“How do you make your pizza?” “How do you make dough?” These questions are difficult to answer. Pizza dough, and dough in general, is such an intuitive process born from experimentation and ‘getting a feel for it' through practice; it's not something one can easily summarize for the curious.
I know that I would have no idea about how to make pizza if I hadn't grown up watching my mom make it — and, eventually, actually tuning in to her process and asking questions in order to learn. It probably wouldn't even have occurred to me to try!
Since I know that many of you are interested in how she makes her pizza, I decided that the next best thing after trailing her all day, watching all the steps and getting to feel the dough at different points, would be to have a whole lot of pictures to help give you the idea.
So, I took these pictures, somewhat on a whim, in real time through the pizza-making process. You might notice the change of lighting; dough-making is a process that spans many hours, so of course I had better natural light at some times than at others.
Since we didn't plan this out too thoroughly, there are actually a few moments I missed getting on film. But hopefully what I have here will be enough to give you a sense of how Auntie Leila approaches her pizza making on a normal day, complete with leaving the house for errands, etc.
The notes are a combination of her instructions and my observations.
There are roughly two categories of bread, she tells me: country loaf and sandwich/roll. Pizza dough falls in the former. You can use this dough and process to make crusty loaves of country bread, including with additions and variations.
For pizza, it is helpful to have really good pizza in your taste memory! Auntie Leila grew up eating pizza in that Mecca of all pizza, New Haven, CT. So that is her ideal — the thin, crusty, chewy-yet-tender (not crackery!) crust with a layer of sauce and some great toppings — not too many.
As you'll see, this approach is for using a large stand mixer. If you were using a food processor fitted with a plastic dough blade, the main difference would be the order of wet and dry ingredients.
Let's get started!
Ingredients for dough:
Yeast
Flour
Salt
Olive oil
Water
(Note about yeast: it's easy to overpay for it! I get mine on Amazon. Auntie Leila also suggests that you buy in bulk at the health food store, big box store like BJs, or spice store — the kind in packets or jars is very expensive! You can store the extra in the freezer to keep it fresh until you're ready for it.)
Start your pizza dough no later than right after lunch for best results. Do not worry about exact measurements!
1. Proof the yeast and get something on the order of a poolish going. This is also known as your starter.
The preliminary mixing of the warm water, yeast, and flour (unbleached, all-purpose) will make for a much more textured and tasty bread/crust.
Use roughly 1-2 cups lukewarm (between 90 and 105*) water; 2 teaspoons of yeast , 1/2 – 1 cup of flour.
Whisk together and let stand for at least 15 minutes — and up to an hour or two.
You will see it get bubbly as the yeast does its thing:
Mistake #1 of home bread bakers: Not leaving enough time between steps. The benefit here is that you can get your starter going while you are loading the dishwasher in the morning or what have you, and delay the work of mixing it for a bit.
2. Once you've got your starter, add flour to fill the bowl to about 3 inches from the top.
The issue here is simply this: How much flour can you get in there without having it spray all over the counter when you mix? That is your limiting factor. The yeast has multiplied in the poolish that you've made. It can leaven the whole lump. You just want to keep things relatively tidy at this point!
Auntie Leila isn't much of a measure-er, since the process is so very intuitive for her. For my pizza dough, I usually use about 7-8 cups of flour (which ends up at around 4 pizza crusts).
Add 2 tablespoons of salt.
Mistake #2 of home bakers: Not adding enough salt.
3. With the mixer running on low, and using your dough (hook) attachment, add warm water (warm to the touch — up to 110* — you are warming up your now cool starter and all that flour) to which you have added a tablespoon or two of olive oil.
You are mixing in the wet ingredients at the bottom of the bowl and adding more liquid to the heap of flour on top. You want to time things so that the dough gets neither soupy around the blade nor stiff and lumpy. This takes practice. Feel free to stop the mixer at any point to pause and readjust!
