Mar 218 min read

Easy Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe! Better than your pizzeria's homemade dough

This easy homemade pizza dough recipe will have anyone who eats it coming back for more! I have been told it is better than your pizzeria dough. I also use this dough for my homemade calzones, pizza pockets, and fried dough (balls) too, the dough is very versatile. I use this dough for many things and have a list of add-ins that I use along the way to spice up the dough and make it a mouthwatering tasty dough for any occasion. It is a very simple process to make dough and doesn’t take a lot of time, the largest chunk of time is the 1 hour rise time. And when the dough is in the rise stage you can be making the sauce, cutting up whatever your toppings will be, reading a book, napping or soaking in the tub whatever you choose.

You can make this dough as flavorful or traditional (non-flavored) as you please. I use all kinds of dry herbs, nooch (Nutritional Yeast), garlic and onion powders or granules for my pizza dough and to be honest my calzone dough too. When I'm making fried dough, I go back and forth between using herbs and spices to sometimes just a traditional dough and letting my homemade sauce be the champion. If I’m making elephant ears I will add cinnamon to the dough. This is what I love about this dough recipe, it is so versatile and fits any type of pizza, calzone or fried dough I choose to make. I have been wanting to experiment with some new spices I bought so I’ll have to update the list of add-ins I use at some point. I find that most people are stuck on traditional ways to make things, and they are missing out on making some pretty drool worthy products. When I first started making this dough, I would just make it with the traditional ingredients, flour, water, oil, salt, sugar and yeast. I did not stray from it and it was the same non-flavored dough you found at your local pizzeria. I was in one of my mad scientist moods in the kitchen and was like I wonder what would happen if I added garlic and nooch to the dough? So, I did and what happened was an amazing final product! My dough had flavor that made it even better than it normally was. So, the next time I made the dough I added more spices and herbs. This time it was mouthwatering and left me wanting more pizza, there were no leftovers that night. After that it was game on with trying out new combinations, I always wrote down what I added and how much in case I wanted to replicate the dough again. To be totally honest, I haven’t made a bad dough, I have put in many different things, and it has seemed to always come out good at minimum and mouthwatering at best.

This dough will make 2 pies, I will be honest and say I have never doubled the recipe to make 4 pies. I have always just made the recipe again for however many pies I needed. I have found that sometimes when you double or triple a recipe it just doesn’t come out the same, but you can always give it a try and see how it comes out, you may like the result. Maybe because we are home cooks and don’t have high end kitchen tools? Example is I made 6 pies for my daughter's birthday one year. Yes, a half dozen pies, and yes, I made this recipe 3 times. There weren’t any leftovers, everyone hammered the slices down and was totally satisfied. I was asked where I got the pizzas from, and when I said it was from scratch, they were amazed. I told them how easy it was, sent them all home with the recipe and now they never buy pizza out.

I have taught many people how to make this recipe and I haven’t met one person yet who is like wow this is so hard I can’t do this, or this is horrible dough! Everyone is always like wow this was so easy, and the taste is better than take out! I find people like how they can add whatever they want or use this dough recipe for many different types of food. It is fun to experiment with, recently I remembered having those hot pockets when I was a child and thought I’d love to create those for the kids. It was something about having the hot pocket and the ooey gooey fillings and convenience of being able to travel with this easily. I could ride my bike and eat a hot pocket no problem, whereas a piece of pizza was a bit harder because of the flimsy shape. So, one night I made the dough, cut up some different toppings, put the sauce in a cup, pulled up a stool and told my daughter tonight we dine on pizza pockets! She looked at me like I was crazy (this is a daily occurrence at my home) and when I started to show her what we were making she got totally into it and loved it. The kids will request pizza pockets over pizza 9 out of 10 times. I will post a recipe for the pizza pockets along with fried dough and calzones.

Before making the dough, I figure out what kind of pizza, calzone, fried dough or anything else I will be making with this batch and then figure out what add-ins I will be putting in the dough. My standard pizza dough I put in garlic powder/granules (whichever one I have on hand), onion powder/granules (whichever one I have on hand), oregano, basil and nooch (nutritional yeast). This combination makes for a guaranteed mouthwatering yummy dough. Depending on how you cook up your pizza this dough will give you a crispy or chewy texture. To be honest sometimes we make a New Haven style apizza (ah-beetz) crust, Chicago style crust or a New York style crust. We have even brought back the stuffed crust in our house! This happens to be the kids favorite, but I mean think back to our childhood (anyone who ate pizza in the 90’s). Sometimes it's made on a pizza stone, on a pizza pan or even thrown directly on the grill. We eat pizza in many styles and love how this dough comes out yummy every time!

