Make Your Own Pizza Dough: How Does It Taste Like in Italy?

If you want to make Italian pizza dough yourself, you need flour, yeast, water, salt, and olive oil. Half a cube of fresh yeast is enough for one kilogram of flour and 500 to 600 milliliters of water. A few dashes of olive oil ensure that the pizza dough becomes supple. You can add a pinch of sugar to make the dough rise even better.

The yeast is crumbled and dissolved in lukewarm water. The flour is piled up in a bowl and then a well is made in it. This is where the dissolved yeast comes in, which you mix with the flour to form a pre-dough. The mixture has to rest for half an hour, then the remaining ingredients are added and the mix is ​​kneaded into a smooth, firm dough. This is best done with your hands, as body heat will help the yeast rise.

The homemade pizza dough must rise for at least an hour in a warm place protected from drafts. You can also leave it in the fridge overnight or for several days. In this way, it rises more slowly and finer pores form.

Instead of fresh yeast, which you can also make yourself using our recipe, dry yeast is also suitable. In this case, you do not need to prepare a pre-dough, but mix the dry yeast with the flour and the other ingredients and knead everything together. The pizza dough still has to rest.

Depending on your taste, you can use light wheat flour of type 00, 550, or a mixture with wholemeal flour. With wholemeal flour, the dough tastes a little tart and saturates longer due to the fiber it contains. Add one to two tablespoons more liquid for every 100 grams of wholemeal flour so that the dough does not become too dry. You can also use herbs and spices in the pizza dough to vary the flavor.

Make sure pizza topping ingredients don’t contain too much moisture or the dough will become mushy during baking and won’t rise properly. So drain thawed vegetables well and do not cover the pizza too much so that the dough can rise a little.

If you need something quick and you don’t have time to make the pizza dough yourself, you will also find ready-made and rolled-out pizza dough in the refrigerated section. All you have to do is cover and bake it.