Skip to Content

Easy Homemade Pizza Dough

Easy Homemade Pizza Dough

Sharing is caring!

Homemade Pizza Dough is very easy to make. All pizza dough starts with the same basic ingredients: flour, yeast, sugar, water, salt, and olive oil. 

Apart from pizza, you can use this dough to make many other creations. (You will find a list at the end of the post).

What kind of flour can I use to make Pizza dough?

Flour is the main ingredient in pizza dough, and the type you use can have a big effect on the end result.

The best one to use is bread flour because it makes the dough more elastic and crunchy, due to the greater amount of gluten it contains.

Of course we can also use all-purpose flour or a combination of both and I use it many times because I do not always have bread flour at home.

The texture of your pizza dough is usually associated with the amount of gluten found in the flour as gluten creates a stable texture, making it one of the crucial ingredients of pizza dough.

A few more minor details that make a difference. 

Sugar is necessary as it helps activate the yeast and makes for a crispier crust. I sometimes add honey instead of sugar.

The water used must be lukewarm (tepid). Lukewarm water is neither hot or cold.

If you have a thermometre the temperature is around 40°C (104°F). If you don’t have a thermometre do it the old way.

Boil some water and then gradually add room temperature water testing each time slowly with your pinky.

If you can hold your pinky in the water and count up to to 5, then the water is ready.

Another secret is to wet the dough with olive oil before rising, which makes a lovely, elastic dough.

At this stage you can use the pizza dough but it is preferable to make it the previous day.

Put your dough in a bowl and cover it with cling film and a kitchen towel. Put it in the fridge and let it rise slowly overnight, at least for 12 hours.

Next day take it out of the fridge so that it comes back to room temperature (about an hour), knead it for a few minutes and the dough is ready for use.

I’ve been making pizzas for many years but this is my best pizza dough.

My friends and relatives who have tried it, say that it’s  the best crust they’ve ever had, considering that it is not baked in a wood fired oven nor baked on a pizza stone.

I have a few pizza recipes to share with you, as well as a couple of calzone recipes I made recently using the same dough, so before giving the recipes here is the dough I use.

Collage Basic Pizza Dough image

Apart from making pizza from scratch, how about making pizza with your leftovers?

Bolognaise pizza with mushrooms image
Bolognaise pizza with cheese on top image

Pizza Bolognese:

Ingredients:

  • Pizza dough
  • Leftover Bolognese sauce as the base
  • Any other ingredients to enrich it such as mushrooms, bell peppers, onions etc.
  • Mozarella or other cheese than melt on top

Directions:

  1. Prepare dough as above.
  2. Grease your baking tin with olive oil and spread the dough.
  3. Add the leftover bolognaise as the base.  Put any other ingredients you like on top and cover with cheese.
  4. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C / 400 F and bake until golden, for about 20 minutes.

Leftover pizza is great for breakfast, brunch or as a snack the next day.

Leftover bolognaise mushrooms and onion pizza image

Here are a few other recipes I made pizza, using leftovers:

Pizza Pull-aparts:

Pizza pull aparts image

Same dough, filled with Bolognese and topped with feta.

collage pizza pull-aparts image

Spetzofai Pizza:

All you need for Spetzofai pizza is some cheese on top.  The dish itself has sausages and peppers.

Spetzofai pizza preparation image

Pizza Peinirli

Although I have never posted the recipe for “peinirli” before, as the recipe is included in my cookbook “More Than A Greek Salad“, the dough for peinirli is slightly different for that of pizza, as instead of water we add milk.

Pizza Peinirli image

I have used this dough to make these gondola shaped boats, which I filled with a filling I made with leftover meat sauce from the equivalent to the Greek Bolognese, which I mixed with some bechamel sauce.  

After filling the boats I topped it with lots of cheese, suitable for pizza and baked them in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Making dough for peinirli image

As I did not intend to post the recipe I did not take any notes of the exact measurements I used.  

However, they were so delicious that it is worth mentioning the ingredients even if they are roughly estimated.    

