A Guide to Pizza Dough

Pizza

Basic Pizza Dough

Ingredients

A good pizza dough needs few ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast. The proportion of the ingredients and the way the dough is handled work together to produce a beautifully stretchy dough.

Flour

It’s important to use all-purpose flour or bread flour. It may be bleached or not, it doesn’t matter much, but we recommend using unbleached flour for its gorgeous cream colour. These flours contain just enough protein to create an elastic dough that will be easy to stretch. This elasticity comes from gluten, which develops in the dough during kneading. When you knead dough, proteins come together end-to-end, forming an elastic network that holds the gases in the dough during fermentation and cooking. You can replace some of the white flour with whole wheat flour if you wish. The dough will rise in the same way, but the taste will be different, obviously.

Sugar

Sugar (or honey) is optional, but its presence in the dough will accelerate the fermentation process (sugar is yeast’s favourite food) and boost the browning of the crust during cooking. You need a very small amount, about 5 ml to 10 ml (1 tsp to 2 tsp) per 250 ml (1 cup) of flour.

Salt

Contrary to popular belief, salt is essential to the dough. Sure, it heightens the taste (saltless pizza dough is quite bland), but its role goes beyond flavour. Salt interacts with the proteins in gluten, strengthening them, so that the dough is less limp and rises better. We suggest using about 2.5 ml (½ tsp) of salt per 250 ml (1 cup) of flour.

Yeast

Three types of yeast are available in grocery stores: traditional yeast, instant yeast and, more recently, pizza yeast.

Traditional Yeast

You must rehydrate this type of yeast for about 15 minutes in lukewarm water with a little sugar before adding it to the flour. The lukewarm water wakes up the yeast, which, when fermenting, transforms the sugar into carbon dioxide (CO2), which in turn creates foam on the surface of the water. This is the point at which you need to add the water and yeast mixture to the flour to make the dough. Traditional yeast doesn’t act as quickly as fast rise yeast and it takes longer for the dough to rise. However, many homemade pizza lovers prefer it to instant yeast because it makes a dough that’s much easier to stretch.

Fast Rise Yeast or Instant Yeast

The manufacturing process of this product makes the yeast more active and faster acting. The term “instant” refers to the fact that it’s not necessary to rehydrate it in lukewarm water before adding it to the flour, which eliminates a step. However, fast rise yeast is more likely to free glutathione into the dough (see sidebar: “Neither Too Hot Nor Too Cold”).

To thwart this problem, manufacturers add ascorbic acid (or vitamin C), which has the opposite effect of glutathione: it makes gluten more resistant. This is the type of yeast we prefer in the RICARDO kitchens, for the texture and flavour it gives to the dough and for its fast action.

Pizza Yeasts

This type of instant yeast is designed specifically to facilitate the stretching of the dough. This is made possible by the addition of cysteine, a kind of gluten relaxant. A molecule naturally present in proteins, cysteine prevents the proteins in the flour from creating links that are too tight together. The result is a dough that stretches more easily without snapping back like an elastic band. Does it work? Yes, we’ve put it to the test.

But a warning: the method indicated on the package mentions that the dough should be stretched immediately after kneading. The idea is to create a pizza in less than 30 minutes. But without a resting period, the dough significantly lacks taste. So, if you use this type of yeast, we suggest that you leave the dough to rest for at least two hours before using it.