Saturday pizza night, the cheap and cheerful end of the week. The starter isn’t strong enough to lift a pizza dough reliably yet, so this is a straight yeasted dough; but given a long, cold overnight rise it still develops a proper flavour and the easy stretch that makes a thin base. Six bases is enough to feed everyone twice over, and the toppings are deliberately unspecified: pizza night is where the fridge gets cleared.
Yield and time
- Makes: 6 x 12-inch thin bases
- Hands-on: 20 minutes to mix, 10 minutes a pizza to top and bake
- Total: best with a 24-48 hour cold rise; doable same-day in about 4 hours
Ingredients
The dough
- 900g strong bread flour or “00” flour, plus extra for stretching
- 560ml water, lukewarm
- 18g fine salt
- 3g instant dried yeast (about ¾ teaspoon)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- fine semolina, for dusting the peel
For 3g of yeast and a cold overnight rise the dough comes up slowly and tastes the better for it. For a same-day dough, use 7g of yeast and let it rise at room temperature instead.
To top (per pizza, kept light)
- a good canned tomato sauce (a tin of San Marzano or whole tomatoes crushed with a pinch of salt, or a jar of passata)
- a little grated mozzarella or whatever cheese is going
- leftovers: roast veg, cured meats, the last of the cheese drawer, whatever needs using
Mix the dough
Whisk the yeast through the flour in a big bowl. Pour in the water and mix to a shaggy mass, then leave it to sit for 15 minutes; this lets the flour hydrate and makes the kneading easier. Add the salt and oil and knead for 8-10 minutes, on the bench or in a mixer, until smooth and springy. It’s a fairly wet dough; resist adding much flour.
Rise, divide, cold-prove
Cover the bowl and leave at room temperature for an hour or two, until risen by about half. Tip out, divide into six pieces of roughly 250g, and shape each into a tight ball. Settle them into oiled containers with a little room to spread, and refrigerate for 24-48 hours. The cold rise builds flavour and makes the dough stretch like a dream.
(Same-day version: skip the fridge and rest the balls at room temperature for 2-3 hours before baking.)
Bake day
Take the dough balls out an hour before you want to eat so they come to room temperature. Set your oven as hot as it will go (250-280°C) with a pizza steel, stone or upturned heavy baking tray inside, and give it a full 45 minutes to heat through.
Stretch one ball at a time on a floured bench, pressing from the centre out and leaving a slightly thicker rim, until it’s about 12 inches across and thin enough to see the bench through. Don’t use a rolling pin. It crushes the air out of the edge. Lift onto a semolina-dusted peel or a sheet of baking paper.
Spread a thin ladle of sauce, scatter a little cheese and a few toppings (thin crust can’t carry a heavy load, so go light), and slide it onto the hot steel. Bake 6-8 minutes, until the base is crisp and the rim is blistered and charred in spots. Repeat for the rest, eating as they come out.