For about 1 cup of leftover meat sauce I made a bechamel with about 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp flour, salt, nutmeg, 1 1/2 cups of milk and 1 egg.  

The meat sauce was mixed in the bechamel and left to cool before filling the boats.  I rolled the dough thin and oblong, I added the meat sauce and then topped it with cheese.  

I then twisted the edges to give them the shape of the boats.  With the above amount of dough it yields about six peinirli.

Leftover Pizza Peinirli with Bolognaise Bechamel filling cut image

There were two leftover, which the next day which I heated on the sandwich griller but without the plates touching the cheese.

They made a lovely snack together with some Greek coffee.

Dough and olives image

How to make Easy Homemade Pizza Dough

Yield: 850 grams
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Additional Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients

Starter:

  • 2 tbsp bread or all-purpose flour
  • 8 grams (0.28 oz) active dry yeast or 25 gr fresh yeast
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1/4 cup lukewarm water

Dough:

  • 500 gram bread or a mixture of bread and all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup lukewarm water
  • 4 tbsp olive oil, divided

Instructions

  1. In a medium sized bowl combine flour, yeast and sugar and mix.
  2. Pour the lukewarm water and mix until it becomes a batter.
  3. Cover with cling film and a kitchen towel and let it rest for 5-10 minutes or until it bubbles. During this time, the yeast should start to bloom and froth up.
  4. Attach the dough hook to your stand mixer. Add the flour, 2 tbsp olive and salt and mix on low speed.
  5. Add the yeast mixture and continue mixing on low speed.
  6. Finally add the water gradually and mix until the dough gathers around the hook.
  7. Remove the hook and add the remaining 2 tbsp olive oil and coat the dough.
  8. Cover with cling film and a kitchen towel and let it rise, until it doubles in volume.
  9. When ready to use, transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead briefly, so that it deflates and becomes smooth (about 3-5 times) 
  10. Your dough is now ready to make pizza or other delicious creations.

Notes

Add the water gradually, as depending on the type of flour it might need less or more.

Nutrition Information
Yield 1 Serving Size 1
Amount Per Serving Calories 3042Total Fat 79gSaturated Fat 12gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 61gCholesterol 0mgSodium 4989mgCarbohydrates 491gFiber 37gSugar 43gProtein 96g

"These values are automatically calculated and offered for guidance only. Their accuracy is not guaranteed."

Did you make this recipe?

Tried this recipe? Tag me @ivyliac and use the hashtag #kopiaste!

Pizza Dough Creations

Here are a few recipes you can make using pizza dough.

Collage Easy Pizza Dough image

Kopiaste and Kali Orexi,

Sharing is caring!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Emer

Sunday 12th of December 2010

Hi, just came across this recipe. I was curious to know if the honey changes the flavour of the dough. I understand you are using it to activate the yeast but if using instant yeast, you don't really need to activate it. In that case, do you still use it (for flavour)? My recent post Ultimate Vegetable Pizza Recipe - Veggie Pizza Recipe - Homemade Pizza Recipe

Ivy

Sunday 12th of December 2010

Greek honey is very healthy and prefer using it instead of sugar.

DEMETRIOS

Sunday 14th of March 2010

The water you mix with the yeast and honey is part of the 11/4 cups of lukewarm water.

ivyliac

Sunday 14th of March 2010

Yes Dimitri, it is the whole amount of water.

Cakelaw

Thursday 26th of November 2009

Homemade pizza dough is always better than those awful store bought crusts, and so versatile!

Soma

Wednesday 25th of November 2009

Nothing like the homemade fresh pizza.

farida

Wednesday 25th of November 2009

Ivy, I haven't been to your blog for ags. How bad of me:( I love homemade pizza a lot. Thanks for the recipe. The addition of honey is interesting. Must add a nice dimension to the taste of the crust.

ivyliac

Wednesday 25th of November 2009

Glad to see you again Farida. Hope to see you more often.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Privacy Policy · Copyright
Skip to Recipe