Easy Overnight Pizza Dough
Servings: 4 x 12 inch Pizzas
This simple recipe is great for thin crust pizzas and flat breads. Begin the night before and have pizza dough ready for dinner the next day. It is a fairly wet dough so it make take some practice handling it if you are not used to working with high hydration doughs.
1000 g Flour (Anita’s 00 Pizza Flour or All Purpose Flour)
700 g warm water (~30C)
20 g fine sea salt
1/4 tsp instant yeast
In the bowl of a stand mixer combine all ingredients. Mix on low speed (Kitchenaid 2) until all of the ingredients are incorporated and then switch to medium speed (KA 4) for 3-5 minutes or until the dough is just starting to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to rise overnight (10-12 hours).
In the morning, divide the dough (200g for small/kids sized personal pizzas, 350-400g for 12” pizzas) and preshape into balls being careful not to degas the dough too much. Coat the balls in flour and place in a flour lined covered container in the fridge. Let the balls rest in the fridge for at least 6 hours.
Preheat the oven with the pizza stone or pizza steel on the second highest rack to its highest temperature (usually 500˚F or 550˚F).
To shape the pizza place your ball of dough on a well-floured counter. Using the tips of your fingers press down the centre of the dough into a disc leaving the outer rim un-deflated. Pick up the dough by one side and rotate the dough allowing gravity to stretch the dough as you rotate it. Next place the dough on top of your fists and gently work around the dough rotating it and stretching it into shape.
Place the shaped dough onto a sheet of parchment (use quality parchment). Working quickly, add sauce and toppings to the pizza, and using a flat sheet pan or pizza peel immediately slide the pizza (still on the parchment) onto the preheated pizza stone or steel. Depending on how hot your oven is and how heavily topped your pizza is the pizza should take 5-8 minutes to bake. You may need to switch the oven to broil for the last 2-3 minutes to properly finish the top of the pizza.y are lightly golden around the edges. Remove trays from the oven and allow to cool down for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool fully.
Cook it hot. Turn your oven up to its highest setting (usually 500˚F or 550˚F).
Bake on a pizza stone or pizza steel.
Thoroughly preheat your oven. Preheat oven and pizza stone or steel for at least 45 minutes.
Get the pizza in the oven as soon as possible after adding the sauce and toppings to prevent the bottom from getting soggy. Have all the ingredients ready so you can top quickly.
Hand stretch the dough instead of rolling it with a rolling pin.