How to make pizza dough, pizza base and dough ingredients.

Complete tutorial from A to Z.

Even if you've never made pizza before, with this comprehensive step by step tutorial, and included 16 pictures, you shouldn't have any problems to master this task. This page is based on the well working recipe from the pizza dough page.

Pizza dough recipe ingredients, making pizza base & recipe for pizza toppings.

US measures for pizza dough ingredients:

US measurements - cups, ounces (oz), fluid ounces (fl oz).

6.7 cups (US) all-purpose flour (29.5 oz - convert flour cups vs. ounces)
1/2 ounce active dry yeast - or one tablespoon
2 tbsp brown sugar (optional - works with or without sugar, sugar adds on crisp)
2 teaspoons salt
2.1 cups (US) tap hot water (16.8 fl oz)

* Depending on your flour quality, if you'd like to make the dough less soft -next time add an additional 0.35oz of flour (or wise versa.)

Metric measurements pizza dough recipe:

METRIC measurements - cups, grams (g), milliliters (ml).

825 grams plain fine flour (5 Metric cups - convert flour cups/grams measures)
14 grams active dry yeast - or one tablespoon
2 tbsp brown sugar (optional - works with or without sugar, sugar adds on crisp)
2 teaspoons salt
500 ml tap hot water (2 Metric cups)

* Depending on your flour quality, if you'd like to make this dough less soft -next time add an extra 10g of flour (or wise versa.)

*best flour to make pizza dough is "flour type 00" used for pizza & pasta. 00 Flour is finer grind therefore it's heavier in weight.

Flour type #00 - is best flour for pizza base dough

Total weight of the finished dough comes to 43 oz (1.2kg) which is good amount for 7 thin pizza bases at 6 oz (170g) per each base and pizza, or enough for 3-4 of 12" to 16" (305mm to 406mm) large pizzas with thick base. You can freeze or refrigerate unused dough in a plastic wrap.

Pizza toppings:

Mozzarella cheese or pizza cheese mix bag 1 lb (500g) amount
Tomato paste 5 oz (140g) for 2-3 pizza bases, you can buy tomato paste in different flavors e.g. Herbs & Garlic.
Fresh herbs, oregano, basil - chop these.
Veggies - mainly tomato, onion.
Sun dried tomatoes in olive oil.
Olives
Mushrooms
Pineapple pieces
Artichokes
Capers

Conversion calculators:
| Butter | Cooking | Flour | Honey | Sugar | °F vs. °C | Volume | Weight |

Everything needed can be seen on this picture, still in packaging.

Working on Pizza Dough.

Mixing all dry ingredients together before adding hot water in.

Add 16.8 fl oz (500ml) of hot water in and start mixing. If you find it hot for your fingers you can begin mixing with a wooden spoon.

Working on the dough, might be harder for some but will pay you well at the end.

Put just a little of flour on the desk to prevent dough sticking to the surface.

Place the smooth dough in a bowl cover it and leave to rise for 1 hour in a warm place. You will see rising starts after about 30 minutes.

Punch it down after rising and take out from the bowl.

Knead it again to remove the air, not as long as for the first time. Second time it's going to go a lot more easier.

Put the dough in the bowl and cover it again. Leave it to rise second time again for one hour in the same worm place.

Starting to make the base. For thin base pizzas divide your dough into 7 parts, that's how many pizzas you can make out of this dough amount. Spread a small amount of flour onto the surface to prevent dough sticking to the table or the roller and begin rolling. When the pizza dough is being stretched into a pizza base, you will find out that it's behaving as if it wanted to shrink again, nearly as a rubber. But it's going to be you who is going to win, all that you concentrate on is to make it approximately of same thickness. You can also use an empty glass bottle to roll the dough with.

Don't worry if the shape of your pizza base is not going to be very round, it doesn't matter what shape you will eat, on the other hand you can have a good laugh about it.

You can experiment to stretch the dough only in hands into desired pizza size diameter. Place it in the cooking pizza tray. If you use a paddle leave the base on your surface, you can slide it under after all topping are on the base.

Placing toppings on fresh pizza dough base

These are all the precut pieces for toppings. We used two types of salami, hotter Feferony and mild Cabana salami to make two different tasting pizzas.

Spread toppings on top in layers. Start with the pizza paste, a 5 ounces (or 140gNET) pack is enough for 2-3 pizza bases, you can use conversion of measures calculator for cooking ingredients. If you decide to buy tomato paste in a shop, they are available in different flavors quite distinctive in taste of pizza. If you happen not to have the paste at home use an ordinary tomato sauce with no sugar content, this will do as well. After you spread it on add on top half of the cheese amount intended to use for your pizza, the second half will be added right at the end as the last layer. By doing so you won't end up with too much cheese on top hiding all toppings.

I suppose the variety of pizza toppings will be up to each individual taste, and experiments. If you would like to make your pizzas juicy in the middle include more of such toppings as tomato or pieces of pineapple.

On the above picture you can see a pizza with our toppings on the base ready to go into the oven.

Pictures on how to go about making pizza in wood fired ovens.