Basic Pizza Dough

• servings: 4 servings
• active time: 15 minutes
• total time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

2 tsp. active dry yeast

1 tsp. honey

1 cup warm water

2 1/4 cups bread flour + 2-3 Tbs as needed when kneading

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbs. olive oil

Directions

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, stir together the yeast, sugar and warm water. Let stand for 5 minutes.

Add the flour and salt and start the mixer on low speed. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Knead on low speed until well mixed and then increase to low-medium (about 3 on the Kitchenaid stand mixer). After a few minutes, the dough should come together into a large ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl - add more flour, a tablespoon at a time, if the dough still looks wet and does not form a ball. Knead for 5-10 minutes; it should be moist but not sticky.

Stop the mixer, remove the dough hook and cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel. Let stand at room temperature until the dough is doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface. Divide the dough into 2 (recommended) or 4 equal pieces and roll lightly or tuck each into a rounded shape. Set on a flour-dusted surface and cover. Let stand at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes. Alternatively, if you will not be using the dough immediately, refrigerate the dough balls (without letting them stand at room temperature) for up to 6 hours; then remove the dough from the refrigerator and let stand at room temperature for 30 to 45 minutes before using.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and add pizza stone(s) to heat with the oven for about 30 minutes while the dough rests.

To make pizzas, place a ball of dough on a floured work surface or parchment paper (this works best). Shape the dough by rolling or by hand into a 10- to 12-inch round about 1/8 inch thick (for 4 pizzas) or to size as needed for desired thickness (for 2 pizzas), dusting with flour as needed. If using parchment paper, transfer pizza and parchment paper together to oven onto pizza stone. If not using parchment paper, you can also use cornmeal sprinkled on the worksurface and a pizza peel or very large flat spatula to slide the pizza from the worksurface onto the heated pizza stone. Be sure to sprinkle additional cornmeal onto the stone before adding the pizza to prevent sticking.

Top and desired bake for 10-12 minutes or more as needed until the crust starts to brown and the cheese is bubbly.

Notes

Cheri’s Notes

Oct 2025: Needed more flour again before this would form a ball - updated ingredients. Made as just two pizzas (about medium sized) and they were perfect. Also used parchment paper to roll out the dough, then moved the topped pizza and parchment paper directly onto the pizza stone/pan in the oven - this worked very well and made it much easier to move around. Turned the oven down to 450 once pizza was in the oven because 500 seemed too hot. Because of that and the crust was a little thicker, took almost 20 minutes for the pizzas to be ready.

Aug 2025: These turned out very tasty! I needed to add 2-3 Tbs additional flour and knead on medium with the stand mixer for closer to 10 minutes to get the dough to come together - instructions adjusted. Dividing this into fourths makes for smallish personal pizzas with a pretty thin crust. Consider dividing into halves instead for a larger size / thicker crust. We struggled some getting these moved from the counter to the pizza stone in the oven because they were thin and the dough was pretty soft - definitely need to use cornmeal to help with the sliding, but can't leave them sit too long because the cornmeal started to absorb and then didn't slide. Parchment paper would also work well - roll pizzas out on the paper, add toppings, transfer entire pizza and paper to stone - still cornmeal to help with sticking!

Overall, very good, and very easy!