With the wide variety of frozen pizzas on the market you may wonder why anyone would possibly want to go through the time and expense of making their own pizza dough. There are two reasons
- It tastes so much better
- You know exactly what you are eating
Number 1 is a bit of a no brainer. Number 2 is a lifestyle choice. Personally, I prefer to be able to pronounce all the ingredients I’m consuming and leave out all the unnecessary preservatives if possible. I’m not some hippy-dippy crazy organic mom by any means, but if I can make at least part of a meal from scratch then I will.**
This pizza dough recipe has 6 ingredients in it. A store bought brand name frozen pizza has roughly 17 ingredients and a few of them I had to google to figure out what they were. Here is an example of what you may find in your store-bought pizza dough.
wheat flour, water, yellow corn meal, soy oil, hydrogenated soy and cottonseed oils, white corn meal, yeast, salt, sugar, mono- and diglycerides, soy lecithin, flavour, colour, spice extract, citric acid
This recipe can be made by hand or if you are lucky enough to have a KitchenAid Mixer like me then I do suggest using it.
Homemade Pizza Dough
Prep Time: 1 Hour 20 Min
Makes: 3 1-kb balls of dough
- 2½ cups warm water
- ¼ cup sugar
- 3 teaspoons instant yeast
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- 6-7 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons salt
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the water and sugar. Sprinkle your instant yeast on top of the water and let it sit for 5 minutes until it becomes frothy. Add in the vegetable oil.
- Add the flour and salt to the yeast mixture, ½ cup at a time, mixing well between additions. Continue adding the flour until the dough can be pulled away from the sides of the bowl with a spatula, but the dough will still be quite sticky. You may need to add in more flour depending on your climate. I generally need to add a bit more. This may be a bit of trial and error if you haven’t made dough before. It does need to to stick to your fingers when you touch it.
- Grease a large bowl, then scrape the dough into the bowl. Turn the dough to coat it in oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a towel and a let the dough rise at room temperature until doubled, about 1 hour. If you live somewhere cold, turn your oven on before you start this whole process and let it warm up, then turn it off and put your dough in the warm oven.
- Turn the dough out onto a well-floured work surface. Pull the dough around to the bottom, stretching it to create a smooth ball. Cut the dough into 3 equal portions. Each ball will be approximately 1 pound of dough.
- Roll out the dough to use in your favorite pizza recipe, or refrigerate until needed. I don’t suggest refrigerating for too long as the dough will continue to rise.
- Make up your pizzas and bake at 400F for about 20 minutes or until cooked through
**No offense to the hippy-dippy crazy organic moms out there. I don’t know how you manage to do what you do, but kudos to you for making it happen!
KidMitts 