Ingredients

The following ingredients have 4 Servings
  • 4 1/2 cups 574 grams bread flour or all-purpose flour, chilled
  • 1 3/4 12.5 grams teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon instant yeast
  • 1/4 cup 62.5 milliliters olive oil
  • 1 3/4 414 milliliters cups ice cold water (4C/40F)
  • whole wheat flour to coat hands and dust baking tray (or semolina flour/cornmeal)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

Instruction

  • Mix flour, salt and yeast into a large bowl. Slowly add olive oil and water into the bowl, 1/3 or 1/4 at a time, use a wooden spatula to stir clockwise, until flour and the liquid are roughly mixed, then repeat till all liquid was added. Add whole wheat flour into a small bowl and set aside. Coat both hands with whole wheat flour, use one hand to further kneel the dough and the other hand to slowly rotate the bowl, till all liquid is absorbed by flour and the dough is formed, in around 10 minutes.
  • Dust a big cutting board with whole wheat flour and coat hands again. Pick the dough from the bowl and place on cutting board. Scratch off the dough that sticky to the bowl by a rubber spatula. Use both hands to kneel the dough until the the surface becomes smooth and the dough is elastic, in around 8-10 minutes. You should be able to pick up the dough by hands, but feeling it a bit sticky to the board when pick up. If the dough is still too sticky, add more flour, 1 teaspoon at a time, and kneel till flour is well mixed with the dough. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or with a wet clear kitchen towel.
  • Add olive oil into a small bowl and set aside. Grease baking dish (or plate) with olive oil and set aside. Dust both hands with whole wheat flour again. Equally divide the dough into 6-8 pieces(*see footnote 1) by knife. Gently kneel each dough by both hands and dust the dough with a thin layer of whole wheat flour, place in the glass dish. After all dough balls are done, drip several drops of olive oil on each dough ball and gently grease the ball with hand. Cover the glass dish with plastic wrap and place in fridge for overnight.(*see footnote 2)
  • (Option) After storing the dough in fridge overnight, the dough will turn slightly bigger, as the image shows below. If you want to save the dough for later use. After storage in fridge overnight, take the dough out, mist it with a thin layer of olive oil again, and place into ziplock bag. Store in the freezer up to 3 months(*see footnote 3).
  • The day when you want to make pizza, take pizza dough out of fridge for at least 2 hours before baking. If take from freezer, take out the dough out earlier, or transfer the dough in to fridge at least a day earlier(*see footnote 3). Dust a cutting board and both hands with whole wheat flour. Gently take the dough out and dust it with whole wheat flour, place it on the cutting board. Gently press the dough into a flat round disk, about 1.5 centimeters (1 inch) thick. Cover it with a plastic wrap or a plate, to keep the dough from dry out. Let the dough rest in room temperature.
  • Preheat pizza stone on lower level of oven to the highest temperature 40 minutes before baking pizza (*see footnote 4), mine is 220 degrees C (430F). If you don't using pizza stone, assemble pizza on baking tray directly (*see footnote 5). Right before assembling pizza, dust both hands again (dust whole hands, including back sides) and dust a pizza peel (or oven tray) with flour (*see footnote 6). Pick out the pizza dough and slowly toss and rotate it with both hands to enlarge the dough. You can also use both hands to pick up one side of dough to let the gravity stretch it, then rotate, and stretch other sides. when the dough is getting thinner and become difficult to toss, place it on pizza peel (or baking tray). Stretch it gently to thinner till the thickness you like.
  • Assemble pizza with sauce and toppings you like. Do not put too much toppings on the dough to shape like a small mountain, it will prevent the dough to rise during baking. Always top with a thin layer of sauce, and place 3 to 4 topping sparsely. Slide pizza into oven from pizza peel onto pizza stone and bake until crust turns golden, cheese is melt and start turning golden brown, in about 15 minutes under 220 degress C (430F) or less to 5 minutes by using higher temperature.
  • Use pizza peel to remove pizza from the oven and let it chill down a bit before slice.