Best Pizza Crust
I’ve tried many pizza crust recipes since living back in the US and this one is hands-down the best. It consistently produces a strong and stretchy crust that crisps up perfectly on the bottom using my oven pizza stone. The biggest difference is the yeast. In Italy they tend to use baker’s yeast which is a fresh yeast sold in little bricks. It’s hard to find in the US and I’m not as comfortable working with it yet. (Though I did make an amazing schiacciata with it once, which is a Florentine focaccia.) This recipe has been perfected by an Italian now living in the US and uses active dry yeast. Here is the original recipe from Vito Iacopelli on YouTube.
Below is my variation that makes 4 personal pizza crusts.
Important Notes:
The dough must have plenty of time to rise. I recommend starting the night before, or begin the first thing in the morning to make it that evening.
You should also have a pizza stone and a pizza paddle/peel.
A food scale is important to correctly measure the ingredients using the metric system.
Original Recipe (makes about 16 crusts) ———> My calculations to make 4 crusts
1 Liter of filtered or bottled water ————————-> 250g water
50 grams (g) olive oil ——————————————> 12.5g olive oil
25g sea salt ———————————————-———> 6.25g sea salt
1.5kg King Arthur Bread Flour ——————————> 375g flour
10g honey ———————————————————-> 2.5g honey
5g active dry yeast ———————————————-> 4g yeast
Instructions: (See video for great instructions to follow along, but using the modified quantities)
In a large bowl, dissolve dry yeast into water. Add honey. Stir it all around with a wooden spoon.
Add 250g of the flour, set the rest aside. Mix the flower into the yeast and honey mixture. Cover it up with a tea towel and let it rest for one hour.
After one hour, add remaining flour, salt and olive oil. Mix it together and knead for a few min. Add a tiny amount of extra olive oil to cover dough so it doesn’t dry out. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap tightly, then cover with a tea towel. Let rest for 1 hour.
After 1 hour, remove covering from bowl and do not knead at all. Divide dough into fourths. I use my food scale to make sure they are equal - about 250g each. Form them into balls without kneading.
Place dough balls onto a lightly floured sheet pan. Then sprinkle a little flour on top of each ball as well. Then cover with plastic wrap securely so no air gets in. Cover with tea towel for a minimum of 6 hours at room temp. I try to give them 6-8 hours.
When you’re about an hour away from chow time, place your pizza stone in the top third of your oven at the highest possible temp it will go. My does 550F fan. Let the pizza stone heat for at least 45-60min on the highest temp.
Press out your pizza dough into crusts. Everyone has their own technique here. I’ve just figured out one that works for me after many attempts. I suggest googling a bit if you’ve never done this before. One method that seems to work well is to lightly dust a working surface with flour. Place the dough on the surface and using both hands, stretch it out into a circle while rotating the dough around. You should be able to easily stretch out the dough so that it’s 12-16” in diameter.
*It’s important to not have any holes in the dough. The sauce can leak through and you’ll have a mess of a time getting it on/off the paddle and the stone. If you do have a hole or two - avoid covering them with sauce.When you’re ready, dust your pizza paddle with semolina flour or corn meal if you have one of those. Otherwise with flour. You want a good coating so the dough can slide right off. Then place the dough on the paddle.
At this point, you can add your sauce and toppings. Go light! Go lighter than you think and than you are tempted to go. I promise. Less is more. See below for sauce and topping ideas.
Try to do this all quickly so that heat doesn’t escape the oven – quickly open the oven door (don’t singe your eyebrows off) and then reach your paddle in giving the pizza a little shove so it slides off and onto the pizza stone. Quickly shut the door.
The pizza should only take about 6-8 minutes. You want to see the crust bubble and turn brown and the cheese and sauce should be bubbling as well.
When you’re ready, quickly open the oven, reach you paddle in and slide the pizza on. I usually use the back of the oven to help me push it on there.
Cut and enjoy while hot. We usually let the first pizza cool while I prepare the second crust and get it into the oven, and we eat the first while the second one bakes. It’s best to eat them round-robin rather than wait for all 4 to be ready, otherwise the first one will have become cold.
SAUCE
The sauce doesn’t need to be complicated or have too much going on. I usually sautée half a yellow onion, maybe one clove of garlic. Then take a big can of Cento San Marzano tomatoes, purée it if needed, then add it to the onion. Add salt. Let it simmer for 15-20 min on low heat.
The sauce on the pizza should be about 1 ladle full. Pour it in the middle of the crust, then use the back of the ladle to spread it around. People always want to add more sauce, but you risk weighing down the pizza so much so that it becomes too difficult to get on and off the paddle.
TOPPINGS
GO NUTS! Just don’t add too much of anything. Keep it light for the same reason as the sauce. If it’s too heavy, you’ll have a disaster to clean up in your oven.
I like to grill eggplant and zucchini in advance and use fresh mozzarella rather than shredded. I just place a few blobs of it around the pizza.
I LOVE sausage on a pizza, especially with grilled zucchini. In this case, I take fresh ground spicy Italian sausage and break it into bits/balls raw. I place that on the pizza with the sauce and mozzarella, and let it cook in the oven with the pizza. It comes out perfect. Then add some spicy olive oil or Calabrian chilis, plus freshly grated parmigiano.
If you use fresh basil or mint, you’ll want to add them after the pizza comes out of the oven.
White pizza is also great - you can forego the sauce and just add olive oil, ricotta, parmigiano, mozzarella… You can do an eggplant + ricotta + mint - that’s a favorite of mine as well.
So many options!
