Yankee Paramotor
New member
- Joined
- May 12, 2025
- Messages
- 4
This is my first serious post here, but the single biggest consistency improvement in my pizza dough/crust the past year, revolves around 3 or 4 key points.
1) Weight vs. volume. Disregard measuring devices like cups, tablespoons, dashes, pinches etc. Head over to Amazon and buy a modest quality, digital kitchen scale that measures with 0.1 gram accuracy. Maybe $18? Learn how to use the" tare" function, which zeros out the weight of your mixing bowl, so that you're only measuring the ingredients by very exacting WEIGHT.
Typically, for 2 additional guests, I'll then weigh out 600 grams of good '00" pizza dough flour. For heartier crusts, occasionally, I'll sometimes combine no more than 50 or 60 grams of whole wheat flour, combining with pizza dough flour, but still hitting that 600 gram starting flour weight total.
Hydration is no accident. Again, stop guessing and use exact weights instead of volumetric measures (except for water because weight and volume are interchangeable using the metric system). I like 65% hydration or less. In this case 600 (weight of the flour) times .65 = 390 Grams or milliliters of water. I don't typically weigh the water (as 1 ml of water weighs 1 gram). Most measuring cups are marked in both imperial and metric volumes. The point is to calculate the amount of water as a ratio to the amount of flour, then measure the water as accurately as you can. Don't add water to the flour just yet!!!
Add in 1.5% to 2% yeast to only the measured out water, don't mix with the dough yet as we need to completely hydrate the yeast (600 x .015 = 9 grams of yeast). I use 10 grams for round numbers. After the yeast is fully dissolved and wet in the water start mixing. When the mix is nearly dough, add in 3% salt. or 600 x .03 = 18 grams. Kosher salt or other specialty salt are preferable vs. iodized table salt. Mix, roll and kneed until your arms hurt. Then let the dough rise for a few hours in one big chunk covered with a towel to prevent if from drying out .
This recipe is easily scaleable to almost any amount of dough, just remember:
-Measure flour
-65% (or less) hydration
-3% salt
-enough yeast to at least proof the dough in a few hours at proofing temp in your over, or on top of your running clothes dryer etc. If you have access to fresh yeast (like from your home beer brewing), use that instead of dry active or instant yeasts.
2) Always make more dough than you think you'll need. Flour salt and yeast are a lot cheaper than the disappointment of having to share a burned pizza that should just be replaced. This 600 gram batch makes either 3 nice 16" pizzas, or 4 slightly smaller and easier to manage crusts. The smaller sizes are good for presenting many different toppings, "personal sized" pies, or for the kids/grandkids. An extra crust is never much of a problem at our house. I even bought a pack of cardboard pizza boxes, for sending guests home with pizzas, delivering pizza as gifts for neighbors, or just a way to conveniently store an extra pizza for later on in the weekend.
3) Proof your dough first, then "ferment it"! After initial proofing of a few hours, cut your dough into equal parts of approximately 200 grams each and place each one as ball in a sealable container. REFRIGERATE over night or even two nights. I bought a few commercial dough fermenting boxes that I only use for pizza crusts. Each box can hold about 8 larger doughs or 10 smaller ones. They barely fit in the fridge, but they keep the dough balls from dehydrating and it's easy to clean between pizza parties.
4 On cook day, get the dough out of the cold and let it come up to near room temp... at least an hour or two prior to cooking. In fact I find room temp for all ingredients, yes even meat toppings, yields more throughly finished pizzas. Use only enough flour to keep the rolled out crusts from sticking to your peal.
Consider taking some notes for a few bakes, until your get to the point where you KNOW your crusts will turn out nice!
Hope this helps
1) Weight vs. volume. Disregard measuring devices like cups, tablespoons, dashes, pinches etc. Head over to Amazon and buy a modest quality, digital kitchen scale that measures with 0.1 gram accuracy. Maybe $18? Learn how to use the" tare" function, which zeros out the weight of your mixing bowl, so that you're only measuring the ingredients by very exacting WEIGHT.
Typically, for 2 additional guests, I'll then weigh out 600 grams of good '00" pizza dough flour. For heartier crusts, occasionally, I'll sometimes combine no more than 50 or 60 grams of whole wheat flour, combining with pizza dough flour, but still hitting that 600 gram starting flour weight total.
Hydration is no accident. Again, stop guessing and use exact weights instead of volumetric measures (except for water because weight and volume are interchangeable using the metric system). I like 65% hydration or less. In this case 600 (weight of the flour) times .65 = 390 Grams or milliliters of water. I don't typically weigh the water (as 1 ml of water weighs 1 gram). Most measuring cups are marked in both imperial and metric volumes. The point is to calculate the amount of water as a ratio to the amount of flour, then measure the water as accurately as you can. Don't add water to the flour just yet!!!
Add in 1.5% to 2% yeast to only the measured out water, don't mix with the dough yet as we need to completely hydrate the yeast (600 x .015 = 9 grams of yeast). I use 10 grams for round numbers. After the yeast is fully dissolved and wet in the water start mixing. When the mix is nearly dough, add in 3% salt. or 600 x .03 = 18 grams. Kosher salt or other specialty salt are preferable vs. iodized table salt. Mix, roll and kneed until your arms hurt. Then let the dough rise for a few hours in one big chunk covered with a towel to prevent if from drying out .
This recipe is easily scaleable to almost any amount of dough, just remember:
-Measure flour
-65% (or less) hydration
-3% salt
-enough yeast to at least proof the dough in a few hours at proofing temp in your over, or on top of your running clothes dryer etc. If you have access to fresh yeast (like from your home beer brewing), use that instead of dry active or instant yeasts.
2) Always make more dough than you think you'll need. Flour salt and yeast are a lot cheaper than the disappointment of having to share a burned pizza that should just be replaced. This 600 gram batch makes either 3 nice 16" pizzas, or 4 slightly smaller and easier to manage crusts. The smaller sizes are good for presenting many different toppings, "personal sized" pies, or for the kids/grandkids. An extra crust is never much of a problem at our house. I even bought a pack of cardboard pizza boxes, for sending guests home with pizzas, delivering pizza as gifts for neighbors, or just a way to conveniently store an extra pizza for later on in the weekend.
3) Proof your dough first, then "ferment it"! After initial proofing of a few hours, cut your dough into equal parts of approximately 200 grams each and place each one as ball in a sealable container. REFRIGERATE over night or even two nights. I bought a few commercial dough fermenting boxes that I only use for pizza crusts. Each box can hold about 8 larger doughs or 10 smaller ones. They barely fit in the fridge, but they keep the dough balls from dehydrating and it's easy to clean between pizza parties.
4 On cook day, get the dough out of the cold and let it come up to near room temp... at least an hour or two prior to cooking. In fact I find room temp for all ingredients, yes even meat toppings, yields more throughly finished pizzas. Use only enough flour to keep the rolled out crusts from sticking to your peal.
Consider taking some notes for a few bakes, until your get to the point where you KNOW your crusts will turn out nice!
Hope this helps
