Pizza Recipes - Dough
If you're a newbie, this about the easiest pizza dough recipe you can find--and it's free. (Of course, you still have to buy the ingredients.)
This original recipe first appeared in the blog post for "Cheap The Pizza II: How to make an amazing pizza in your home oven for under three bucks." This is a no-knead recipe that's based on my standard recipe for a fully-kneaded and cold-fermented dough that appears in the book, Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have.
ABOVE: These two dough balls are the product of the recipe that appears on this page. These dough balls went on to result in a pizza that looks like the photo below...
ABOVE: This is a pretty good pizza crust for not a lot of work. This is the kind of thing you can accomplish when you use the main ingredient known as patience.
MAKING THE PIZZA DOUGH
Kneading dough is the act of forcing water into the flour. We’re not doing that here. Instead of lots of vigorous kneading and bouts of resting, we’re letting time and water do the work for us. We are using a no-knead dough that I literally formulated during a week in June 2025. I did it using my standard dough recipe by adding about four tablespoons extra water and not kneading it. Genius!
We’re going to mix together the dry ingredients. Then, we’ll add water and combine everything to a coarse consistency.
After that, we cover the bowl and let it sit for 20 hours. At the end of that rise, we remove the dough from the bowl, break it down into balls, put them into zippered plastic bags and brush them with olive oil.
The dough balls will then cold ferment for 48 hours. (They can be used before then. I’m just promoting best practices, which lead to the best tasting pizza under the circumstances. The pizza I made in the “all wrong” photo at the top was never cold fermented at all. It still tasted pretty good--but I know there's better.)
Also, this dough is so simple, you can pretty much remember the recipe. As somebody who never commits a recipe to memory, I already know this one by heart.
[NOTE: This recipe has been updated since it was first published on 6/13/25. I realized few people have a 1/8 teaspoon measure for the yeast, so I doubled the quantities to provide for a 1/4 teaspoon measure of yeast. That also doubled the recipe from two to four doughballs. Instructions for halving the recipe are below.)
Time: About five minutes of active work, followed by 18 hours of inactive time.
Tools
Large mixing bowl
A metal kitchen spoon
A wire whisk (optional)
Plastic dough scraper (optional)
Plastic cling wrap
Ingredients
5 cups of all-purpose flour (King Arthur brand recommended)
2 teaspoons of fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast
2 cups of water, room temperature
Yield: Four dough balls for 12-inch pizzas, or eight dough balls for 8-inch pizzas.
Feel free to cut this recipe in half. Use 2.5 cups flour. 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 cup of water, and 1/8 teaspoon of yeast.
However, a lot of people do not have a spoon for measuring 1/8 of a teaspoon. If you do, great. Proceed. If you do not, try this:
- Use a gram scale to weigh a .5 gram of yeast. Really easy.
- Eyeball it. Measure 1/4 teaspoon of yeast. Using a clean work surface, gently put the yeast in a little pile. Divide it in half with a knife blade, a credit card, or some other straight-edge tool. Be careful. Yeast like to roll away. Less easy, but still simple enough.
Instructions
Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium size bowl, stirring them together thoroughly with a whisk or a metal kitchen spoon.
Add the water and stir with a metal kitchen spoon until everything is combined. It will be sticky. Scrape any dough off the spoon and return it to the bowl.
Using your hand, get into the bowl and continue mixing the dough. Squeeze it, press it, and do what it takes to incorporate all of the dry ingredients into the dough ball.
When all of the dry ingredients are incorporated and the dough ball is coarse or shaggy, form it into a ball in the bottom of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave the bowl someplace comfortable. (I have a mantel in my living room that is the most temperate room in the house. That’s where I put my no-knead dough.)
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ABOVE: A half batch of this dough, (left) after a minute or so of mixing it with my hand. That's pretty ugly. Hard to believe it became anything. On the right is what the dough looks like after 18 hours of alone time, rising in a room all by itself.
After 18 hours…
Overnight, the dough will have risen in the bowl, filling it part way.
Take the bowl to your work surface in the kitchen. Dust the surface lightly with flour. Using a plastic dough scraper or a metal kitchen spoon, scrape the dough gently out of the bowl, persuading the dough to drop onto the floured surface. (Pizza dough is your friend. Sometimes, it helps to be gentle.)
Divide the dough into four equal parts. (You may weigh the dough, or you can eyeball it. Weighing is more accurate.)
If you’re making 8-inch pizzas because you have a smaller skillet, divide the dough into eight equal parts. (You can freeze the extra.)
Form each piece of dough into a dough ball. You can accomplish this by folding it over itself in one direction, and then the other. Then, gather all the open edges together at the bottom of the ball and close them. Squeeze and pinch then together and even turn them until the ball is relative smooth and uniform.
Put the dough ball down on the worksurface, and rotate it with your hands, cupping the ball and smoothing it as you spin it.
Try as much as possible to close up the openings on the bottom of the dough ball.
Put each of the dough balls into their own zippered plastic bag and brush the dough with olive oil. (I have a lazy man’s approach to this. I drizzle a little olive oil inside the bag. I press the bag to distribute the oil around the inside. Then, I put the dough ball inside, close the bag, and rotate the bag by grabbing it at each of the corners in succession, turning it and letting the ball roll around in between the oil-coated sides of the bag.)
Put the bagged balls into the fridge. For optimum flavor development, allow them to stay there for 48 hours before using.
After 18 hours…
Overnight, the dough will have risen in the bowl, filling it part way.
Take the bowl to your work surface in the kitchen. Dust the surface lightly with flour. Using a plastic dough scraper or a metal kitchen spoon, scrape the dough gently out of the bowl, persuading the dough to drop onto the floured surface. (Pizza dough is your friend. Sometimes, it helps to be gentle.)
Divide the dough into four equal parts. (You may weigh the dough, or you can eyeball it. Weighing is more accurate.)
If you’re making 8-inch pizzas because you have a smaller skillet, divide the dough into eight equal parts. (You can freeze the extra.)
Form each piece of dough into a dough ball. You can accomplish this by folding it over itself in one direction, and then the other. Then, gather all the open edges together at the bottom of the ball and close them. Squeeze and pinch then together and even turn them until the ball is relative smooth and uniform.
Put the dough ball down on the worksurface, and rotate it with your hands, cupping the ball and smoothing it as you spin it.
Try as much as possible to close up the openings on the bottom of the dough ball.
Put each of the dough balls into their own zippered plastic bag and brush the dough with olive oil. (I have a lazy man’s approach to this. I drizzle a little olive oil inside the bag. I press the bag to distribute the oil around the inside. Then, I put the dough ball inside, close the bag, and rotate the bag by grabbing it at each of the corners in succession, turning it and letting the ball roll around in between the oil-coated sides of the bag.)
Put the bagged balls into the fridge. For optimum flavor development, allow them to stay there for 48 hours before using.
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Other books require a lot of decision making. They're cookbooks full of so many recipes they lead to decision paralysis. Not this one. Instead of having to choose between various styles of pizza, and making choices about flour, and deciding which sauce to use, and wondering what's going to come out the other end, Free The Pizza frees you from making choices and wondering what's going to happen. This book is designed for the beginner's success. It's the kind of book I wish I'd found a long, long time ago. You can find it at Amazon in hardback, paperback and Kindle by clicking here: Free The Pizza: A Simple System For making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. Free the pizza, my friend... |
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