Kneading and Proofing the Dough

While making pizza, pizza dough is the most important aspect. You need to have a perfectly kneaded dough in order to get the best pizza crust.

Initially, when I started making pizzas, I ignored the kneading instructions and just kneaded the dough like you would for normal bread. I did not think that stretching the dough could actually bring a lot of difference in the texture and the taste of my pizza dough.

So, all I did was mix the dry and wet ingredients and then knead the dough till it becomes a nice and smooth ball and leave it aside to rest.

Now, this does bake you some good pies and you can make a pizza by following the basic mix all the ingredients and knead the dough for a few minutes and leave it aside method but if you really want to get the perfect crust then follow the method mentioned below

This method gives you more of the Sicilian style crust which is something that you get in most of the fast-food pizza outlets and if you are a big fan of that kind of crust then you can easily achieve it if you follow the simple tips and tricks that have been mentioned below.

 

Kneading the dough

Making pizza dough is extremely easy especially for someone who does it so often as I do. All you need is all-purpose flour, salt some active yeast, sugar, and oil.

Mix all these ingredients with some warm water and knead a dough. Once you are done with kneading it, you need to then take the dough ball in your hand and stretch it as long as you can without tearing it apart.

Once you reach that point, you need to fold the dough back and then turn it and stretch it again the same way and then fold it back. Doing this for 5-7 minutes can really make a difference in your dough.

 

What you are doing in this process is that you are creating gluten strands that would then trap the CO2 that comes off when the yeast is being fermented.

This gives your dough a nice rise while cooking and you would feel the difference when you make your dough this way. You know your dough is ready when you take a small piece of the dough and spread it flat and see-through light and find a nice web-like structure being formed.

This way you know you can stop the stretching and folding process. Once you are done with this you need to do the next step mentioned in the post.

 

Proofing the Dough

In this section, all that you need to do is leave your dough to rise. Ideally, you can leave your dough to rise for at least 10-15 minutes so that you get good results but if you really want to see it double in size then leave it for 30 minutes to an hour.

You would see that the dough would rise double to its size and if the rising is not that great then maybe you didn’t use enough yeast or you have missed out an ingredient that causes the yeast to rise.

If you leave the dough aside then it would definitely rise to double its size and that’s when you know you are ready to get started with cooking your pies.

You need to then knead the dough again a bit so that the excess air comes out and then you can make small round balls for the dough and get started with cooking some fresh homemade pizzas.

Kneading and Proofing the dough are extremely important if you want to get a nice crust with an amazing texture just like the ones you find in the restaurant.

You are going to love everything about the way the dough would taste if you follow these two steps correctly. My whole cooking style has been changed once I have tried to use both these methods while kneading my pizza dough.

 

Do try these tips and let us know what you think in the comments below!

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