This is my family’s pizza dough recipe.  We make pizza almost weekly, so it is a workhorse recipe, one of the most important in our kitchen.

People familiar with our neighbourhood have asked why we make our own pizza when we live literally one block from a pizzeria.  The answer is that it’s easy and good and fun and cheap.  The scaling and mixing of the dough take less than ten minutes.  All together the ingredients for our homemade pizza cost under $5 per 12″ pie, something that we pay $18 plus tip for down the street.

I feel obligated to mention that our recipe is adapted from the little booklet that came with our KitchenAid stand mixer.  I resent having to mention that, because the recipe in that booklet is completely useless!  Firstly because the quantities are all in volumes, making the results wildly inconsistent, and secondly because the quantity of flour it calls for is “2 1/2 – 3 1/2 cups”.  Such a huge variation is absolutely ridiculous.  “You either need this quantity of flour, or 40% more flour than that, I’m not sure.”  How can it even claim to be a recipe when it makes statements like that?  It’s more like a Vague Outline for Pizza Dough.

Anyways, we made the following changes:

• Converted all units to precise, reliable weights.
• Dialed in the flour quantity so that the dough is nice and wet but still workable.
• Increased the salt content from a meagre 1/2 tsp to a much more sensible 1 1/2 tsp.

Papa Suds’ Pizza Dough
Adapted from the absurd excuse for a pizza dough recipe in the KitchenAid Stand Mixer booklet

Ingredients

• 240 g warm water
• 8 g dry active yeast
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 360 g all-purpose flour
• 1 + 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• extra olive oil for greasing fermentation bowl
• extra flour for rolling out
• coarse cornmeal for baking

Procedure

1. Weigh the water in a bowl. Add the yeast and oil.  Stir to moisten yeast.  Let stand a few minutes.
2. Weigh flour in the bowl of the stand-mixer.  Add the salt.
3. Add the liquid components to a well in the centre of the flour.
4. Mix the dough using the dough hook on low speed until the dough comes together in one ball and the sides of the bowl are clean.
5. Turn the mixer speed to 2 and knead for 2 minutes.
6. Put a splash of olive oil in a large bowl. Wipe the oil up the sides of the bowl. Put the dough in the bowl. Turn the dough so its entire surface is coated with oil.
7. Cover the bowl with plastic and a towel and leave at room temperature until the dough has doubled, roughly 90 – 120 minutes.

Yield: dough for 2 x 12″ pizzas