Bread Machine Pizza Dough Recipe - Mom On Timeout (2024)

FAQs

Why is bread machine flour the best for making pizza crust? ›

Bread Flour

It's easy to find in any grocery store (again, King Arthur Flour is a favorite brand), is affordable, and adds some extra oomph and crispiness to thin crust and New York-style pizzas. It will make your crust crispy on the outside and chewy and textured on the inside.

Yes, you can, pizza crust is bread after all. You'll notice a difference in its texture though. The bread dough will produce a crust with a tighter crumb that be as light and airy as the one made by your local pizza parlor. It'll be like, well, bread.

Tips For Making Pizza Dough

Plan on at least 1 1/2 hours of rise time before shaping, topping, and baking. Get your oven as hot as it will go — at least 500°F. Keep the toppings basic.

In the first Homemade cycle, select the “Knead” course for 15 minutes and “Rise 1” for 45 minutes to 60 minutes, for the first rise. At the completion of this cycle (and once the dough has doubled in size) remove it from the machine and shape the dough by hand.

Because of the extreme fineness of the Italian 00 flour, it doesn't require as much water to begin kneading. And because of the decent amount of protein it doesn't take long to create the gluten structure required for that characteristic Italian crust.

Higher protein content means higher gluten content, as we now know, so using bread flour in your pizza dough will result in a stretchy dough that's less likely to tear. You get a very chewier, more bread-like pizza crust when you make your dough with bread flour.

Don't let it rise for too long, though.

“A few days' rise is fine and will enhance the taste of the crust, but any more than three days and the yeast will start to eat up all the sugar in the dough and convert it into alcohol, which will adversely affect crust flavor,” Schwartz said.

The best flour for making Deep-Dish Pizza Dough is all-purpose flour. In bakeries and pizzerias, Pizza Flour is often used because it is a high-protein flour that produces a light and airy crust. However, all-purpose flour will also work well for Deep-Dish Pizza Dough.

Most “00” flour that we see in the United States is ground from durum wheat and has a mid-range protein content of about 11 to 12%, similar to all-purpose white flour.

Too little yeast and your dough won't rise enough, and the pizza base will taste bland. Use too much yeast and your dough may over-ferment. Tell-tale signs are your dough expanding too much or tasting and smelling a bit sour, with an almost alcoholic aftertaste (the yeast produces alcohol as it ferments).

Can you refrigerate pizza dough after it rises? ›

At which point during the dough making process would it be best to freeze or refrigerate? You can refrigerate the dough after almost any step, but after the first rise (or a little before) works best. Store it, covered, in the refrigerator for 1-3* days. Allow room for the dough to expand as it will continue to rise.

Yes! If a recipe calls for proofing bread dough overnight in the refrigerator, it can be proofed on the counter at a warmer temperature for a shorter period. Rather than placing the dough in the refrigerator overnight, leave it covered on the counter for 1 to 4 hours until it's ready to bake.

Turn the mixer to speed 2 and knead for 8 minutes. The dough should be smooth and spongy.

Speaking of adjusting, one common bread machine mistake is thinking the appliance is like a pressure cooker or blender and cannot be opened once it's on. Think again—it's actually a good idea to flip that lid and peek at the dough, especially about 10 minutes into the kneading stage.

Old or stale yeast. Expired yeast or moisture contaminated yeast will have trouble growing properly and this can lead to dense bread machine bread. Always relatively new yeast & store it in an airtight container.

Plain (all purpose) flour and bread (strong) flour are both used for pizza dough. Bread flour has more protein, makes more gluten, produces a chewier crust and absorbs a little more water than plain flour. I usually use bread flour for yeast breads, but all purpose flour works just fine for pizza dough.

Caputo "00" Bread Flour.

Use Tipo 0 or Tipo 00 flour. Tipo is a grading of flour on the Italian flour scale. And these flours have just the right amount of protein content - around 12.5% for pizza baking.