You can get pizza dough from a store -- or from a pizzeria. (Mario's Pizza sells dough for $3 to $5 depending on the size of the pizza.)
But it's not that hard to make your own. And it is definitely worth it if you make a big batch that can refrigerated or frozen for later use.
Pizza dough is essentially bread dough with a little olive oil, which helps make the dough soft and supple.
Pizza dough is also relatively wet and sticky. Wet dough is soft and elastic and easier to stretch into a thin round.
If the dough is too hard or dry with too much flour, it will rise too slowly and will be harder to stretch.
It also can be too soft, with too much liquid. Then it will rise too fast and be prone to tearing when shaped into a pizza crust.
So you want it wet -- but not too wet. It helps to have a good recipe with the right proportions. But experience is the best teacher. If mixing and kneading the dough in a mixer, a dough with the right consistency will pull away from the sides of the bowl and stick to the bottom.
If the dough sticks to the sides, it is too wet. A little flour should be added. If the dough pulls away from the bottom, it is too dry and needs a bit more water.
A stand mixer is good for kneading dough. It does the work for you and eliminates the temptation to unnecessarily add more flour, which often occurs when mixing by hand.
The editors of Cook's Illustrated recommend kneading the dough in a food processor. It's not conventional, but they say it does a great job in only about 30 seconds. A stand mixer will take about 5 minutes, and hand kneading will take 8 to 10 minutes.
If you knead it by hand, use as little flour as possible to get the dough soft and wet.
Properly kneaded dough will be smooth and satiny, and it will feel moist and sticky, not dry and floury. To test, pinch it and pull gently. You should be able to pull it slowly to about four times its size without tearing it. And it should be elastic enough that it slowly moves back into place.
Pizza can also be made with a no-knead dough. Be sure to have a recipe made specifically for this method, as it is typically formulated differently. A no-knead recipe will often have more liquid and less yeast.
Once mixed and kneaded, pizza doughs may get one or two rises. Pizzerias such as Mario's Pizza do just one rise for thin-crust pizza. If you have a recipe that calls for two rises, it's probably designed to make a thicker crust.
Mario's also does a long, slow rise in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
"The dough I make today is for tomorrow," said Mario Alessio, a co-owner of Mario's. "The slow rise gives it more flavor. It's also easier to stretch.
"Fresh dough tends to get a lot of bubbles in it. If you leave it the refrigerator overnight, it won't have bubbles so much."
Doughs with long rises typically call for less yeast, so if you want to have your dough rise in the fridge, be sure to use a recipe designed for that.
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