When I make my dough, I add around 2.5 cups of warm water. Auntie Leila's guess was that she did around 4 cups. In any case, it's all about watching how the dough progresses as you gently add the water.
Mistake #3 of home bakers: Making the dough too stiff. That dough needs to be loose!
If there seems to be a lot of flour staying dry at the bottom of the bowl, time the pouring of your warm water to reach it as the blade turns away from you — don't just pour the water on top of the already wet part.
Remember, you can stop the mixer and figure things out.
When the consistency is that of a thick pancake batter or what you think of as bread dough that is going to be impossible to knead, you are there and should stop adding water. If the dough ends up being too watery, you can always add flour, but my guess is that it's not loose enough, if you are used to making bread dough.
You want all the flour to be moistened, including what's at the bottom of the bowl, but don't worry about inconsistency of texture. Lumps (as long as they aren't hard, dry lumps) are fine at this point.
4. Now just let it rest. Just like that, in the bowl, with the hook still attached. Go read your kids a book, fold a load of laundry, clean up the kitchen around your mixer, correct a pile of French exercises, or check your email. This stage is called autolyse, and it's very important to the structure of the gluten for you to leave it for at least 20 minutes. An hour is fine — although if your kitchen is warm, the dough will rise above the blade and that's obnoxious.
Mistake #4 of home bakers: Trying to work the dough before it has rested. Advantage to the autolyse: Your issues fix themselves while you get something unrelated done!
5. After the rest, give the machine a few more turns. You will see the strands of gluten forming at this point, the lumps vanishing, and the dough resolving itself into a cohesive whole.
6. Let the dough rise for the first fermentation, about 30 minutes and up to a couple of hours with a turn or two to prevent overflow, since that bowl isn't big enough, for real.
For pizza, this is all Auntie Leila does for rising. If this were all going to be made into bread, she would transfer to a larger bowl and let rise twice (one fermentation with a gentle turn, and then one rise before shaping). We'll discuss that in another post.
She moves the bowl over to a cleaned workspace for moving into the pizza-making phase.
The dough will seem too loose to knead. That's okay, because you won't be kneading in the sense that you probably think of it. It's not good for the dough to be pounded, slapped, and punched! Just turn it out onto a floured counter. Two tools that will help you: a sturdy plastic spatula (hers came with her food processor and is perfect for scraping out dough) and a bench scraper.
7. Divide your dough into 4 pieces, using your bench scraper and keeping the counter floured.
If you have a 5 quart mixer like she does, each piece will be the right size for a 16″ pizza (assuming you filled the bowl with enough flour to all but fly out as you mix!). If you have a bigger mixer, you need to set aside some of your dough for country loaves.
Pro-tip: Take off your rings or they will get covered in dough!
First divide in half, keeping the outsides of the pieces well floured (but not really mixing flour into the dough itself). Use your bench scraper to move the pieces around so that you aren't getting stuck in the dough. Keep the exterior of each piece intact. Think of it as the pillowcase…
Mistake #5 of home bakers: Mixing a lot of flour into their nicely fermented dough. The new flour won't be fermented and will make the whole thing taste flat.
Stretch the outer covering over the interior as you roll. Tuck it under. Make a ball by enclosing the dough. Lightly flour the outside but don't incorporate flour inside.
Before you know it, possibly just after you are about to despair, the dough will magically respond to you.
As you form your pieces of dough to be rounded (for even rolling out later), note that they take shape. Where they were sticky and too soft and formless, your rolling action, in which you tucked the piece into itself, gives them an outer layer and a resistant interior. You can pat the dough and feel it. It's springy but not at all dense.
Cover it all with a warm, damp towel. Don't clean your counter — you will roll the dough out right there, so leave it floury.
8. Let the round pieces of dough rest while you get your toppings ready, clean up around yourself a bit, and get the oven hot (500* with the rack at its lowest point).
Voila! From starter to a quartered batch of dough, ready to be rolled out for pizza! Stay tuned for Part II!
