Chip Cullen

My pizza dough recipe as of May 2025

Everyone needed a COVID hobby. Mine was learning how to make pizza at home. We typically have "Pizza Friday" 2-3 times a month - so, I've made quite a few pizzas in the last few years. What I'm sharing here is the recipe for pizza dough that I use for my family. It's the third major version, but I've been using it for at least a year and a half. My aim is to make a "New York-ish" style pizza.

And - even better - here is the recipe as a Google Sheet! This will allow you to choose different numbers & sizes of pizzas, and it adjusts the ingredients accordingly.

Full credit - this recipe started life as Roberta's Pizza Dough from the NY Times. I've tweaked it a bit over the years.

Equipment

For a yield of 3 12" pizzas:

Wet ingredients

Dry ingredients

Procedure

  1. Get warm water (110º or so, measured with the thermometer), mix in sugar to dissolve, then sprinkle yeast on top

  2. Let proof for 5 minutes - the mixture should bubble up (If not, stop and get fresh yeast. I'm serious. There is no point proceeding if you don't have good yeast.)

  3. Add olive oil to water/yeast mixture

  4. Using a food scale, measure dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer

  5. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly by hand at first in order to distribute salt in the flour

  6. Put bowl into the mixer stand, and attach the dough hook. Turn on stand mixer to low, pour in wet ingredients

  7. Allow mixture to come together slowly. You will likely need to stir manually with a spatula to get all of the flour to incorporate.

  8. When dough ball has come together and is pulling away from the bowl, stop mixer, turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface

  9. Knead slightly (no more than a minute) just to form the dough into a large ball

  10. Coat a container with olive oil (can be the mixing bowl); put dough in container and rotate around to coat in oil. Cover dough with plastic wrap, put a container cover on (lid or towel), and let stand at room temperature 2-4 hours until dough doubles in size

  11. If not cooking at this point, put dough in the fridge to stop the proofing

  12. If the dough is being refrigerated, pull dough from fridge 1.5 hours before cooking

  13. Cut into the desired number of dough balls. Use the scale to get even ball sizes. I take the dough out of the container, put the container on the scale, 'tare' it to zero, then put the dough in. That is the total dough weight. I then divide that by 3 (or however many pizzas I want to make). With this recipe & yield it should be in the ballpark of 340g each.

  14. Set balls aside to rest for 1 hour. Cover with a slightly moistened clean dish towel in order to avoid 'skin' forming.

  15. With a baking steel or pizza stone in your oven, set it to 550º (or it's hottest setting) - let it preheat for 1 hour (same time as the balls are resting)

  16. Shape balls into pizzas rounds - which is it's own technique

  17. Put on a pizza peel (or upside down baking sheet) sprinkled with either flour or corn meal. Make sure the round moves when you jiggle the peel/sheet before proceeding.

  18. Add toppings 1

  19. "Launch" pizza onto the steel / stone, and close the oven door. There is a knack for this - it's okay if it doesn't go right at first.

  20. Bake for 4.5 minutes (In my oven, anyway. It's convection, which may be why it goes fast.). The second and third pizza may take longer since the oven & steel are loosing heat . Use your judgement on when a pizza looks "done".

  21. NOM

1 This is a whole other can of worms that I don't have time to cover. The short version is my sauce is a can of crushed tomatoes with a dash of salt, some olive oil, and oregano mixed in. I eyeball this. I put about two spoonfuls of sauce on each pie and spread it around with the back of said spoon. For cheese I use freshly grated Low Moisture Whole Milk Mozzarella. Get the block from the grocery store and grate it yourself. You won't go back. Toppings from this point are your call. My family really likes sausage & onion.