There are several aspects of my life where I push for perfection. Pizza is one of them. And the dough is the foundation for a fantastic pie. Here's my current recipe.

Heads Up

With so many variables at play, one must develop some "tweaking judgement" through experience. Durations, ingredient amounts, folding counts of the dough, etc. are constantly being adjusted to suit the air temp, time constraints, flour, freshness of yeast, yada yada. So, I can’t provide a “this is guaranteed to work if you follow this to the minute/gram” but it should still serve as a helpful framework towards good pizza dough.

Notes

• Although this is intended for wood-fired pizzas, I also use this dough for artisan and ciabatta bread frequently.
• I make ~280g dough balls to produce ~12” pizzas.
• Target hydration is 70-75% (mass of water / mass of flour).
  • 75% is softer, fluffier, but HARD to work with (sticking, ripping, & overstretching comes easily).
  • 70% yields similar results but a little more forgiving.
  • If you struggle when working with the dough during pizza prep, you can try to go lower in hydration but anything below like 65% won’t give the epic “soft and crunchy” results.
• Times are very dependent on ambient temp. The poolish will ferment at widly different rates at 66F vs. 76F.
• This recipe uses a poolish preferment. There is classic variation that uses a biga preferment instead, but unless you have a commercial style spiral dough mixer, you'll struggle to mix the biga and final dough.

Recipe

Ingredients

The type of flour makes a notable difference. My go to is Caputo Pizzeria, but I’ve recently started to experiment with Caputo Nuvola Super (some people like this over the Pizzeria flour but I have found it to be stickier thus far) and Caputo Manitoba Oro (very high strength flour that helps bring structure to the dough when using Pizzeria flour poolish preferments).

I use Caputo Semolina flour on my work surface/paddle when spreading/prepping the pizzas.

I use Caputo Lievito yeast but any good instant yeast will work fine.

Use good water - we have a reverse osmosis setup at home and use that.

Poolish Preferment

Target hydration: 100%

• 2 strategies:
  • Very little yeast with 12-16 hour rest at room temp (68-72*F) overnight.
  • Much more yeast with 1hr at room temp and then 24 hours in fridge.

Example ingredient amounts PER PIZZA

• 81.3g room temp water
• 81.3g Pizzeria flour
• Yeast
  • 1/12 teaspoon for room temp / 12hr version
  • 0.5g for 1hr room temp + 24hr fridge version
• 1.6g honey
• No salt

Steps

1. Combine ingredients in a container that has an airtight lid.
2. Mix by hand/spatula until smooth (1 min), but you are not trying to develop gluten structure.
3. Follow resting strategy based on the amount of yeast you used.
4. The poolish is ready when:
   1. Room temp rest: it has doubled/tripled in volume and there are bubbles popping every few seconds at the surface.
   2. Fridge rest: 24 hrs have passed (with this strategy, it will not have tripled in volume but you should still see some gluten development and bubbles throughout).

Mixing the Final Dough

• Target hydration: my go to is 70%, but as described above, somewhere between 65% and 75% will do depending on your level of dedication.
• Flour used: either more Pizzeria or this is where I’m experimenting with the Manitoba flour to have more dough strength… most of the time, I just use more Pizzeria flour.

Example ingredient amounts PER PIZZA

• 32.5g room temp water
• 81.3g flour
• 3.3g fine sea salt
• Ideally, NO yeast. The poolish activity will develop the final dough. However, if you struggle with rise or are in a time crunch, you can add a little bit of yeast (like 1/12tsp per pizza) to the final dough to speed things along.

Steps

1. Pour the water into the poolish to help it separate from the container.
2. Add the flour.
3. (Autolyse 20 min) Mix until combined but don’t worry about developing gluten yet. Cover and rest for 20 min.
4. (Develop) Work the dough. Add the salt during this process (if by hand, immediately; if by mixer, at the halfway point). I have 2 strategies for this:
   1. By hand. Use the pinch-pull-fold technique.
   2. Mixer. Start on a slower speed (2-3?) until the dough is kinda uniform in texture (3-4min). Then speed up (4-6?) to get the dough separating and slapping around the bowl.
5. After the first round of development (maybe 8min), the dough should hold a shape momentarily (when tensioned), by smooth in texture, and have a good amount of strength.
6. Rest for 20 mins.
7. Assess the dough and if needed, work the dough again (common if doing this by hand). Doesn’t have to be long, but you are looking to add tension to the dough so that it will hold a ball longer and longer.
8. Depending on how the dough is forming, you may need to rest and then develop again, especially when working by hand. If using a mixer, you’re probably good.

Shaping and Proofing

At this point, we once again have a couple strategies which differ in time:

1. You intend to make the pizza same day.
2. You intend to wait 24-48hrs before making pizza.

For same day:

1. Rest the final dough for ~1 hr.
2. Divide into ~280g balls.
3. Allow to proof until doubled in size. Time will vary significantly depending on air temp and whether you added additional yeast for the final dough. At 75*F and no addt’l yeast, maybe 4-6hrs.

For long proof

1. Rest the final dough for ~1 hr.
2. Divide into ~280g balls.
3. Immediately put into fridge and allow to rest for 24-48hrs.
4. On the day of pizzas, remove from the fridge about 1-2hrs ahead of time.