Share Your Best Pizza Dough...

[Participant]

I've written up my current pizza dough recipe/method in the below Google Doc. Might be useful for some people. It includes a link to a MyFitnessPal recipe with the macro and kcal breakdown.

Single pizza is only 573 kcal, not including any extra toppings beyond the cheese and tomato.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14-6cKMXBMUSs7jHoHo-sCj-RUhzlX6495AgteAt9dtU/edit?usp=sharing

I used this recipe today (or very close to...I added a teaspoon of olive oil) and it worked really well, so thanks.

As it was my first ever try at making pizza and I was impatient, I proved it outside in the sun for ~90 minutes rather than letting it cold prove for days, which I might try next time.

However I was blown away by how easy it was compared to what I thought it would be (I am NOT a baker!) as well as how utterly delicious it was compared to the pizzas I usually buy (instant oven cook types from shop).

Cheated and used ready-made pizza sauce from Ocado.



Rest of the toppings on: mozarella, gruyere, fresh basil, spicy salami.

I'm using a flat roasting tray as a peel.



End result. Delicious, but critique would be: crust a bit too big, too much flour on the outside, and the toppings and sauce created a bit of a sloppy base.



This is the stone I used. KitchenCraft branded from Amazon, £10. My oven has a pizza setting, so I wacked up to max on this setting (275C) for 1hr before cooking the pizza as per the instruction on the stone, so it was fairly hot when I put the pizza on it. Took ~7 minutes to cook.

 

[jpaul]

looks good .. you must be good at circles.

a razor blade on stone cleans them well .. for those crispy bits of overflow cheese, when cool.

 

[FrenchTart]

I used this recipe today (or very close to...I added a teaspoon of olive oil) and it worked really well, so thanks.

As it was my first ever try at making pizza and I was impatient, I proved it outside in the sun for ~90 minutes rather than letting it cold prove for days, which I might try next time.

However I was blown away by how easy it was compared to what I thought it would be (I am NOT a baker!) as well as how utterly delicious it was compared to the pizzas I usually buy (instant oven cook types from shop).

Cheated and used ready-made pizza sauce from Ocado.



Rest of the toppings on: mozarella, gruyere, fresh basil, spicy salami.

I'm using a flat roasting tray as a peel.



End result. Delicious, but critique would be: crust a bit too big, too much flour on the outside, and the toppings and sauce created a bit of a sloppy base.



This is the stone I used. KitchenCraft branded from Amazon, £10. My oven has a pizza setting, so I wacked up to max on this setting (275C) for 1hr before cooking the pizza as per the instruction on the stone, so it was fairly hot when I put the pizza on it. Took ~7 minutes to cook.

Looks great for a first attempt

 

[Psymonkee]

I'll probably get lynched for this, but I did my first stab at low-carb fathead dough pizza over the weekend. The dough was a mixture of mozzarella, almond flour, cream cheese and egg.

Pretty good if you make sure to get it all crispy during the initial bake before you add your toppings. I went overboard on the topping cheese, so eating the whole thing made me a bit over-oiled for a while.

Anyone doing low-card or keto, give it a try, very simple to do.

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/fat-head-pizza/

Little late quoting you here but this is a great base for the low carbers out there like you say! I love pizza but I find it doesn't agree with me so much sadly. Luckily this solves my problems

 

[krooton]

Little late quoting you here but this is a great base for the low carbers out there like you say! I love pizza but I find it doesn't agree with me so much sadly. Luckily this solves my problems

Yeah, I've made it a few times now, the best version so far subbed out a third of the almond flour for ground flaxseed, and adding a teaspoon of psyllium husk to the dry ingredients before adding to the 'dough'.

Franks Hot Sauce as a base, layer of pulled beef with some chopped up jalapenos, and topped (sparingly) with shredded mozzarella and cut up fake cheese slices. The fake cheese brings this "Philly cheesesteak" pizza to life

 

[jpaul]

this is a great base for the low carbers out there like you say! I love pizza but I find it doesn't agree with me so much sadly.

if this is less a carb issue, and more a yeast based bread digestion issue , then sourdough based bases may avoid that.
also almond flours not cheap ? £10/kg versus <£1 I usually pay for bread flour.

 

[Psymonkee]

Yeah trying to work on identifying the exact issue since you're quite right the cost is outrageous!

 

[krooton]

Keep in mind you only need a little almond flour, I can make 4 individual pizzas (you wouldn't eat a normal sized pizza with fathead dough, far too rich and calorific) with just 80g of almond flour, so well over 40 bases from that £10.

I'm very aware that low-carb is a way more expensive lifestyle (compare the price of erythritol to sugar, then die a little inside), but it is working wonders for me and the missus.

