Pizza
Our 7 Favorite Pizza Dough Recipes
Including recipes from Erin McDowell, Maurizio Leo, and Jim Lahey.
Not difficult, always worth it. That’s homemade pizza dough’s new tagline (I’ll send the invoice later). And unlike most slogans, it’s actually true. You don’t need any technical ability to properly make dough from scratch. You just need patience—and maybe a bit of yeast. Other than that, there’s nothing to it. The best part? Most pizza doughs hold up in the freezer, meaning if you double or triple any of these recipes, pizza night can become a last-minute meal any night of the week.
To help get your pizza night (impromptu or not) started, we gathered seven of our best pizza dough recipes—all of which happen to be tested and approved by our Test Kitchen.
1. Jim Lahey's No-Knead Pizza Dough + Margherita Pie
A riff on his own no-knead bread technique, Jim Lahey’s dough is both easy and reliable. As is the case with many pizza dough recipes, this dough must proof (allow for the yeast to ferment, release gas, and expand the dough) for at least 18 hours. If you’re looking for a straightforward, classic pizza dough you can make from home, start here.
2. Deep Dish Pizza Dough
Deep dish is the perfect at-home pizza. Unlike Neapolitan—which is typically cooked between 800 and 1000 degrees Fahrenheit—deep dish is baked at a relatively cool 375 degrees, a temperature every oven should reach. Here’s the only catch: Unless you’re in Chicago, odds are you won’t find deep dish dough nearby (if, say, you were looking to buy some instead of making your own). But don’t worry, Erin McDowell has you covered. Her dough is precise, quick to make (only needs an hour to proof), and the right balance of pillowy and crispy.
3. Homemade Pizza Dough
Amber Wilson’s dough relies on an unusual (but highly effective) time-saving technique: While mixing the dough, heat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it fully heats, turn the oven off. Instead of proofing the dough somewhere on your counter, place it directly in the warm oven. The residual heat will make it fully rise in only an hour.
4. Lazy Weeknight Pizza Dough
“This is lazy weeknight pizza dough—it doesn’t promise to be the most authentic, or the best fermented, but thanks to a handful of clever shortcuts, it does promise that you can have a delicious, airy-crumbed, crispy-edged sheet-pan pizza on the table in under an hour,” writes recipe developer Ella Quittner.
5. Whole-Wheat Sourdough Pizza Dough
From James Beard Award winning cookbook author—and former Food52 Baking Resident—Maurizio Leo, comes a pitch-perfect whole-wheat sourdough that’s equally sturdy and chewy. While the level of detail within Maurizio’s recipes is second to none, it does make the recipe a bit more involved. In this case, you’ll need 100 grams of sourdough starter, 30 hours of prep, and a heaping cup of patience. We promise it’s worth it.
6. Mimi’s Pan Pizza Dough, Two Ways (The Mimi & The Papa)
Inspired by her mother’s pizza, this dough from Erin McDowell is, as she describes it, “somewhere between a classic ‘Grandma style’ pizza and a typical pan-style pizza.” In other words, it’s got all the textures: crisp, fluffy, and sitting comfortably between thin- and thick- crust. Pro tip: Triple the recipe, freeze your extra dough, then thaw it when you need an easy, weeknight-friendly sheet-pan dinner.
7. (Nothing Better Than This) Fried Pizza Dough
Never throw away your pizza dough scraps. Instead, fry and coat them in spices. There’s a good chance they’ll steal the show from the pizza—and that’s totally okay.
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Written by: Paul Hagopian
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