How to Make 24 Hour Pizza Dough
One of the most important things to know about making your own pizza dough is how fermentation works and why it matters so much. Fermenting a batch of dough together over a number of days helps create huge flavor and a good rise. It also makes it easier to work with, reducing the chances of dough sticking to the countertop, peel, or stone. Grab your stand mixer and favorite kitchen apron because things are about to get doughy!
Rise of the Dough
Fermentation is an ancient practice, most likely discovered by a drunken Egyptian. The theory is that, after running out of water, an Egyptian baker used beer to bake their bread, introducing yeast to the dough, and proper dough to the world! Yeast digests the carbohydrates in the dough, expelling gas as they’re doing it. This paired with the strengthening of the gluten proteins in the dough, leads to the kind of pizza dough texture we’re used to: firm dough, with light airy pockets throughout.
Fresh Dough vs. Fermented Dough
To put it simply, fermentation is the process of using yeast to age dough. Using this process properly will give your dough the capability to rise like it should during the baking process. Fermentation also plays a huge part in developing good flavor and texture in your dough.
When you take a freshly made batch of dough and turn it into pizza, the dough hasn’t had any time to rest and begin fermentation.
Flour, Water, Yeast, Salt
You can use our Pizzacraft 00 Pizza Flour base, or make your own! When I make pizza dough I always try to keep it simple. Flour, water, yeast and salt are my four go-to ingredients. I’ve seen plenty of dough recipes containing oil, sugar, malt, and other ingredients that taste great, but personally I’ve always felt that simple is best when it comes to pizza. Keeping with this idea, we’re going to explore this method of fermentation using a simple dough recipe. Let’s take a look at the ingredients:
Basic Pizza Dough Recipe:
Ingredients:
4 to 4 ½ cups All-Purpose Flour (updated on 7/17/17)
2 cups lukewarm water
1 packet active yeast
2 ½ tsp. kosher salt
First, mix all of the ingredients; it should be sticky and rough. A mixer comes in handy here if you have one, but you can definitely work the dough by hand. Wait 10 minutes for the water to absorb, and then knead the dough by hand for 10-12 minutes on a silicone rolling mat (or 8-10 minutes in a mixer). Put the dough in a clean bowl with a lid or kitchen towel over the top and place in the fridge for 24 hours or longer.
After 24 hours, remove dough and separate into desired size for your pizza using a dough scraper. Cover with cling wrap (cover, do not wrap them up, to allow the dough to rise a bit more if it wants to) and let sit for an additional 2 hours. If your dough always forms unwanted bubbles while cooking, try lightly piercing it with a fork or a dough docker before adding toppings to deflate any air bubbles that occur during baking. Then you’re ready to make fresh, homemade pizza.
Depending on the activity of the yeast, the temperature of your fridge, length of fermenting time, and your personal preferences, you can get a range of different textures and flavors out of your dough! Be sure to experiment (it's fun!) and let us know what your optimal result looks and tastes like in the comments.
Check out how to make whole wheat dough.
Check out some of our other pizza tips:
- Help, My Pizza Is Stuck To My Pizza Peel
- No Mixer? No Problem. No-Knead Pizza Dough Recipe
- How To Fix Sticking Pizza Dough
- Store-Bought Dough: Who's Is Best
- All About Yeast
See what we cooking today in the Pizzacraft kitchen - Instagram: @_Pizzacraft
14 comments
Can I freeze some of the dough. If so at what stage can I freeze it
Has anyone baked bread in the Pizza oven. My regular oven is old and takes an hour to get hot.
To prevent the dough from forming a crust while in fridge, coat the bowl with oil and place dough ball in bowl then turn dough ball over so top of the dough has a thin coat of oil. Loosely cover the bowl with a towel and let sit 24 hours.
when i make pizza i generally like to use a 70/20/10 mix of bread flour/00 flour/ass hair,it really makes a good pizza…
It’s really terrific that Pizzacraft is offering pizzeria flour. Regular all purpose flour doesn’t contain as much protein and gluten as pizzeria flour does.
Protein gives it that eye rolling taste and gluten gives it that luxurious chewy texture.
There are a number of secrets to pizza especially New York style crust. Some of these are closely guarded and passed down from one generation to the next. (It took me 40 years to find some of these)
The first is you must bloom or activate your yeast. Don’t go too warm with the water 90 degrees F is plenty hot or it will sour. To bloom it add the yeast to your water along with a teaspoon of sugar. Stir very well. Wait 15 minutes for it to foam. If it doesn’t foam, the yeast was dead and you need fresh yeast.
A major secret to New York pizza is the New York water. It’s not what is in the water, it’s what’s not in it, primarily less chlorine. All city water utilities put chlorine into the city water.
Chlorine retards the yeast. For New York style crust use distilled water.
Another secret is don’t add the salt into the yeast liquid. Salt also retards the yeast. Instead sprinkle in the salt as you knead the dough near the end.
The yeast does two things, it leavens or softens the flour, and it gives the dough gas bubbles.
Leavening is a slow process. You can “rise” your dough on your counter top and make a good pizza but the best dough results if you let it slow-rise in your fridge over night.
This gives the yeast time to leaven the flour better.
You don’t need a billion degree oven to make amazing pizza.
If you like a crispy crust bake it on the lowest shelf near the burner/element. This works so well if you’re not careful you can singe the crust too dark. If you do this keep an eye on it.
325 o F is plenty hot.
And the last secret is to brush the crust edge with melted butter just before serving.
Enjoy !
Al