Pizza dough
Makes 4 × 250 g balls — four 12-inch pizzas
Ingredients
1,000 g bread flour or Italian "00" flour
640 g water, room temperature (64% hydration)
25 g fine sea salt
3 g instant dry yeast (about 1 tsp)
10 g olive oil (optional, for a softer pan-style crust)
Method
Mix. Whisk the yeast into the water. Add the flour and stir with a spoon or your hand until no dry patches remain — a shaggy, sticky mass. Cover and rest 20 minutes. This is the autolyse; it does a good chunk of the kneading for you.
Add salt, then knead. Sprinkle over the salt and squeeze it through the dough. Knead on a bare counter for 6–8 minutes (or 5 minutes on low in a stand mixer with the dough hook) until smooth and elastic. It should pull back when you stretch it and feel tacky but not gluey.
Bulk ferment. Cover and leave at room temperature for 2 hours, folding the dough over on itself once at the 1-hour mark.
Divide and ball. Cut into four 250 g pieces. Shape each into a tight ball: pull the edges into the center, flip seam-side down, and drag it in circles on the counter until the surface goes taut. Tension now is what lets it stretch later.
Cold ferment. Place the balls in an oiled container or separate covered bowls and refrigerate 24 to 72 hours. Twenty-four hours is good; 48 is better; 72 is the most flavor you'll get before the gluten starts to slacken.
Come to temperature. Pull the dough out 2 hours before baking. Cold dough tears instead of stretching.
Shape. Flour a ball generously and press from the center outward with your fingertips, leaving the outer inch untouched for the rim. Then lift it and let gravity do the rest, rotating the edge through your hands. Never use a rolling pin — it crushes the gas bubbles you spent three days making.
Bake. As hot as your oven goes. On a steel or stone preheated 45 minutes at 500–550°F, a pizza takes 6–8 minutes. In a wood or gas pizza oven at 850°F, 90 seconds.
Notes
Flour matters most. "00" flour gives a tender, extensible Neapolitan crust but needs real heat (above 700°F) to perform. Bread flour is the better choice for a home oven — it browns and crisps at lower temperatures.
Weigh everything. A cup of flour varies by 20% depending on how you scoop it. Baker's percentages only work with a scale.
If the dough fights you while shaping, it's either too cold or too tight. Cover it and walk away for 20 minutes.
Freezing. After balling, freeze in oiled bags for up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge overnight, then 3 hours at room temperature.
To adjust hydration: 60% is easy to handle and slightly denser; 70% gives a more open, blistered crumb but is genuinely sticky. Start at 64% and move once you know how the dough should feel.
