Pizza Dough a la Rosie

One of my favorite weekly rituals is “Friday Night Pizza”. Every week I make a pizza dough and let my creative side run wild with toppings and herbs and of course EVOO (extra virgin olive oil… YUM) and it’s the BEST night!

This dough recipe is one I’ve been honing for a while now and I’m sharing it with you! My hope is that you treat yourself and enjoy a creative night at home crafting your pizzas :)

Gluten free options coming soon too!

Pizza Dough a la Rosie

Ingredients

+ 1 1/2 cups warm water (226 grams warm water (around 85 – 100 degrees F))

+ 1 packet dry yeast (***8 grams yeast)

+ 3  to 3 1/2 cups bread flour (**around 435 - 450 grams)

+ 1 tbs honey (11 grams)

+ 2 tsp salt (I like 5 grams kosher salt – you can use more to your taste)

+ 1 tbs olive oil (11 grams)

+ any herbs you are interested in adding (rosemary is fun, thyme, red pepper flakes, everything bagel seasoning... go wild hehe)

Instructions

1. Combine yeast and warm water in a bowl, stir and let sit for about 5 minutes or until you see the yeast “bloom” on top of the water - basically a foamy cloud.

2. Add flour, honey, salt, olive oil to the yeast and water and begin mixing together until it combines and starts to become a ball – you’ll see the dough begin to scrape together and form a ball shape.

3. On a lightly floured surface knead into a smooth, firm ball. I knead for at least 5 minutes, sometimes 7 minutes. This is when you can add herbs like rosemary, everything bagel seasonings, red pepper flakes, etc into the dough. Take a teaspoon at a time (I usually do 2 teaspoons of herbs), place it on top of your dough ball, and gently knead it into the dough.

4. When your dough is smooth from into a nice ball shape and place back in the bowl. Cover with a plastic wrap, wax wrap or tea towel and let sit in a warm area for about 1 hour or until it’s doubled in size.

5. Once doubled in size turn the dough out onto a flat surface. Divide the dough in half (or thirds / fourths – your choice on how big a pizza you want) and knead each piece into a little ball. Cover each baby dough ball with plastic or a tea towel and let it rest for 15 - 30 minutes.

6. You’re ready to roll out or hand shape your pizzas now! I recommend using your hands to stretch it out so you keep the air inside the dough for more bubbly. You can also wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for another day :)

**when I scoop the bread flour out I try to keep around 450 grams flour but it varies a bit depending on how the dough feels by around 20 grams (I’ve added 430 grams and even up to 470 grams flour before and it was a great pizza either way) – aim for a soft feel, easy to work with your hands. I use bread flour because of the higher gluten/protein which creates a crispier crust and it works really well with my oven, which can only go up to about 500 degrees F. If you have an oven that can get up to 800 degrees then I suggest switching to 00 flour which has a little less gluten than bread flour but is much less likely to burn at the high temperature - you can get a lovely crispy Pizza Napoletana using 00 flour and high high high temps.*

***A quick rule to adapt recipes to sourdough is: Substitute 100 grams of starter for each gram of yeast, and then subtract about 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour from the recipe to compensate for the water and flour in the starter if it’s 50/50 hydration – if using a different hydration percentage match accordingly. *