New York Crust Pizza Dough

By Ellen L. Published: 2012-04-15

Because we've been making a lot of pizza, my little girl and I, and having floury fun all over the kitchen, we've managed to come up with an improved version of our previous New York Style Pizza Crust Recipe.  The improved crust is thinner and bakes up more crunchy than the previous pizza crust, even though the previous is pretty darn good already (well, at least we think so). 

We made a chorizo, mushrooms and Red Pepper Pizza with this improved pizza crust recipe.  I love, love, love chorizo with almost everything but it is especially divine on pizza.  With a fragrant base of our homemade tomato pizza sauce and a very generous topping of grated mozzarella cheese all on top of a thin deliciously crunchy yet chewy pizza crust, homemade pizza is hard to beat!

My little girl likes to help out with the dough.  She's getting quite good at understanding and handling dough, something which took me forever to learn, so I'm happy she's starting early.  This pizza dough uses less yeast and a longer, cooler rise time to give the dough the good flavor that only a long rise will provide.  

Also it is quite a wet dough as you can see from the photo above, taken after an overnight rise.  Don't worry though, once the dough is punched down you'll have a beautifully stretchy silky dough to work with.

Here's a good tip if you bake your pizzas on a pizza baking stone.  I like to shape my pizza dough right onto a square of parchment paper (a bit larger than the pizza) that's sitting on cutting board.  This way, once I shape the crust and add on all the toppings I can very easily lift the cutting board and slide the whole pizza, parchment paper and all, onto the hot baking stone in the oven.  Saves a lot of trouble and fuss!

Time for the toppings!  It's a great way for kids to join in the cooking fun cause there's no such thing as the wrong way to pizza topping, so get them an apron and off they go!  Sometimes we go a bit crazy and make pizza cars and pizza bears and pizza spaceships...  Kids can make anything they like and it's guaranteed to come out tasty!

This is our go-to pizza crust recipe.  We've been making pizza with this crust for years now.  It's easy peasy, just need to make it a bit ahead of time and it always comes out great.  Thin, tasty, crusty yet still chewy on the inside and strong enough have a thin base without a soggy bottom.  Thin enough for kid's small teeth to bite through without too much effort which is a definite plus.   

We hope you try and like this new and improved pizza dough recipe, our go-to recipe!  See here for pizza tomato sauce recipe and toppings suggestions.

New York Crust Pizza Dough Recipe
Prep time: 10 mins   Rising : 4 hours    Cook time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cup warm water
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp  yeast
• 3 cup flour, 375g
• 1/4 cup extra flour, 31g
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 F or 240 C.

Pour water and salt in mixing bowl and stir to dissolve salt.  Add yeast, then flour and mix with hand mixer (with the dough hook attachment) for 10 minutes.  It will be very wet.  Add more flour, 2 tbsps at a time and knead until the dough forms a soft wet ball (soft like a baby's bum).  It should just hold together, don't be afraid to let the dough be quite wet.  

Use olive oil to lightly oil the sides of a deep bowl, plop in the dough, cover and place in refrigerator preferably overnight or at least 4 hours.  Overnight will allow your dough flavors to develop more.  If you're pressed for time let rise at room temp until doubled is fine as well.

Prepare a square piece of parchment paper at least 12 inch by 12 inch.  Sprinkle flour (or cornmeal if you have it) generously over your baking tray for pizza . This will help the pizza to not stick to the baking tray.

Flour your working surface generously and dump dough out.  You will probably need to scrape it along with your fingers.  Generously sprinkle flour over top of dough and cut in 4 equal pieces.  No need to knead, just shape each piece into a ball.  Place onto lightly floured surface and cover.

Bring out one dough ball at a time when ready to make pizza.  Use hands or rolling pin to press dough out into a 10" circle, lightly dusting with flour on both sides to prevent sticking (this wet dough will be sticky).  The dough should neither stick to the working surface nor your fingers.  Leave a thicker ridge of dough all around to make the pizza edge and give the ridge an extra dusting of flour to create the characteristic pizza edge look and taste.

We usually do 75% of the pressing and shaping on a well floured working surface and then lift the dough on to the well floured baking tray for the final shaping.  If you are using a baking stone then press the the dough out on parchment slightly larger than your final pizza size and use a chopping board to lift the pizza and slide onto baking stone for the bake.

Put on your sauce (see our homemade pizza sauce recipe), cheese and toppings and then pop into oven at highest heat for 12-15 minutes.   Crispy yet chewy gorgeously thin pizza crust every time.  Yum, yum!

Delightfully Doughy at The Hong Kong Cookery:

Homemade Bagel

Broccoli Vegetable Pizza

White Clam Pizza

Pizza ala Gong Bao Chicken 宮保雞丁比薩

Chinese Spring Onion Pancake 蔥油餅

Google