Susan says
This is super helpful–thank you! I used to be a pizza dough wizard but lately it’s been not working. I think I used to do these steps but I’d never really thought about what I was doing and why and as life has gotten busier I’d started cutting corners . . .without really knowing which corners I was cutting!
We really need to stop for pizza next time we’re in New Haven. I could eat New York City pizza pretty much every day. I know New Haven is similar, yet different.
Leila says
Susan, I don’t know if the pizza is the way it used to be. I went a few years ago to a place on State St. and it wasn’t what I remembered! But maybe Pepe’s — the ultimate pizza place with lines out the block when I was a kid — is still the way it was. I hope so!
Mrs. B. says
We went to Frank Pepe’s a couple of years ago, while headed to Cape Ann – we had the famous clam pizza! Wonderful! But the best pizza for me is Piola: http://www.piola.it
Auntie Leila, you must try it on your D.C. trip!!
Melanie says
I have no dough hook. It’s a travesty. I have a very old kitchen aide that they don’t even make a hook for. Someday….in the meantime, I use my bread machine to make pizza dough. It’s ok. meh.
Leila says
Melanie, I’ve never used a bread machine, but I think you can pause it. The rests are essential. Or mix in it in the bread machine and then turn it into an oiled bowl for the rest of the stages. The machine is too fast!
Kelsey says
Alright, I have a question about stand mixers. What is the deal with them? My mom only baked occasionally when I was growing up, and she never had one. (She did have a bread machine which went through a spell of frequent use, but, blah.) Whenever one of my sisters-in-law or friends gets engaged, a stand mixer is pretty much the first thing they put on their registry, but I am totally mystified! I do bake, but I just use a bowl and wooden spoon, often my hands. I do have a food processor with a dough hook, but haven’t tried it. I am just not seeing what these mixers are meant to accomplish beyond what I can do myself – please explain!
Deirdre says
Kelsey, do you bake frequently? We LMLD ladies do, and we are definitely big fans of the Kitchenaid.
It’s true that most things that it does can be done by hand, but it just cuts down the manual labor and time significantly. In the case of dough, which can be quite heavy to mix, it’s nice to have a machine that can do the job consistently and easily.
There’s a lovely feeling to kneading dough by hand, but the mixer doesn’t preclude that experience — just take the dough out of the mixer for the last steps in bread-making and finish on the counter…
Another clutch function of the Kitchenaid: whipping cream. Have you ever whipped cream by hand? Whereas it takes constant, sweat-inducing work for at least 25 minutes to whip cream by hand, with a Kitchenaid one can have whipped cream literally in a matter of seconds.
I guess the short answer is just that, once you have one, you realize how easy it makes things! But yes, it’s true, most baking can be done with bowl and spoon…. 🙂
Susan says
I have been on a mission the last few years to find things that are actually easier to do by hand than with a plug-in kitchen tool. I have to say, despite being a very avid baker and all-around from-scratch cook for a family of seven . . .the Kitchen Aid really only comes out a couple of times a year. Perhaps I would use it slightly more often if I had a kitchen where I could leave it out on the counter. But bread dough takes much longer to knead in it than by hand and my simple balloon whisk from Ikea will whip up cream in less than two minutes. Perhaps because my family is young I haven’t yet experienced the need to produce in quantity. I don’t typically make four pizzas at once. And if I had to whip up a whole quart of cream that might tax my arm.
Kelsey says
So interesting. I like to bake, but I don’t bake all of our breads by any stretch – though this is a goal! Right now it’s just my husband, the thirteen month-old, and me, so I don’t bake in quantity. For whipped cream, I use a handheld electric mixer, and it works beautifully! (I once whipped cream by hand – I think I finished it off with an immersion blender!) I do have very limited counter space and an inherent aversion to heavy plug-in appliances. Maybe I’ll try using my food processor and see!
