Best-Ever Pizza Dough Recipe (No Knead) - Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

What does adding an egg to pizza dough do? ›

A: Eggs, as either whole eggs or as egg whites, have been added to pizza dough for many years and for different reasons. Whole eggs can be added to the dough to provide better browning characteristics to the dough. To some extent, they also provide a richer flavor.

Windowpane test. Pull up a piece of dough, stretching it with your two hands and separating them. If you end up with something you can see light through, it's called a windowpane and your dough is kneaded enough. If the dough breaks, it can be kneaded more.

There are many tricks to achieving a tasty, homemade pizza dough that rises into a beautiful pizza crust, such as making sure your ingredients are at right temperature, using half bread flour for a stronger dough and half all-purpose flour for a nice rise, substituting honey for sugar to help caramelize the crust and ...

Any pizza dough with a complex flavor has been slow-fermented. All this means is that the yeast it contains has had ample time to eat the simple sugars in the flour. The longer the yeast has had to feast – ideally 24 to 48 hours – the lighter and more flavorful the pizza dough will be.

Milk (liquid): Strengthens gluten, helps crust brown, softens the crumb. An enzyme in milk slows the growth of the yeast and it can break down the protein in the flour and weaken the dough. Scalding the milk destroys this enzyme.

Flavor the dough, if you'd like: This is a great basic pizza dough recipe, but you can spice it up to make it more flavorful by adding a few dashes of garlic powder, dried basil, and oregano.

The general rule is to let pizza dough rise until it has doubled in size, which could take anywhere between 1-1.5 hours. This will give the yeast time to activate and create a light, airy texture in the crust. However, I personally prefer cold-fermenting the dough for 48 hours for extra flavor.

Did you know the protein and sugars in milk actually help strengthen pizza dough while baking and create a beautiful, golden-brown crust? Try it for yourself!

The top chefs all agree that the best pizzas are all about the crust, so salt in the dough should never be sacrificed at the altar of salty toppings. “Building a pizza is like building anything else – you have to make compromises and consider the whole when choosing the parts.

The No. 1 reason restaurant pizza is better than homemade is that they have ovens that can reach 900°F, or even hotter, which makes for perfectly crisp and chewy crusts, with those lovely charred spots, says Kierin Baldwin, chef-instructor of Pastry & Baking Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education.

At what point do you put an egg on a pizza? ›

If you want an egg that's a little runnier, then crack the eggs on the pizza after 10 minutes of baking, and return to the oven for an additional 5 minutes. Use room-temperature eggs. The egg whites will spread out if the eggs aren't cold when you use them, ensuring that you won't get a bite with too much egg.

besides the nutritional benefits there are a few other good reasons to use egg in breadmaking. It makes the bread lighter and fluffier. The reason for that is the fat in the yolk that inhibits gluten formation just as any other fat would. This results in a looser dough that can expand and puff up more.

Egg yolks added to shortcrust pastry make it richer and slows down the development of the gluten in the flour, which is exactly what you want. Gluten has an elastic quality which can make pastry rubbery if overdeveloped. But the resulting crumbly dough can be difficult to work with.

Egg wash is beaten egg used to glaze or seal baked goods or to adhere breading to foods like cutlets. Whole egg is beaten alone or with another liquid like water, milk or cream. The wash is brushed over the surface of goods like breads, pastries and pies to give them a shiny browned appearance after baking.