Pizza Friday with “Almost” No Knead Pizza Dough. Still No Mixer Required!

March 21, 2014 by Laurie Nguyen 30 Comments

Remember my “No Knead Bread Dough” post?  Last Friday, I decided to modify the recipe just a tad bit and try it as a pizza crust.  I have a love/hate relationship with homemade pizza crust.  Over the years, I’ve tried a couple of recipes with varying degrees of success.  The “never fail” recipe my mom used is okay.  It’s super easy, no knead, and no wait time before I can use the dough.  But the flavor is not as good as other crusts, and the texture is not where I’d like it to be.  More recently, I used a friend’s roll dough as a pizza crust, and it’s pretty good.  The flavor is there, but I miss that crisp pizza crust.

 

So I decided to dive right in and modify the No Knead Bread Dough recipe into a pizza crust.  Here is the recipe.  It’s adapted from a recipe I found here on Making Things Awesome’s website.

 

Almost No Knead Pizza Crust

 

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups bread flour

1 3/4 teaspoon salt (reduce to 1 teaspoon if you’re going to add salty ingredients like cheese, garlic salt, etc.)

1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

 

Proof the yeast by adding the sugar and yeast to the warm water.  Let it sit for a few minutes until it is bubbly.  Add the dry ingredients to your bowl, then pour the yeast mixture in and stir to combine.  Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour or so (it’s pretty forgiving).  When it’s doubled in size, remove the plastic wrap and punch down the dough.  Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough sit for another hour or so.  When it’s doubled in size, dump it onto a floured surface.

Knead in flour until the dough is no longer sticky to the touch.  Cut the dough into four pieces and roll out into a circle with a rolling pin.  Transfer to a greased pie tin and top with your favorite ingredients.  Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until the crust is light brown around the edges (about 15-20 minutes).  Remove from oven, cut, and enjoy!

 

Here are some pics of my process.

 

Start with your yeast.  After about 5 minutes, your yeast should be bubbling up like this. It doesn’t have to have this many bubbles, but it should be increasing in size.

 

I added the yeast mixture to the flour mixture and stirred. It looked like this once everything was incorporated. I covered it with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour or so until doubled.

 

See how the dough looks all bubbly and light? It’s risen for a little over an hour and has doubled in size.

 

I punched it down (yes, I literally made a fist and punched the dough) to deflate it. Then I covered it and let it rise for another hour or so until it doubled.

 

Now it’s ready to make into my pizza crust. I dumped it on my floured counter top and kneaded it for a few minutes. Not serious kneading, but just enough that the dough wasn’t sticky to the touch.

 

And it looked like this.

 

Then I used my handy pizza cutter (one of my favorite multi-use tools in my kitchen) to cut the dough into four pieces. Depending on the size pans you are using and the desired thickness or crust, you may want to cut it into more or fewer pieces.

 

I rolled it out with a rolling pin.

 

Then I transferred it to a pyrex pie pan sprayed with Pam.

 

Now for the good stuff!

 

 

I spread my favorite pizza sauce on the crust.

 

 

I made 1 mushroom onion pizza using some balsamic mushrooms and onions I’d made the night before.

 

And I had to put some cheese on top!

 

I made 3 cheese pizzas for my boys.

 

After 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven, they were ready!

 

Doesn’t the mushroom one look lovely?

 

Here’s the cheese pizza.

 

And the mushroom pizza.

 

The pizza didn’t last very long.  Most of it was gone that night with a little leftover the following day.  But I have some hungry boys.  They eat just about EVERYTHING!

 

Will you make pizza when it’s this easy? 

What’s your favorite pizza topping?