The best homemade pizza dough I ever had the pleasure to eat. Like from a proper pizzeria! Yeah baby.
We cracked the pizza code! This pizza dough is not only simple and easy, as well as relatively quick to make. It is also super super yummy! We love it because:
- It’s light and soft on the inside
- and crisp on the outside
- It can be made in just one bowl
- No need to knead!
How to make our easy pizza dough
So we promised you it’s easy to make our delicious pizza dough. So let’s prove it! (hehe baking pun)
Basically all you need to do is mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl – flour, dried yeast, sugar, salt, olive oil and warm water. Cover and leave in a warm place. After about an hour the dough will have risen and me about twice the size as before (this is why you need a big bowl!) The dough will be light, moist and full of air. Then you will need to ‘knock it back’ If you are a beginner dough maker this just means, mix it all together to press all the air out of it again so you have a compact dough. We use a spatula for this, you could also use your hands or a spoon. Tip the dough onto a well floured board, now you are ready to shape your dough how ever you wish!
How to shape the dough
Once you have divided your dough into however many pieces you wish for. You can roll out the dough with a rolling pin, but for best results we like to stretch the dough. It’s so soft and elastic that you can just do it by hand. For tips on this technique see the recipe card below. We aren’t quite at the level of dough throwing pizzeria chefs, but we are getting better each time we make this delicious dough!
How to use our easy pizza dough
Our pizza dough is perfect for pizza, (obviously!) Get creative and have fun topping your vegan pizzas. We like to load them up with veggies and sauces. Small individual ones are always fun so you can try out different topping combinations, We will share a few of our favourite topping ideas in upcoming recipes!
Our other absolute favourite thing to use this pizza dough for is to make vegan calzones. These folded over pizzas are the perfect food for cooking over the fire or in our van when we are traveling. We even love to fill them with sweet filling to make delicious dessert calzone!
Easy Pizza Dough
Ingredients
- 1 tsp dried yeast
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 7/8 cup warm water
- 2 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
Dough
- In a mixing bowl, mix all the ingredients into a uniform, moist dough. No need to knead!
- Cover the bowl and let the dough rise in a warm place or in a sunny spot for 1 – 2 hours. *
- When it has risen to about twice the size, the dough is ready to proceed.
- Briefly knock back the dough – mix the fragile risen dough back together, making it compact again.
- Tip out onto a floured surface (ideally a wooden board). Fold the edges inwards and let the dough relax for 5 minutes.
- Cut or divide the dough into equal pieces: 2 for large pizzas; 4 for small pizzas, calzones or breadsticks.
Shaping pizzas
- Always keep pieces of dough lightly floured to avoid sticking to surfaces or your fingers.
- (Skip this step if you are in a hurry) – For each piece, fold edges of piece of dough to the center repeatedly to form a round, slightly flat ball. Turn over, let rest on a floured surface for another 15 – 30 min.
- Pull and stretch a floured piece of dough into a flat pizza base. **See notes for tips
- Spread it out on a floured wooden board. Again, make sure the finished pizza bases do not stick to the board. They need slide off the board easily***, or you might end up with a holey mess!
Topping or filling
- Top your pizza with your favourite pizza sauce and toppings. Have you tried our vegan lentil ragu?
- For a calzone: fold in half, sealing the edges together. Sweet calzones work great, too!
Baking in the oven
- Baking a pizza or calzone in the oven, 10 minutes at 250˚C top-bottom heat brings amazing results results!
Cooking in a campervan on the hob or over a campfire
- Place your untopped pizza base in a preheated pan (cast iron works well). Cook on medium/high heat until cooked on one side, then turn over the base. Top your pizza in the pan, put a lid on the pan and continue to cook until the dough and toppings are cooked on top. For calzone, simply cook on each side until the dough is brown and crusty.
Notes
*Water Temperature
The warmer the water, the quicker the dough will rise. If the water feels warm, but not hot to your fingers, it’s just right. **Shaping
Take a piece of dough into your hands and begin to pull and stretch it into a flat sheet. Use your thumbs to roll the fat edges further outwards, going in a circle. Also, you can carefully stretch the dough even thinner from underneath, using your knuckles and back of your fingers. Keep going for a bit until you have a well-sized flat pizza base. ***Tips for moving a topped pizza
If you don’t have a pizza peel – and who does? – (Pizza peel is that thing with a long stick as a handle that pizza cooks use to slide the pizzas into and out of the oven) I recommend you top your pizzas one at a time on a floured wooden board, and slide it off and onto a (preheated) baking sheet ready to go in the oven, before topping the next pizza on the board. That’s the easiest effective way to get a pretty pizza onto the baking sheet.
Nutrition
We hope you enjoyed our easy pizza dough recipe. We just had a family pizza feast in the garden! Today we had ours topped with celeriac, kale, mushrooms onions – the toppings were delish, but it was the dough that stole the show!
Happy dough making
Paul and Sophie
I never thought that making pizza would be this easy!!!
It came out really well, soft and tasty. Everyone in my family liked it, esp my kids.
Thanks a lot.