A little background on the different styles of pizza crust to hopefully broaden your pizza making abilities. Sometimes we can’t create it exactly as it was intended to be cooked because we don’t have professional equipment and our oven doesn’t go as high as needed. But we can always try our best to get it as close to the style we want. To start off we will go to New Haven, CT where they have their own style crust that came from the Italian immigrants from southern Italy. This style of crust is cooked over extremely hot coals that range from 650 °F (343 °C) to 1000 °F (537 °C), I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the capability right now to get a temp that high! Cooking the thin crust at these high temps char the crust along the edges. Hey! Don't knock it until you try, it's scrumptious! The next style of crust is Chicago style, it is a deep-dish crust with unique textures. It is an airy crust and crispy bottom with a buttery flavor in the crust that was developed back in 1940’s by two men named Ike Sewell and Ric Riccardo immigrants from Italy who opened a pizzeria called Pizzeria Uno, since his creation of this thick crust people have fallen in love with this doughy, buttery, and flaky crust. And the last stop is New York. As with the New Haven style crust this was brought over from Italian immigrants, this style crust is a Neapolitan thin crust (from Naples, Italy) and is also traditionally cooked over a coal fire. However, nowadays it is mostly cooked in a gas oven. A traditional slice of pizza is usually large and wide, it is made to fold over and mangia!

My dream is to have a wood fire pizza oven in my yard one day, a professional one. My love to cook and eat pizza is worth the price tag. In our home we love all different crusts, toppings, and sauces. We love it cooked in the oven, air fried, and on the charcoal grill. We make personal size, family size, and pockets whatever we feel that night is what ends up on our plates. The great thing about pizza is it is so versatile, and you can make many kinds of pizza, it is almost an endless possibility. I highly suggest trying all the crusts listed above and seeing which one or ones you prefer then switch it up every time you make a pie. Add different spices and herbs to your dough to step it up and make gourmet pizza’s! Put on some music and use your best Italian accent as you create your own pie, who knows you might become known as the best apizza maker in the world. After writing this article I absolutely know what is for dinner tonight we are having better than your pizzeria's homemade (dough) pizza!

Pizza Dough

Makes 2 dough balls

662 g (4 cups) All-purpose flour (I use Azure Market Organics All Purpose Unbleached flour or King Arthur’s Organic All-Purpose Flour), use bread flour if you want a crispy crust (I use Azure Market Organics Unbleached Bread Flour Ultra-Unifine or King Arthur’s Organic Bread Flour)

7 g (2 ¼ tsp) Yeast (I use Fleischmann's Instant Dry Yeast)

4 g (1 tsp) Organic sugar (I use BJ’s organic brand)

12 g (2 tsp) Kosher salt (San Francisco Salt Company Chefs salt)

338 g (1 ½ cups) Lukewarm water

27 g (2 tbsp) Organic EVOO (I use Pompeian), plus more to grease the bowl

10 g Garlic powder or granules

10 g Onion powder or granules

10 g Nooch (Nutritional yeast)

1 g Oregano

1 g Basil

Combine flour, sugar, yeast, kosher salt, garlic powder/granules, onion powder/granules, nooch, oregano, and basil into a mixing bowl and combine well.
Add lukewarm water and 2 tbsp. of olive oil and mix by hand until the dough starts to come together. If the dough is sticky, add additional flour, 1 tbsp at a time. If the dough is too dry, add additional water 1 tbsp at a time. You essentially want a dough that is not sticky to the touch and does not crumble when you are kneading it. Scrape dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead into a smooth, firm ball. You do not want to overwork the dough; it will turn into an extremely chewy glutenous dough that has more of a bread texture. Work it just enough so that it forms a small and smooth ball.
Grease a large bowl with the remaining 2 tsp olive oil, add the dough ball, and cover with either wax paper, plastic wrap, or a damp tea towel. Put the covered dough in a warm area of your home and let it double in size, for about an hour. I will sometimes, depending on the time of year or if I need a quicker rise turn the oven on for a minute or so at about 100°F so it warms the oven, then turn it off and put the dough in.
When the dough is done rising, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it into 2 equal pieces. You can do one of these two ways use a scale for absolutely equal pieces or just eyeball it and cut where you think it's equal. Cover with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let them rest for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 450°F (232°C) while you get your dough rolled out. If you are cooking on a pizza stone you will preheat the oven with the stone in it. If you are cooking on a pizza pan or any other way you will just add the pan or dough to the outside grill. A pizza peel is a must when adding to a pizza stone, pizza oven, or grill.
Now it's time to get your rolling pin out and roll out the dough (I use a French rolling pin, it’s so much easier). If you are not making two pizzas go ahead and put the dough in a bowl with a lid on it and put it in the refrigerator for future use this week. Roll out the dough to the size and thickness you prefer and depending on how you are cooking it you will either put it on the pizza pan or on the pizza peel. Now it’s time to add your sauce (I have a sauce recipe on the site), non-dairy cheese (or dairy your preference), and the fixings. After you are all done add it to your preheated oven for around 12-15 minutes (oven temperatures vary as will the time).
Mangia!