So you want to make pizza at home huh? You have come to the right place. I have been in your position and can understand the frustration. Making pizza can become as easy as buying from the frozen aisle at your local store to a 48-hour cold fermented dough with deep artisan flavors.
Our goal at The Home Pizza Maker is to help you craft the perfect pizza dough for your particular scenario. It can be a 2-hour pizza dough or a fully-fledged 48-hour fermented dough. Our journey has been full of mistakes that have taught us the craft of homemade pizza. Lucky for you, you will have fewer mistakes because we will help you avoid these and get to pizza even faster than we did.
Here is what you need to know to start your homemade pizza journey and get a perfect, airy crust, in your homemade pizza dough.
Homemade Pizza Dough Essentials
Ingredients
To make pizza dough at home you will need only 4 ingredients and a few tools. All these items are easy to find in your local store. Each of these ingredients plays an important role in making a great pizza and changing the proportions of each will directly affect the outcome of your pizza. The dough is typically composed of flour, water, salt, and yeast. Of these ingredients, the flour is the only one where you may face many options and alternatives. When choosing flour the most important aspect is the protein content and flour strength. These determine the gluten development and will define the texture and composition of your dough.
Learn the basics of pizza flour: Pizza Flour 101: Flours for Homemade Pizza
Pizza Dough Hydration
Pizza dough hydration is easily the most important variable when making pizza at home. Before attempting to make any pizza dough at home, learn about pizza dough hydration and make sure you understand how setting a hydration level impacts the outcome. Then experiment with different hydration levels until you reach the sweetspot for your home oven. In short, pizza dough hydration refers to the amount of water the dough will have. Hydration levels are often referenced in percentages and you can easily calculate by dividing the total weight of flour by the total weight of water. So for example a 68% hydration dough will have 68g of water for every 100g of flour you use. Baker’s percentages are important to grasp as pizza dough formulas are often expressed in baker percentages.
Learn about baker percentages in this article from King Arthur Baking.
Pizza Dough Fermentation
Dough fermentation is where the magic happens. After you mix your ingredients, the yeast in the dough will start to break down the sugars and produce carbon dioxide. This will cause your dough to grow in size and get fluffy. Because of this breakdown of sugars, the dough also develops complex flavors over time. The longer the dough ferments the better the flavors your dough will have. While it seems like the fermentation is an automatic process as with many natural processes the right conditions must exist for this to happen properly. In this case, you must keep an eye out for three variables: temperature, salt content of the dough (expressed in baker percentage), and time. Again, when making pizza dough at home you will want to experiment with different parameters.
Learn more about the variables affecting dough fermentation: Mastering Pizza Dough Fermentation: Complete Guide.
Test out an advanced fermentation process: Poolish Pizza Dough: The Secret for Superior Neapolitan Pizzas.
Troubleshooting Your Dough
You will certainly have to experiment a few times before getting it just right. It’s okay to get it wrong a few times, this just means you are closer to getting a perfect crust. Keep at it and don’t get discouraged. To help you with any questions you can have along the way we created an FAQ section where you can find some common questions and troubleshooting tips.
With this short intro to pizza dough, you have arrived at the start line of your pizza journey! Follow us on Instagram and tag us with your creations.
Happy Pizza Making!
