The nice thing about homemade pizza dough is that it freezes really well! Pressed into a 3-4" disc in a ziploc bag, a pizza's worth of dough can be thawed out in about an hour on a countertop or overnight in a refrigerator.
We will address the baking of pizzas in a separate post :)
Best Pizza Dough
Wet Ingredients:
1 and 1/3 cups warm water (90-100 degrees F)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Dry ingredients:
4 cups bread flour
1 and 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast (i.e. 1 packet)
Hardware:
either a Bread Machine capable of handling 2 lbs of dough OR a Stand Mixer with a bread hook attachment.
Procedure:
Combine wet ingredients and dry ingredients in the pan of your bread machine (make sure the stirring paddle is in place.) Set to the 'dough' setting and for '2 pounds' if your model allows for varying recipe sizes. while the machine is mixing the dough, scrape down the sides of the pan occasionally. You may need to drizzle in a small amount (1 to 2 teaspoons) of additional water onto the dry flour if it is having trouble merging with the ball of dough.
Once the dough is mixed, either leave it to rise for 90 minutes in the machine, or if using a mixer, remove to a large bowl and cover at room temperature for 90 minutes.
After the first rise, punch the dough down (i.e. fold it in on itself several times, squeezing out the large bubbles of CO2 that have formed.) Form the dough into a tight ball, place in the large bowl used for the initial rise, toss in a drizzle of olive oil, cover, and place in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours. This stage is called the 'cold rise' and gives the dough its tangy, yeasty, chewy texture and flavor.
After the dough has cold risen you can either use immediately to make pizzas, leave in the fridge for another 2-3 days, or freeze. The recipe makes enough for 4 small (~10-12 inch) pizzas
For best results with freezing, separate the dough into portions, place in small ziploc bags, and press the dough into a flattened disc shape. This will make for MUCH faster thawing than a tight ball.
Pro Tips:
Use bottled or purified water if your tap water has a LOT of chlorine in it, as the chlorine will kill the yeast before they have a chance to chow down on the sugar.
You can substitute up to 1/2 the total flour with whole wheat flour, if that's your thing. I find it messes up the chewy, yeasty texture that I like, though.
I have had terrible luck over the years with the 'jars' of instant yeast - no matter how I store them, they seem to become ineffective very quickly after being opened. I have turned to buying the individual use packets as I have had very high rates of success with those, even though they are technically more expensive per usage.
