Pizza Dough With All-purpose Flour

Everyone knows the saying: Sharing is Caring! Well, pizza is the perfect dish to share or to create in cooperation with others. Either you all have the same taste and just bake one big plate of pizza that you can share, or if you have guests with very different tastes everyone creates his own little pizza.

Another plus is that you can easily prepare and store the toppings for the pizza. If you have any leftovers, just store the dough in the fridge or use the toppings for something different like a gratin. How could things be any easier?

This time, we made pizza dough with all-purpose flour. If you would like to have an alternative, why don’t you take a look at our pizza dough with hard wheat semolina recipe?

Things to know before you start

Time Schedule

After about 21,5 to 29,5 hours you will be able to enjoy your pizza.

Info: The work and waiting times for the shape, topping and bake steps are per pizza as it is best to make one pizza at a time. While one is baking in the oven, you can prepare the next one.

Total ingredients

You will have dough of about 1.760,3 g in total suitable for 6 pizzas.

The good thing about pizza is, that you can choose whatever toppings you want. We went for a self made pizza sauce, mix of Emmental (Swiss) and mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, paprika, bacon and fresh basil on top after baking.

Difficulty

Nice and simple recipe for an easy to shape pizza dough.

Baking tools

Actually you don’t need any special baking tools besides a baking sheet and a bowl, but to achieve a really good result a baking stone is highly recommended and a stand mixer can take care of mixing the dough if you don’t want to do it by yourself.

For more baking tools you can check out our baking tools page.

Steps

1. Poolish

• Mix all ingredients thoroughly together
• Store sealed for 12 to 20 hours at 20°C (68°F)

2. Mix

• Mix all of the mentioned ingredients except for the olive oil together in a stand mixer for 5 minutes on speed one and 10 minutes on speed two
• Add the olive oil after 5 minutes of mixing over the course of 5 minutes
• The dough should be elastic and smooth
• Info: It is also perfectly fine to mix all ingredients by hand for about 20 to 25 minutes

3. Bulk Fermentation

• Put the dough in a sealed container and place it in the fridge at 4-6°C (39,2-42,8°F) for 8 hours

4. Shape

• Take the dough out of the fridge
• Seperate about 300 g of it and place it on a floured surface
• Place the rest of the dough back into the fridge
• Here is a short guide on how to get the dough into the right shape before baking it:

1. Flour the surface a bit
2. Shape one dough piece into a small ball
3. With your hands, gently stretch the dough out to a thin circular shape
4. Place the shaped dough on a pizza plate covered with parchment paper

• Tip: If the dough starts sticking to the surface or your hands, add a little flour on top of the dough, flip it to the other side, add a little flour on top and start stretching it out further

5. Proof

• Cover the dough with a towel
• Let it proof for 30 minutes

6. Topping

• First, add a bit of pizza sauce
• Go on with some Emmental and mozzarella cheese
• Then a handful of toppings like paprika and mushrooms
• And again a bit of Emmental and mozzarella cheese

7. Bake

• Preheat oven to 300°C (572°F) for ~45 minutes with the upper and lower heat function
• Put the pizza in the oven and bake for 5-6 minutes
• Info: The higher the heat in your oven, the better. Professional pizza ovens can reach temperatures of about 400°C (572°F). At this temperature a pizza just needs 3-4 minutes until it is ready. Most kitchen ovens can only reach about 250°C (482°F). At this temperature the pizza will need about 10-15 minutes.

8. Cool

• After baking take the pizza out immediately and place it on a plate
• As the pizza baked on a very high heat, let it cool for about 5 minutes before you take your first bite

Conclusion

Taste

The taste of this pizza was just what we were looking for. Let’s focus on the dough first.

It was nicely crunchy at the outer edges and firm at the bottom but also fluffy in the middle and on top so you´re not feeling like you are eating a cracker that’s just crunchy. This means you have a pizza that doesn’t fall apart and keeps all of the toppings. Just like a good pizza should be.

When it comes to the toppings, this is a very individual decision of course but 2 things have to be on your pizza: tomato sauce and cheese. And maybe some extra cheese because there cannot be enough cheese on a pizza!

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