Pizza Dough & Fermentation

Italian Cookery

Chapter 6 · Pizza Dough & Fermentation

Pizza dough shares a starting flour with Chapter 2's fresh pasta — 00 flour again — but almost everything else about it is different. There's no egg, no windowpane test in quite the same way, and the single biggest factor in whether your pizza actually tastes like something is a step that happens mostly in the fridge, doing nothing you can see.

The Dough

Ingredient	Rough amount (per 2 medium pizzas)
00 flour	500g
Water (room temperature)	325ml (roughly 65% hydration)
Instant or active dry yeast	A small amount — as little as 1–2g when fermenting overnight, since the dough has far longer to rise
Fine salt	10–12g
Olive oil (optional)	A small drizzle, for a slightly softer crumb

Mix flour, water, and yeast first Combine the flour, water, and yeast in a bowl until no dry flour remains, then let it sit, covered, for 20–30 minutes. This short rest (sometimes called an autolyse) lets the flour fully hydrate before you add salt, which makes the dough easier to knead afterward.
Add salt and knead Add the salt and knead for 8–10 minutes, either by hand or with a stand mixer. Pizza dough at this hydration is noticeably stickier and looser than Chapter 2's pasta dough — resist adding extra flour to make it easier to handle, since a wetter dough is part of what gives a pizza crust its eventual texture.
Bulk rise briefly at room temperature Let the dough rise at room temperature for about an hour, or until visibly puffed, before moving on to the cold ferment.

The Long Cold Ferment

This is the step that actually separates a genuinely good pizza dough from a flat, bland same-day one. After its brief room-temperature rise, divide the dough into individual balls (roughly 250g each for a medium pizza) and refrigerate them, covered, for 24 to 72 hours.

Why the fridge, not just more time on the counter A long, cold, slow fermentation gives the yeast far more time to work at a much slower pace than it would at room temperature — and that extra time produces real, complex flavour compounds a fast, same-day rise never gets the chance to develop. The cold also relaxes the gluten network extensively, which is exactly why a properly cold-fermented dough stretches so much more easily than a same-day one — a direct payoff when you get to the stretching section below.

Before you bake, pull the dough balls out of the fridge and let them come back up to room temperature for at least an hour or two — cold dough straight from the fridge is stiff and will resist stretching, fighting you the whole way.

Hand-Stretching, Not Rolling

Once your dough ball has come back to room temperature, shape it using your hands, not a rolling pin.

Press from the centre outward Using your fingertips, press the dough from the centre outward, leaving a slightly thicker rim untouched around the edge — this will become the crust's own puffy border once it bakes.
Lift and let gravity help Once the disc is a manageable size, lift it and drape it over your knuckles, gently rotating and letting the dough's own weight stretch it thinner as gravity pulls it downward.
Work toward an even thickness Keep rotating and stretching until you reach a roughly even thickness across the middle, still leaving that outer rim a little thicker than the centre.

A rolling pin pushes out the air you spent two days building All of that long, slow fermentation created real gas bubbles trapped throughout the dough — and a rolling pin flattens and pushes that gas straight back out, along with any hope of the light, airy crust structure the cold ferment was meant to produce. Hand-stretching works around the bubbles instead of crushing them, which is the whole reason it's the traditional method rather than just a stylistic choice.

Kitchen Practice

Kitchen Practice 1

Mix and knead a batch of pizza dough, using the autolyse rest before adding salt, and divide it into individual dough balls once it's finished its brief room-temperature rise.

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Kitchen Practice 2

Cold-ferment two dough balls from the same batch for different lengths of time — one for 24 hours, one for 72 hours — and compare how each smells, looks, and stretches once brought back to room temperature.

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Kitchen Practice 3

Shape one dough ball entirely by hand, using the press-and-drape method, and — as a direct comparison — roll a second dough ball flat with a rolling pin. Compare how each looks before baking, and keep both aside for Chapter 7.

→ Solution

Quick Reference — Pizza Dough & Fermentation

00 flour, water, a small amount of yeast, and salt — mixed with a short autolyse rest before adding salt
Pizza dough is wetter and stickier than pasta dough — don't add extra flour to compensate
Divide into dough balls, then cold-ferment 24–72 hours for real flavour development
Bring dough back to room temperature for 1–2 hours before shaping
Hand-stretch by pressing from the centre and draping over your knuckles — never use a rolling pin, which pushes out the gas the ferment worked to build

Next — Chapter 7: Baking Pizza at Home
Preheating a stone or steel as long as the oven itself, and why home ovens can't match a real pizza oven — and how to compensate.