One night this week was a pizza night for our household. While many families pick up a pizza from a restaurant or a take-and-bake pizza to bake at home, our family makes pizza from scratch. We have found what we feel is the perfect pizza dough recipe and have been making this dough for the past 5+ years. In addition, this dough also makes the perfect breadsticks. You can just double the dough recipe to be able to make additional pizzas or to make a pan of breadsticks to compliment your pizza.
Perfect Pizza Dough Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup of warm water
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey or sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive, canola or oil of your choice
2 ½ to 3 cups of bread flour* (give and take the ½ cup depending on heat and humidity)
*To make bread flour, add 1 teaspoon of vital wheat gluten to 1 cup of all-purpose flour
Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, preferably a stand mixer; stir yeast and honey into warm water. Let sit for 5-10 minutes or until bubbles form and mixture starts to foam. This tells you that the yeast is alive and kicking. Then pour in the salt, oil, and half of the flour and mix.
Once the flour is incorporated, start adding the remaining flour, a little bit at a time or until you get the pizza dough to the right consistency. The dough should be slightly tacky but shouldn’t stick to your hands when you touch it.
Once you reach this stage, turn your mixer onto a 2 or medium high or knead by hand for 6 minutes. Turn the timer on and walk away if you’re using a stand mixer. This seems like the magical number to give you a dough that is smooth and easy to work with. When you come back, you should find your bowl to be clean.
You will then lightly grease the bowl with oil or cooking spray and then cover the bowl with plastic wrap to prevent the dough from drying out. You will then let the dough rise for 1-2 hours.
Directions to prepare the pizza:
Prepare your pizza stone or pan by sprinkling some cornmeal on the pan. Then flour and roll out your pizza dough. Transfer the rolled out dough to your pan. Stab the entire pizza dough with a fork to make tiny holes in the pizza crust. This will help your crust to cook evenly and develop a nice golden brown crust on the bottom. Next you will spread whatever type of sauce depending on the type of pizza you are making. You will find follow this by a layer of cheese, layers of toppings, and a layer of more cheese. We typically sprinkle Johnny’s garlic seasoning in. We bake them in a 500 degree oven for a total of 16 minutes, turning the pizza halfway through the cooking process.
Be sure to try making a homemade pizza for your family. It’s so easy and tastes so good. Thank you for visiting Sunup to Sundown, please be sure to stop by again soon!
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