Pizza with black olives and red pepper on top

Many people wonder: is it possible to make pizza dough with all purpose flour? Is it possible to cook pizza at home without a fancy oven? The answer is yes and it is delicious.

This is a really easy pizza dough recipe that is perfect for beginners. I’ve been making it for years and I was surprised by how good the pizza turned out when I prepared for the first time.

I’m not a pizzaiolo and I use an old oven. So if I can, so do you.

It works really well and you can play around with different toppings such as mushrooms, ham, olives, vegetables, etc. You can use leftovers as well such as chicken or sausages.

What you’ll love about this recipe:

  • EASYNESS – This recipe asks for water in room temperature, all purpose flour, and dry yeast you can easily find in supermarkets; it cooks well in home ovens.
  • HEALTHY – by choosing a good quality flour and mozzarella on one hand, and your healthy toppings such mushrooms, vegetables, olives etc you’ll be in control of ingredients.
  • INEXPENSIVE – you’ll spend just a fraction of what you’d spend buying ready made pizza.
  • EFFICIENT – In one batch your work will yield 4 pizza doughs. You can freeze pizza doughs if you don’t use them all.
  • FUN – After you get use to it, delegate parts of the making process to family members, such as somebody spreads tomato sauce on dough, while another person will be in charge of spreading mozzarella, for example. They’ll have a blast.

There are many factors which contribute for a successful homemade pizza dough.

The quality of the flour plays a crucial role because flour quality varies significantly. I’ll recommend using a regular all purpose flour that you already have. You’ll try different brands until find the one which suits best your dough.

In addition, restaurants cook pizza at around 400 Celsius or 752 F for only 4 to 6 minutes, so the high heat turns pizza crust crispy fast outside and melts cheese on top. At home, it’s not possible to reach this temperature with regular ovens.

This recipes is perfect to bake in home ovens, as you will cook it at 200 Celsius or 390 F.

Another factor is the correct temperature of the water to prepare the dough. Fresh yeast requires lukewarm water and it’s easy to heat the water too much, so killing the yeast; or too little, so the dough does not rise well.

This recipe requires water at room temperature to activate dry yeast, so you don’t need to worry about killing the yeast.

When the topic is pizza toppings, tastes vary a lot. One of my favourite toppings is ham, mushrooms and olives. But, tomatoes and olives only, such as the one on the photo below, is simple and delicious. Serve with a super easy green salad with cashew nuts.

Warning: your local pizza place will end up missing you!

Ready pizza made with all purpose flour pizza dough
Pizza made with homemade pizza dough using all purpose flour.

Recipe for homemade pizza dough with 1kg of flour

Ingredients

  • 1 kg all purpose flour or T65 flour. Organic if you can.
  • 1/2 l water at room temperature
  • 40 g raw sugar
  • 40 ml olive oil
  • 20 g sea salt
  • 10 g dry yeast

Kitchen tools

You’ll need a pizza pan and a rolling pin. I use a 35 cm pizza pan tray which is 14 inch tray.

A rolling pin is necessary to spread dough.

Tips for a successful homemade pizza dough

  1. After the dough had already rested and doubled size, work with dough on a floured surface and open it with a rolling pin. This way you can adjust to the desired size.
  2. To fold edges, you make a vertical small cut of 3 cm on the edge and start folding from left to right.
  3. You’ll place dough on the back of pizza tray, instead of placing it on the front where most pizza tray have edges. This tip may sound counter-intuitive, but this way the edges of dough will cook better.
  4. You need to drain water excess from mozzarella, otherwise the mozza will release too much water making the dough wet and mushy.
  5. You’ll cook pizza in two phases. First you’ll put dough in the heated oven for 5 to 7 minutes. But remember that dough must have already tomato sauce on before going in the oven. Why? otherwise it will get the dough too dry.
  6. After this time, you’ll put pizza topping and slide it on oven tray rack. This is the second reason why pizza dough must be placed on the back of pizza tray.
  7. If you need to freeze dough, brush it with olive oil before freezing it. I like to freeze it in a reusable plastic bag. To defrost, take it out at least 5 hours ahead of the time you’ll use it. For example, I take it out of freezer at 11h and use it around 19h the same day.

Instructions

  1. In a large bowl, add all dry ingredients: flour, sugar, sea salt and yeast and blend by hand with a spoon.
  2. Add wet ingredients: olive oil and water and blend again with a spoon.
  3. At this stage lumps will appear.
  4. Transfer batter to a lightly floured surface and work the batter with your hands.
  5. Fold the dough onwards and work with your hands until you reach a smooth dough. It will take around 10 minutes until you reach a smooth dough.
  6. Cut dough in four pieces with a regular knife.
  7. Place the dough or doughs you’ll use in a bowl and cover with a wet cloth for around 1 hour. The wet cloth prevents dough from drying.
  8. Freeze the others. Before freezing it, brush dough with olive oil to prevent drying it in the freeze.
  9. Cut mozzarella in pieces and put it in a sieve to drain water excess.
  10. Before working on the dough, turn your oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
  11. Let it heat for 15 minutes.
  12. After 1 hour, the dough will have doubled its size. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until you reach your pizza pan size. The dough will surpass the pizza pan tray in size.
  13. This is a precious tip: take the dough from floured surface and place dough on the back of pizza tray. This will cook better edges.
  14. Make a small cut on the edge of the dough to fold its edge all the way. Add the tomato sauce of your preference and bake for 5 to 7 minutes. It is really important to bake pizza dough with the tomato sauce on top to not dry it.
  15. After around 7 minutes, you’ll take dough out of the oven. The edges will still be white. Do not brown the edges at this stage.
  16. Add your favourite mozzarella and topping.
  17. Bake again for 4-7 minutes until edges are lightly brown and mozzarella is melted. Take it out of oven and lift a bit pizza to look how much dough is cooked under. It will be lightly brown in some parts. If dough under is still totally white, you can put back 2-3 minutes more.

Enjoy!

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