My three favourite pizza dough recipes for quick and tasty pizza at home
I make pizza a lot at home - probably more than i should, but it's so good! Here's my favourite dough recipes to help you get started - and you don't need a specialist oven for ANY of these, you can bake them in your home oven.
Psst, if you don't follow me on Instagram, you might know know I ran a microbakery for a while!.
Number 1 - Gozney / Adam Atkins 100% Biga Dough Recipe.
I've made this dough a few times when i've managed to think a little ahead of time, and it's ALWAYS amazing, airy, light, with crunch and chew, everything you want.
You can cut the quantity in half, Adam's Youtube Channel is also well worth checking out.
This takes, from start to finish, about 24 hours.
Number 2 - ONE HOUR Pan Pizza
Brian Lagerstrom has an awesome Youtube Channel that doles out both recipes and techniques. Don't be scared by the fact he adds a lot of yeast compared to other recipes, it doesn't affect the taste. Adding the beer to give the bread a more "fermented" taste is genius too. We make this at least twice a month when I can't be bothered to make usual pizza or if we have things in the fridge we need to use up.
This takes, from start to finish, as it says on the video, one hour and maybe an extra 15 mins on top of that bake time.
Number 3 - Straight out of the pizza bible.
Get the book on Amazon (Affiliate Link)
Tony Gemignani's pizza bible book is FULL of great recipes, but the "Master Dough Without Starter" is the one I love the most and keep coming back to. I've cooked this dough for events and it's gone down well. It's 64% hydration, which means that you can cook it hard and fast neopolitan style as long as it's not topped too heavily, and you can also cook it lower and slower if you want to load it on up. I tend to do it somewhere in the middle.
Tips for baking in a home oven.
Baking pizza in a home oven sounds scary, best thing you can do is get yourself a pizza steel like this one (don't bother with pizza stones in a home oven, in my opinion), and get it in the oven for an HOUR before baking at full temperature. That might sound nuts, but it's the kind of heat you'll need to cook your pizza as close as possible to a real pizza oven. Use the heat WITHOUT the fan setting, if you have one.
If you have a pizza steel + pizza peel, then use the peel and some semolina to launch your pizza into the oven, and then immediately close the door to keep as much heat in as possible, if you want, you can turn the fan on at this point to ensure even heat distribution, but I usually just leave it off.
Once it's been in for about 30-60 seconds, fully rotate it (carefully!) and turn the oven off, and turn on the grill/broiler (the overhead head source), this will start to cook your toppings more directly and give them more of the same type of cook they'd get from a rolling flame.
Rotate again if needed, this time in 90 degree increments, keep an eye on the bottom for signs of burning, you can peek under using a chopstick, knife, or spatula.
If you DON'T have a pizza peel, you can use the back of a baking tray, OR stretch your dough onto a floured piece of cardboard covered with some cling film if needs be - but be careful as this method usually results in sticking, so I don't recommend it much.
Pan pizza is EVEN easier - just put your pan pizza in the hot oven, and turn once, or as needed.
Enjoy the pizza!
Psst - some of the links above are amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy something as a result of clicking on it through this site, I get a little bit of money as a reward - but it doesn't cost you anything extra.