If you’re craving pizza tonight, this 2-hour pizza dough recipe is exactly what you need. My basic California-style pizza dough recipe takes at least 5 hours to be ready, and ideally up to three days. But sometimes you don’t have that sort of time.
Best of all, even though this recipe takes a couple hours, it requires less than 20 minutes of active attention. The rest of the time, you can be doing other things or prepping toppings. (And if you don’t already know what you want to put on your pizza, check out my other posts for tons of ideas for unique and delicious pizzas.)
Note: the metric measurements are more precise, and I recommend using them if you have a scale.
Even if you use the metric measurements, you’ll need to slightly adjust the quantities of water and flour. Different types (and even brands) of flour react slightly differently, and the temperature and humidity of the air can affect things too. Even your kneading style can have an impact! So don’t be alarmed if the proportions don’t seem immediately right. Just do as the recipe says and add a bit of flour or water to adjust after 20 minutes of kneading.
This is part 2 in my Complete Guide to Making Pizza. Check out the link to learn about the next steps!
Ingredients
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 2 teaspoons yeast
- 2 ½ teaspoons sugar (divided)
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (divided)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil + more
Instructions
Preparing the dough:
- In a small bowl, combine the water, yeast, and 1/2 teaspoon (2 grams) sugar. Whisk, then set aside for 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, combine 2 cups (280 grams) flour, the salt, and the remaining sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir briefly to combine, then add the olive oil.
- When the yeast water is ready, add it to the bowl. Mix, using the dough hook, for about 5 minutes on your mixer’s lowest setting. Every minute or so, pause the mixer to stir in the dry ingredients around the edges.
- Once all of the dry ingredients are incorporated into the dough, add the remaining 1/2 cup (100 grams) of flour. Mix for another 20 minutes on the lowest speed. Ideally, pause the mixer every 5 minutes or so to scrape the dough ball off the hook.
- The dough should be slightly sticky to the touch and sticking a bit to the bottom of the bowl, but dry enough that it’s not sticking to the walls of the bowl. If the dough feels too tacky or too dry after 20 minutes of mixing, add flour or water just a little bit at a time and incorporate fully.
Resting and rising:
- Remove the dough to a clean bowl, cover, and place somewhere warm for 35 to 40 minutes to rise.
- After 35 to 40 minutes, remove the risen dough from the bowl and place it onto a clean, flat surface such as a cutting board or marble slab. Knead for about a minute to remove any large air bubbles.
- Divide the dough into 4 equal parts. Roll each part into a tight ball, ideally keeping an unbroken “skin” on the outside of the ball (pinch the bottom of the ball together to hold the skin shut).
- Lightly coat a flat surface with olive oil. If you don’t have dough trays, a cutting board or baking sheet works great! Coat each ball with olive oil, then set onto the oiled surface, pinched-skin-side down. Make sure the dough balls are several inches apart, as they’ll grow again.
- Place the dough balls somewhere warm (like on top of your fridge) for 45 minutes, or until about doubled in size.
Next steps:
- Your dough is now ready to use! Stretch one of the dough balls (check out this tutorial on how to stretch pizza dough if you’re not sure how), top it with your ingredients of choice, and bake until it’s delicious, gooey, and irresistible.
Need some inspiration for toppings?
Take a look at my many recipes here on Three Big Bites for gourmet topping combinations.
Want to remember this? Post this 2-hour pizza dough recipe to your favorite Pinterest board!
Kaitlin
"Place the dough balls somewhere warm (like on top of your fridge) for 45 minutes, or until about doubled in size."
And then?!?!
Gretchen Holm
Thanks for the question, Kaitlin! I’ve updated the post to clarify that at this point, the dough is done and ready to use. 🙂
Steph
Hi I’m trying to convert this to metric. I don’t understand how 2 cups of flour is 280g but half a cup is 100g – surely the total would be 500g and not 380g? Now I’m lost on how much water to add in ML and I’ve used all my flour 😫
Gretchen
Hi Steph, I’m sorry—I should have been clearer in the recipe and will update it for future readers tomorrow (it’s already midnight here tonight, but I wanted to respond to your comment ASAP). I calculated the metric and imperial recipes separately rather than simply converting from one to the other, since grams of flour per cup is so variable. So 380g flour and approx. 236ml water should be correct and will give you a 62% hydration dough – but as mentioned, you may need to adjust slightly since each type of flour behaves differently. Hope you see this in time!