Homemade Pizza Dough: Basics and Recipe Sources

Homemade pizza dough needs only flour, water, salt and yeast. Two published approaches show the range: a no-knead dough from King Arthur Baking that rests on the counter for 12 to 24 hours, and a cold-fermented dough from Cambro that rests in the fridge for 72 hours. This page summarises both. We have not made either; amounts and times are the sources’.

Option 1: King Arthur’s no-knead pizza crust

King Arthur prints this recipe on its organic bread flour bag. It makes two medium pizzas from 3 cups (360 g) bread flour, ¼ teaspoon instant yeast, 1½ teaspoons salt and 1½ cups (340 g) barely lukewarm water, about 78°F. The steps are:

• Stir everything together in a large bowl. The dough will be very loose and sticky.
• Cover and rest at cool room temperature for 12 to 24 hours, until it has risen and developed lots of bubbles.
• Pour the dough onto a heavily floured surface, flour the top and turn it over on itself a few times with a scraper.
• Heat the oven to 450°F, with a pizza stone on the middle shelf if you have one. Divide the dough in half and pat each piece into an oval about ¼ inch thick on parchment. Without a stone, slide the parchment onto a baking sheet and spray the crusts with water.
• Bake the crusts about 12 minutes on a stone, or about 16 minutes on a sheet, until just beginning to brown on top. Add pre-cooked toppings and bake 4 to 8 minutes more.

The bag recommends weighing ingredients and notes that raw flour must be baked before eating.

Option 2: 72-hour cold fermentation

The Cambro recipe by Freddy Jennings makes five 300 g dough balls from 900 g of flour with protein in the high 12% range or above, 540 g water (about 60% hydration), 27 g olive oil, 27 g sea salt and just 4 g instant yeast.

• Mix the flour, yeast and water, then the oil, then the salt, and knead until the gluten is well developed.
• Rest about 20 minutes, fold, divide into five 300 g balls and refrigerate them covered for 72 hours.
• On baking day, leave the dough at room temperature for about 4 hours before baking.

The author says the small amount of yeast and the controlled cold rest let the dough rise slowly, which he says avoids off-tasting CO2 and improves flavour and digestibility. Those are the author’s claims. The page gives no oven temperature, bake time or shaping method, so use the oven settings from a recipe you trust.

Which to choose

The no-knead version needs less work and a full set of bake instructions. The cold-ferment version needs planning three days ahead. If you already bake bread, our summary of King Arthur’s no-knead loaf uses a similar mix-and-wait approach.

Sources

• King Arthur Baking: no-knead pizza crust on bread flour packaging
• Cambro: 72-hour cold-fermented pizza dough

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