 

[jpaul]

I can make 4 individual pizzas .. with just 80g of almond flour

(finally read the recipe too ..)
80g flour for 4 pizzas ! how big are they. ? need a picture next time .. maybe you already posted.
I use about 80g flour for one persons pizza 7"-8" dia, with about 80g of cheese.
I see the recipes also suggest 170g of cheese -so that's 2x what I use.

I'm perhaps also surprised, it does not taste marzipany.

 

[krooton]

Pizza cutter for scale, and excuse the charring, I overbaked initially.

 

[krooton]

(finally read the recipe too ..)
80g flour for 4 pizzas ! how big are they. ? need a picture next time .. maybe you already posted.
I use about 80g flour for one persons pizza 7"-8" dia, with about 80g of cheese.
I see the recipes also suggest 170g of cheese -so that's 2x what I use.

I'm perhaps also surprised, it does not taste marzipany.

The 170g mozzarella is just for the base, you add even more cheese before grilling, lol

 

[Participant]

I needed to have about 10-15% less of it and knock it down a lot more before cooking.

Question about knocking back: what's the benefit for pizza dough? Does this not make it more bready / tighter bubbles as the air in the mixture is reduced?

I can see lots of pizzas dough recipes recommending knocking back after the first rise, but whilst I can understand doing this for a loaf of bread, I can't relate the stated benefits (smaller bubbles) to pizza dough.

Surely big wide air bubbles is a desirable trait of pizzas?

 

[FrenchTart]

Question about knocking back: what's the benefit for pizza dough? Does this not make it more bready / tighter bubbles as the air in the mixture is reduced?

I can see lots of pizzas dough recipes recommending knocking back after the first rise, but whilst I can understand doing this for a loaf of bread, I can't relate the stated benefits (smaller bubbles) to pizza dough.

Surely big wide air bubbles is a desirable trait of pizzas?

So my original comment was quite some time ago but I guess now I'd say the advantage of knocking back is really just that you can have a tight/stable outer "skin" without the air bubbles or general volume of air being too large. With pizza, generally speaking, you want a long ferment to get the most flavour from your yeast and the most sugars and such from the breaking down of starches. A long ferment helps with this. However, it also generates dough balls that are a bit unwieldy so I guess having a second ferment deals with that.

Either that or it's just a leave-over from regular bread baking and isn't really needed. I'd be interested to hear your results if you experiment with not bothering.

 

[jpaul]

Surely big wide air bubbles is a desirable trait of pizzas?

if it is well hydrated, as it should be, then big bubbles ready to burst, do not not make it very handlable as you form it out to a circle ... you can end up patching a hole.

I sometimes make nan/pitta breads with same dough and uinhibited by the weight of topping it will typically balloon into one big bubble, even though it has had a knock-backs,
so you dont loose anything, it has rested post knock-back anyway..

 

[famas]

Had My first proper go at pizza the other night.

Can't remember where I got this recipe from but it's been in my head for years.

Base ingredients where:
220g 00 flour
5g sugar
3g salt
5g fast action yeast
170-200ml water
5g Nigella seeds (optional) These give the dough a wonderful nutty peppery taste.

mix the sugar, salt, yeast and nigella seeds in a large bowl with half the water. Next slowly add all of the flour and mix while slowly adding the rest of the water.
knead for as long as you can then leave the dough in the bowl and put it in the fridge over night.
The next morning take the dough out of the fridge and it will be ready to use when you get home from work.

Separate the dough in half (each half will make one 9" pizzas) round the dough into a ball, folding and tucking it's self under to trap as much air into the dough as possible. This technique has a name but I cant remember what it is but its very important you do it.
Leave to rest for 30 mins before stretching the dough into a pizza.

 

[robj20]

Pizza cutter for scale, and excuse the charring, I overbaked initially.

What are the yellow strips?

 

[Participant]

What are the yellow strips?

Yellow peppers

 

[rexehuk]

I've been out of the pizza game too long... Jealous of all these pizzas.

Soon I shall be back with home made pizza oven and hopefully dough recipes never done before! I also will have a steam oven over next few weeks, so curious what I can do with dough in that.

 

[krooton]

Yellow peppers

Fake cheese slices (Tesco value ones had the best macros)

 

[Psycho Sonny]

having some real issues with dough that has been left to prove for more than 2 hours.

it's far too sticky, airy keeps on shrinking after rolling it out.

the sticky part is the killer as it won't come off the peel even with a shed load of semolina. ends up a mess.

the same dough if you make it 1-2 hours before hand and just use it is perfect. but if you have some left over and stick it int he fridge to use the next day it is unusable.

any tips? i'm using italian tipo 00 flour. some french bakers yeast, etc. using the dough recipe from new york times.