Jim Lahey’s No Knead Pizza Dough recipe

I know of no-knead pizza dough and how it works great with the right ingredients however, I tried out Jim Lahey’s no knead pizza dough recipe, and well, it wasn’t a recipe that blew my mind. It was OK.

This pizza dough is of the “make-it-and-forget-it” variety, where you leave the dough to ferment for 16 hours or more to achieve the best results.

While I did make this recipe, and the results were okay, I still struggled to comprehend the popularity of it.

There are much better pizza dough recipes out there. However, I decided to fully commit and make the pizza just as I would with any other pizza dough recipe to see the final results.

After all, patience is key in this culinary journey.

Pros Jim Lahey’s No Knead Pizza Dough

1. Quick and easy to make

Cons of Jim Lahey’s No Knead Pizza Dough

Long fermentation time is a drawback of Jim Lahey’s pizza dough. It doesn’t rise as quickly as the Bobby Flay pizza dough or the Wolfgang Puck’s pizza dough.

This is because both the recipes use sugar and honey, which are sweet and act as food for yeast, helping it rise quickly.

2. The lack of sugar in this pizza dough recipe is what causes it to ferment slowly. However, it doesn’t brown as much as other pizza dough recipes because it lacks sugar.

3. I found the dough somewhat gummy, and I suspect the order in which the ingredients are added plays a crucial role. I use the same ingredients to make Neapolitan pizza dough, but the results are notably different and amazing.

Ingredients

200 grams Flour– I used Tipo 00 flour for this recipe to allow it to shine, but if you’re testing the waters and trying to see if you like this recipe, you can use regular all-purpose flour.

120 ml water (I used room temperature water)

1/4 tbsp of yeast- I used instant active yeast in this recipe. There’s another type, active dry yeast, which requires dissolving in warm water with sugar to activate. With instant active yeast, you can skip that step.

1/2 tbsp of salt

Procedure

1. Take flour and mix in salt and instant active yeast.

2. Once you have mixed all the dry ingredients, then you have to add water and start kneading the dough. I used tipo 00 flour to make this pizza dough to give the recipe the best opportunity to be a star recipe.

3. Once you get a homogeneous mixture, leave the dough to rest so it can rise. I left it for 18-24 hours at room temperature.

You do not need to knead this pizza dough at all, so once you get a homogeneous mixture, that is all you have to do. Leave it to proof, and the dough will be ready within a few hours.

4. Now, you can take out your dough and form dough balls or stretch it out to make a pizza immediately. If you do not plan to use it immediately, you should ball it up and freeze the pizza dough.

My Final take on making this Pizza dough recipe

The pizza turned out okay, but it was more chewy and gummy than I liked. I would never understand why people like this recipe because it tasted bad in my opinion.

If you are making pizza dough for a home oven, then one addition in this recipe would be helpful and that is adding sugar along with salt and yeast to the dough.

This is probably a great recipe to make a thin crispy crust. But if you are looking for an airy crust then look at the other pizza dough recipes shared on this blog.

The sugar helps in the browning of the crust and the fermentation process. If you do not want to add sugar and still make this recipe, check out our Neapolitan Pizza dough recipe.

Also, kneading the dough helps with the Neapolitan pizza dough recipe. So, this pizza dough wasn’t that great for me, and I would make the Bobby Flay pizza dough recipe any day over this one!

Let me know if you like it and why Because I’m curious!