Lazy pizza dough (2022)

Some days I just want an easy pizza dough. I don’t want it 3 days from now, I just know I have food in the fridge that needs to be used up, and a pizza is the most palatable way to do it. This recipe is based on a Serious Eats recipe, and I start it after coffee in the morning on the weekend. So, like 11:30AM.

Mechanic

Every ingredient here is scaled as a baker’s percentage against the flour weight, so the recipe holds up if you scale it up or down. At 70% hydration it’s a medium-hydration dough, and the vital wheat gluten nudges standard Canadian AP flour (13.5% protein) toward bread-flour territory for more chew.

This recipe uses weight measures as it’s simpler, assuming you have a decent scale. I just tare (reset) it between ingredients.

Ingredients

Makes about 1.1 kg of dough: enough for a 350 g focaccia and three 250 g pizzas.

Method

In a large Pyrex measuring jug, stir together the water, most of the oil, and the yeast until the yeast dissolves.

In your stand mixer bowl, combine the dry ingredients, including the sugar, and set the mixer to low. Slowly pour in the liquid and mix on low into a shaggy lump.

Turn off the mixer for a few minutes and clean up some of your mess. This is a lazy autolyse-like step and is totally optional, but why not clean up a bit?

Return the mixer to low and mix until a ball starts to form. Speed up to around medium for 4–7 minutes, scraping the bowl down occasionally (or lowering and raising the bowl). On a good day, a ball comes together without much fuss and cleans your bowl. Other days, you need to coax the stubborn thing along.

Let the dough proof until doubled, about 1–2 hours, or until you remember you need to be somewhere else. This depends a lot on your yeast and the temperature of your kitchen.

If you’re not using it right away, oil it and refrigerate it in a sealed container.

I don’t bother with any fancy dough prep while it proofs, though folding can help develop layers and gluten alignment or whatever. The dough works pretty well as-is, at least for a Greek- or Roman-style pizza.

Focaccia

We usually make a focaccia snack in the afternoon with part of the dough (because focaccia is awesome).

Pour too much olive oil (about 75 ml) into a medium baking dish or a ½ short steam pan, and add about 350 g of the dough. Stretch it to the size of the pan and let it rest 10–20 minutes. Stretch it again, repeating until it relents to your will.

Dimple the dough with your fingers as hard and deep as you can, like you’re playing a Ben Folds song on someone else’s piano. Add another 25 ml of oil and your toppings, and press them in with more force than seems necessary.

Bake in a 220°C (425°F) convection oven, or 230°C (450°F) standard, until nicely browned, 25–30 minutes.

Cool in the pan on a rack. Once it’s cool enough to handle, lift the bread out and cool it another 20 minutes or so. Waiting to cut into it is always best, but I don’t care if you cut into it early. I know you probably will anyway.

Pizza

Divide the remaining dough into 3 portions of about 250 g and roll into balls. Rest them 10–20 minutes if the dough is at room temperature, or a few hours if it’s coming out of the fridge.

Flatten and stretch the dough as thin as you can reasonably get it. Form a crust or not; either way it will be tasty pizza. It really doesn’t matter how you do this: roll it out, flip it in the air, use cutting boards to flatten it, or whatever. Just make sure it’s even and about the size of pie you want to make. If the dough won’t stretch, leave it for 10–20 minutes to think about its life choices and try again. This may be inconvenient to your dinner plans, but it’s unlikely you can convince dough that time matters.

Set your oven to the hottest temperature it goes. Put a cast iron griddle, carbon steel pan, or similar on the middle rack (or even better, a pizza steel). If you have none of these, use a few baking sheets instead.

Build your pizza on parchment dusted with cornmeal, on a cutting board, then transfer it to the hot surface: slide the pizza and parchment on, then pull the parchment out. If the parchment doesn’t come out it’s likely fine, but it does tend to char at 260°C (500°F) and above.

Bake until the top is browning. If the bottom isn’t done, pull it anyway and finish it in a pan on the stovetop. Every oven is different, and you’ll have to experiment with temperature and rack position to get both crusts right.

Cool the pizza on a wire rack. I don’t recommend cutting into molten hot pizza as it will just melt back together anyway, but you do you.

Notes

Pizza in a home oven can be a bit frustrating, but the finish-it-in-a-pan-on-the-hob hack has saved me more than a few times. You can also par-bake the crust for ~10 minutes (until you see a tiny bit of colour), but I’ve always found this much less satisfying for my ego.

The challenge is getting everything cooked to the right doneness without a lot of practice, and there are several ways to do it:

• The easy bake: 175°C (350°F) for 25–30 minutes, like a Roman pie or focaccia. It may bubble and lose its shape because the crust forms slowly, so docking the stretched dough helps. You won’t see scorch marks. Finding the right rack takes practice.
• The par-bake: 220°C (425°F). Bake the crust until about half done, then dress it and finish baking until browned (at a lower temperature if you load it up like we do).
• The steel or stone: 275°C (525°F), or as hot as the oven goes. Slide the pizza onto the stone and pray. Scorching will happen, so timing is key.
• The preheated sheet pan pile: 250°C (475°F). Slide onto the stacked sheet pans (an oven-safe griddle works too, but watch for smoke). You get nice browning, and both sides will be done if you’ve picked the right rack.

Keep practising and track your results. A mediocre home pizza is usually better than most quick delivery pizzas (assuming good ingredients and assembly).

• See also The Aldersons’ epic 12 days of pizza, our family’s 12-pizza Christmas marathon.