How to Make the Perfect Pizza Dough: Easy Recipes, including by Jamie Oliver

Instant Yogurt Dough

You will have a soft and thin pizza base.

Ingredients

1 cup self-rising flour (or 1 cup regular flour mixed with 1½ teaspoon baking powder) + ¼ cup flour for dusting
1 glass of Greek yogurt
salt, ground pepper - optional.

Preparation

Pour flour into a bowl and add yogurt. You can add a little salt and pepper if you like. Knead the dough with your hands, a spoon, or a wooden spatula. Transfer it to a clean, flour-lined work surface.

Sprinkle the dough with flour on top and roll into a medium-sized tortilla about 3-5 mm thick. On this base, you can immediately lay out the ingredients and send to the oven.

This is perhaps the simplest and fastest pizza dough. True, due to the fact that it does not mix for very long, the base does not look quite neat. If you want to fix this and make the dough more elastic, knead it on the work surface with flour for 5-8 minutes.

Life hack

To make your life easier, roll this and any other dough on baking paper. This way you can easily transfer it to the oven.

Quick yeast-free dough on kefir

You will have a soft, delicate base with a crispy crust.

Ingredients

1 ½ cups flour;
1 glass of kefir;
2 eggs;
40 g olive oil;
¼ teaspoon of salt;
¼ teaspoon of baking soda;
vinegar - for extinguishing soda;
vegetable oil - for lubrication.

Preparation

Whisk eggs and salt in a bowl. Pour kefir into another bowl, add soda slaked with vinegar there, then add beaten eggs and mix well. Add flour to the mixture and mix with your hands or with a spoon (you can also use a blender).

It is better to add flour in parts so as not to overdo it. As a result, the dough should resemble thick sour cream. If the amount of flour suggested in the recipe is not enough, you can add a little more.

Pour olive oil into the dough, mix again. Then pour it onto a baking sheet, greased with vegetable oil, and send it to the oven, preheated to 200 degrees.

Bake the dough for 10-15 minutes, until browned. If you have a small form, the dough will be thicker and take longer to bake: about 20-25 minutes.

The filling should be spread over the already browned dough and baked until tender.

Life hack

In this recipe, kefir can be replaced with low-fat sour cream. The proportions remain the same.

Yeast dough with milk

A pizza base can be made thin or fluffy, soft or crispy.

Ingredients

1 glass of milk;
2 cups of flour;
3 tablespoons olive oil
7 g dry yeast;
½ teaspoon sugar;
⅓ teaspoon of salt.

Preparation

Heat the milk until it is slightly warm. Add sugar, yeast to it, stir and let stand for about 10 minutes. When bubbles appear on the milk (a sign of fermentation), add sifted flour, salt and 2 tablespoons of olive oil to it.

Knead the dough, roll it into a ball, brush with the remaining olive oil, cover with a towel and put in a warm place to rise.

The dough should approximately double in size. This process can take 30-40 minutes.

Crumple the dough, divide in two and roll out. The finished dough is enough for two pizzas.

Life hacks

If you want the pizza to be fluffier, let the rolled dough rest for 5-10 minutes. Cover it with cling film to keep it cool.
To make the dough thin and crispy, roll it out harder and bake at an elevated temperature (230-250 degrees).
Another secret of a crispy base is to put the rolled dough on a baking sheet greased with olive oil, bake in the oven for 5 minutes at a temperature of 220 degrees and then add the filling.
Use the paper trick above or a rolling pin to easily transfer the rolled dough to the baking sheet. Wrap it in half of the dough and transfer it while holding the handles.

Traditional pizza dough: Jamie Oliver's recipe

You will have a soft and fluffy dough like in Italy.

Ingredients

1 kg of premium flour (or 800 g flour + 200 g semolina);
1 teaspoon sea salt
14 g dry yeast;
650 ml of warm water;
1 tablespoon sugar
4 tablespoons of olive oil.

Preparation

In a bowl, combine yeast, sugar, butter and water and let sit for a few minutes. At this time, sift the flour, mix it with salt and heap it on a clean work surface. Make a depression in the slide and pour the liquid yeast mixture into it. Use a fork to stir in the flour, starting at the edges of the slide. Knead the dough with your hands until it is smooth and firm.

Roll the dough into a ball and place in a bowl lined with flour. Sprinkle flour on top of the dough too. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and leave in a warm place for about an hour: the dough should double in size.

After an hour, take out the dough, remove excess flour and knead for a few more minutes with your hands.

This amount of dough is enough for 6-8 pizzas. You can use it all at once, dividing it into equal parts, or wrap the excess dough in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer.

Roll out the dough or stretch it with your hands. The approximate thickness of the base is 5 mm. Let the dough rest for 5-10 minutes (you can cover it with plastic), add the sauce and filling and bake.

Life hacks

For the traditional recipe, type 00 Italian flour is best, but other finely ground white flours will work as well.
In the variant when a mixture of flour and semolina is used for cooking, the dough is more crunchy. You can also use this mixture to sprinkle on the baking sheet to make the bottom of the pizza even more crispy.
You can add more yeast (about ¾ teaspoon more) to help the dough come up faster.
To make the base even more aromatic and tasty, you can stir in oregano, dried basil, or other dry seasonings of your choice into the dough.