How to make pizza dough

I love homemade pizza – it’s SO much fun to make and – if you start with a good base – you can end up with a really fabulous meal. I’ve been working on my own pizza dough recipe for a while now and I have finally cracked it! My recipe is easy to make, doesn’t require any great bread skills, and produces a fantastic crisp, yet chewy pizza base.

How to make pizza dough

For enough dough for 4 large pizzas, you need:

• 525g strong white bread flour
• 125g semolina (plus extra for dusting)
• 7g sachet of fast action yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 25ml olive oil (plus extra for greasing)
• 50ml warm milk
• 325ml warm water

1. Combine the flour and semolina in a large bowl and add the salt and sugar to one side of the bowl, and the yeast to the other side. Make your hand into a claw shape and mix all the dry ingredients together. Add the milk and oil to the mix with around half of the water.
2. Keeping the claw shape, mix the ingredients together until you start to form a dough. Add the rest of the water and bring together into a ball.
3. Rub some olive oil onto a clean work surface and pop your dough on top. Knead it for a couple of minutes until it starts to become smooth. Once it’s developed a bit of elasticity, you can pick it up and slap it down on the work surface a few times to help stretch out the gluten strands. I tend to do this about 20 times. Be careful not to break the dough, just slap it and loop it back, before slapping it again. You basically want to be kneading for about 5 mins until it’s smooth and elastic.
4. Pop the dough in the bowl and cover with cling film. Pop in a warm place and leave to prove for an hour and a half, or until the dough had doubled in size.
5. Knock it back and knead again until smooth, then leave to rise again for another half an hour.
6. Now, pre heat your oven to 220°c. If you have a pizza stone, stick it in before you turn the oven on.
7. Cut the dough into four equal pieces. If you don’t need them all, you can wrap up and freeze the dough for up to three months. Dust your work surfaces with semolina and and roll out the dough, stretching with your finger tips. If you’re brave enough then have a go at tossing the dough, then go for it! There are videos on YouTube. When your dough is stretched out and pizza shaped, pop it on a chopping board dusted with semolina.
8. If you don’t have a pizza stone, put a heavy duty baking tray in the oven to warm.
9. Now, cover your pizza in whatever you fancy (passata stuff, cheese, etc etc) and then slide it carefully off the baking tray and straight onto your pizza stone/tray. Bake for 20 mins or so until it’s crisp on the bottom and golden around the edges. Enjoy!