Deirdre says
Kelsey, yes, I can understand counter space being a major issue. If I had to pull it out of a cupboard every time, that probably would affect how often I’d use the Kitchenaid.
Susan, I think that we do end up making large quantities of food at a time. When we bake bread, we bake several loaves and freeze some. When we make Friday night pizza, we make a few extras for lunches on Sat and Sun. And there’s no such thing as too much whipped cream… 🙂 But hey, if you like to do baking by hand, we won’t stand in your way! 🙂
Anna says
I would be delighted if you would do a post on the uses of the Kitchenaid. And the making and freezing of bread doughs. Could you freeze a couple of those pizza doughs once they had reached the final rest stage?
One thing I have been doing with my, newly acquired, Kitchenaid mixer is making a large quantity of cookie dough and then flash-freezing the dough so that it is ready to be dropped and baked. Given that I work four days a week, to be able to grab a bag out of the freezer, pop them in the oven and produce warm-from-the-oven cookies mid-week makes our household a happier place.
Lisa G. says
For many years I made do with a hand-held electric mixer, and that’ll do anything a stand mixer can do, except knead bread. But, according to the folks at American’s Test Kitchens, only a KitchenAid will do bread dough – it’s just too much for the other brands. Still, I like to make bread by hand, especially since I learned from Leila that you don’t have to fight with it! I hadn’t realized that it can be a gentler exercise.
But this is all very welcome! I don’t make pizza very much, but it’s because I don’t think of it. I look forward to the next installment. I realized I am guilty of mistake #5, definitely! I had no idea you weren’t supposed to work that top flour in, nor did I even know it could be avoided! Thanks for that. If I make this, though, I’m afraid I’ll halve the yeast amount, use cold water and let it rise at it’s own pace; it’s what I usually do with bread recipes.
Leila says
Lisa G., I used to make dough in my Cuisinart food processor, which also has a bread “blade.” That works fine as well, although it’s not quite big enough for the quantities I like to make.
Making it by hand is fine!
Kimberly says
What pretty hands Auntie Leila has!! 🙂 Thank you for the tutorial!
Leila says
Aw, thanks!
Anita says
Not related to pizza dough, but your under cabinet lighting really makes me smile a lot. I have a strand that is destined for this very use now. Thank you for the idea!
Josie says
I thought the same thing about the lights and seeing Auntie Leila in the kitchen just made me so happy!:) I love to have the Kitchen Aid for cakes and cookies. I don’t use it for bread, but only because I burned out the motor once leaving it kneading too long (I thought I was doing a good thing!) and it was nearly impossible to get it fixed, save a good friend whose husband was fixing her own and took my broken one on too! Phew! I am inspired, though, to try again more carefully with this pizza dough tutorial. I just made pizza on Friday with store bought whole wheat dough and it was pretty unsatisfactory:).
Leila says
Ladies, my kitchen is so outdated. That corner is dreadfully dark! It made me super happy to think of the lights! Try it!
Donna L. says
My mouth is watering at the sight of yeasty gluten-full pizza dough! I used to make bread, cinnamon rolls and pizza at least twice a week. Alas, we have several people in our home with Celiac/gluten intolerance so I am making gluten free foods. It’s not the same flavor nor texture, but I have to say, it’s been transformational for us.
Does anyone know where to find great gluten-free bread recipes?
Mona says
Thank you SOOOOO much. I’ve been reading about your pizza Fridays for so long and have been longing to know exactly how you make pizzas from scratch. It’s good to see Auntie Leila in the flesh (or in pixles). You are beautiful.
Betsy says
I typically only make 1-2 pizzas at a time. Is there a way to store the dough? Does it refrigerate well? And could I use a large knife instead of a bench scraper to divide the dough? Or is that a tool that I should invest in?
Becky says
How far in advance can you make the dough? Will it hang out in the fridge for a couple of days? Can you freeze it and then let it thaw in the fridge? Or would you just make extra pizza and freeze them whole? We have ballet this fall on Friday, right when I would usually be making our pizza.
