Making pizza dough at home only requires a few simple ingredients, a great pizza dough recipe, and little knowledge, and a few tools and techniques. There is nothing better than making pizza dough that is homemade and you will certainly taste the difference when compared to store bought products or to your local pizza shop.
The pizza crust is usually the area that gives most people frustration when making homemade pizza, but it is the central element to creating a great pizza. Making pizza dough is often thought of as a mysterious and confusing process, but it does not have to be that way.
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Many Variables
Flour, water, salt, and yeast...
These four simple ingredients are all that is required for making pizza dough, and while we naturally would assume that this is an easy process and we can't go wrong, sometimes it is the simple things that prove most difficult.
There are a couple of other variable that can affect your pizza dough, altitude, temperature and humidity can change the absorption or bake times considerable. These elements do not usually change dramatically from one day to the next, so they only need consideration during change of seasons or when you travel to another location.
So, our ingredients can greatly affect the outcome when making pizza dough. Commercial flour is actually a blend of several types of flour. The flour is blended to try and create a consistent final product, because the characteristics of wheat vary significantly from field to field.
The final product, your finished pizza dough, will be greatly affected by the flour you use. The most common types of flour used are: All Purpose, Bread, and High Gluten. The home chef is most familiar with All Purpose flour, but most pizzerias use some type of High Gluten flour. Good quality high gluten flour will more closely mimic the pizza crust that is similar to your neighborhood pizza shop.
Use fresh yeast. If you have some yeast stuck in the back of your refrigerator that has been there since your teenager was just a baby, throw it out and purchase fresh yeast. Yeast is an active, living microorganism and will need to be alive to produce the gases for making pizza dough. The process of activating yeast will tell you whether you have dead yeast, there is also an expiration date stamped on the package.
Whether you know it or not the water coming out of your tap changes all of the time. In addition, in some parts of the country the water is softer than other areas where the water is harder. This difference in water will have an impact on your baking.
Putting it all together
So, even though there are only a few ingredients used in making pizza dough, there are many variables affecting the successful outcome of each dough. While some of them are in your control many are not, and the best approach is to simply select good quality flour, purchase fresh yeast, and generally ignore the rest of the variables. Now is the time to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. I encourage you to begin by making pizza dough by hand so that you can develop a feel for what works and what doesn't. The knowledge and feel you develop will also help you solve the other variables once you understand what a good dough feels like.
Our best advice for making pizza dough is just do it, get your ingredients together, get your hands dirty and have some fun. Your first dough may not turn out exactly the way you want, don't worry about it just try it again. Maybe you should not wait until 20 guests are coming over for dinner to try making pizza dough, but otherwise practice, practice, practice and before you know it you will be making the best pizza in your town.
Making Pizza Dough at Home
You can find everything you need for making pizza dough, and much more information about making great tasting homemade pizza at http://www.homemade-pizza-made-easy.com
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