy when baking bread.
- Pizza Pans do not have to be round. If all you have is a cookie sheet, then use a cookie sheet.