My easy homemade pizza dough recipe

My simple 6 ingredient pizza dough recipe. Yeast, water, flour, salt, sugar and garlic is all you need.

Mike Reed  –  published Oct. 12, 2019

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Close up photo of my homemade pizza.

After years of experimentation with my yeast pizza dough I've come to this conclusion: simplicity works. I've experimented with all sorts ingredients: lard, butter, sugar, Italian pastry flour, olive oil, etc, etc.

Some worked better than other but none worked as well as these six simple ingredients.

The recipe

Time: 2 1/2 hours
Level of difficulty: easy

- 3 cups flour
- 1 1/4 cups warm water
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar

The secret is the process

That's the frustrating part of yeast breads...it doesn't matter how good your ingredients are. It's about the process you use to put them together.

Starting the dough

Pour your yeast in the warm water with the sugar. Then give it a stir. The sugar will really kickstart your yeast as a levenging agent. Next, pour the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Sift it together with a fork.

Once the yeast is frothing (usually about 5 min), pour the water / yeast mixture in the mixing bowl. Then throw the garlic in. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, please use this. Otherwise you're going to have to mix and kneed the dough by hand. Mix the dough until it's smooth with no clumps.

Pizza dough in the mixing bowl vs it fully mixed.

Let it rise, then fry it

Once the dough is ready put it back in the mixing bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and put the bowl in hot water for a few minutes. The water will heat the bowl and kick-start rise process.

When the dough has doubled (roughly 1 hour) cut the dough into 3 balls. User your hands and a rolling pin the spread out one of the balls into a thin pizza-shaped crust. It doesn't have to be perfectly round; it almost never is.

Heat your largest frying pan on medium and spray it with Canola oil. When the pan is hot fry your crust for 5 minutes or so. Don't flip it. Only fry one side. After it's fairly stiff on the side, take the crust out and let it cool.

After it's cooled then presto...you're ready to make your pizza!

A tasty, crispy pizza crust

Frying means the crust will be nice and crispy when it's finished baking...just like from a real pizza oven!

Add toppings, cheese, sauce, etc to the side that hasn't been fried (very important). Preheat your oven to the highest temp and flip a cookie sheet upside down. This makes a great adhoc pizza stone

Closeup of pepperoni pizza before it's put in the oven.

When the cookie sheet is hot, place your pizza on top of it in the oven. It helps if you have a pizza peel but it's not a absolute necessity. The baking should take 10 - 20 minutes, depending on how thick your crust is. Once the cheese started to boil on the top, take it out and let it cool

Overhead of pepperoni pizza after it's taken out of the oven, fully cooked.

And there we go. Pizzaria quality pizza crust, with simple ingredients.