Barbara says
Leila, what’s your feeling on adding oil to the dough? I have a pretty standard recipe saved in my head as I have also been making pizza at home for dozens of years, but once in a while I fall for someone’s recipe titled “best pizza dough” and lately I have been using semolina flour. But I can never decide if adding oil makes a difference or not.
Katie says
Dough update: We’re a pizza-every-other-weekend-ish sort of household, and I looked forward to trying out the LMLD advice as I made it today. Alas, my yeast turned out to be dead as a doornail, but happily some wonderful pizza comes of the story I relate (thanks to a packet of instant yeast added to the dough a couple of hours in, once I realized it). The most enlightening advice: “When the consistency is that of a thick pancake batter or what you think of as bread dough that is going to be impossible to knead, you are there and should stop adding water.” Perfect description, Deirdre– I wouldn’t have stopped there otherwise, but you’re totally right. And Auntie Leila’s counter-flouring advice, especially the tip on hanging the dough off the edge, really made a difference. Most of all, it was great to try the LMLD approach of having a method but otherwise trusting gumption over measurements! I’m an Alton Brown fan and learned a lot from Good Eats, but I loved skipping his scientific recipe and seeing it come together all the same. Thanks again. We enjoyed pizza margherita and ham & pineapple, with leftovers to look forward to. =)
Kari says
Hi!
I have two questions: do you have any idea how this will work in the high desert southwest? I live near abq. Nm at about 6800 ft altitude and our air, flour, etc is very dry. I love making bread and pizza and the texture always seems right, but once baked is denser than we like. I’m guessing I knead in too much flour, but still I use at least 1c less than any recipe calls for. Also, without hard measurements (i love to cook that way too!) How do you adjust for a smaller kitchen aid bowl? I have the classic size…. I just used less than 2 cups of warm water in the dough and it’s very wet. Do I need to add more flour and make a bigger batch?
Thanks! Kari
Leila says
Kari, I have no clue. I was in Denver last week for the first time in my life and felt a little dizzy. End of experience 🙂
So take this under advisement accordingly:
Try using less flour overall and don’t knead at all. Just mix as described in the mixer and treat gently on the board. It isn’t that you’ve used less flour but maybe that you’ve kneaded in too much towards the end, and thus it tastes flat, as it hasn’t had time to ferment.
Try using potato water (water that you have drained off of your mashed potatoes).
It doesn’t sound like 2 cups of water is too much for the smaller kitchenaid. It’s hard to make yourself deal with the looser dough. but after you let it rest in the bowl, mix it a little, and turn it out, use your bench scraper to see if you can’t divide it in four.
Then take each piece and, again using your bench scraper, make your rounded blobs of dough. As you round them up, you should feel that they come together under your hand. Even if you just plop that into your pan and stretch it out as best you can, you will find your pizza is better tasting!
Kari says
Your post has completely revolutionized my pizza making! It is just SO good! The texture is great (even though I forgot the oil once…oops) and it doesn’t take much active time, just a lot of sitting time. Now I’m trying to memorize the process so I don’t have to keep looking it up every week! 🙂 This is the VERY BEST pizza crust I’ve ever tried. Wow!
Kari
rachelnehme says
Have a busy day and so making some pizza dough in the AM in hopes that somehow you will see this and respond?!?! After the autolyse can I leave it in the kitchenaid mixer all day? Or put it into the balls and leave it all day? Probably should have done this later in the day, but no time!
Leila says
Hi Rachel — it depends on how much dough you have. If the mixer is more than half full you might want to transfer it to a larger bowl. If it’s about half you can leave it. You can put it in the fridge! just take it out an hour before you are ready to bake. Turn it onto the counter with a little flour, let it rest and warm up, and gently divide the dough into pizza portions, rolling it gently and leaving it to rest as you gather your ingredients.