Best-Ever Pizza Dough (No Knead) BONUS 100th Episode - Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking

Hi Bold Bakers! It’s kind of hard to believe but today is our 100th episode! It is definitely a time for celebration, and I thought the perfect time to share with you my amazing no-knead pizza dough recipe that you’ve been asking for ever since I started the channel. So let’s get baking. So I know a thing or two about making pizza. When I lived in San Francisco, I turned my living room into a pop-up pizzeria. And I would make fresh pizza for my friends, even strangers, until all the pizza was gone. This no-knead pizza dough is incredibly easy. You mix it by hand, you do not need a machine, and I guarantee you will have restaurant quality pizza at the end. We’re going to start out in a large bowl. Now you want a large bowl because we’re not only going to mix our dough in here but we’re also going to ferment it so it needs a lot of room to grow. Into my bowl, I’m going to add in all-purpose or plain flour. Now the reason that I’m using plain flour and not bread flour is the plain flour has a protein content of around 10%. Bread flour has a protein content of around 12%. Plain flour has enough protein in it to be able to make you a really good pizza dough and you still get a nice chewy bite from it. If you want to use bread flour, that is totally fine but just note that you will need to add more water to your dough if you use bread flour. Our next ingredient is salt. And add that in to one side of the bowl. Now salt is super important in bread making, especially pizza because you want it to enhance all the other ingredients in there. On the other side of the bowl, I’m going to add in my dried yeast. I use active dry yeast but feel free to use any dried yeast you like. The reason why I add salt and yeast on different sides of the bowl is because you do not want to lay them directly on top of eachother because the salt will deactivate the yeast. So just put them on either side. Now just mix all your dry ingredients together. This recipe only asks for a little bit of yeast and that’s because we’re going to ferment it and it actually will create its own natural yeast over time. This is our dry ingredients and now I’m going to prepare the wet. In a jug, add in your blood temperature water. So by blood temperature, what I mean is if you put your finger in the water and you can’t feel it around you, it means it’s the same temperature as your blood. And that’s the perfect temperature to activate the yeast. Into your water, add in some olive oil. Adding olive oil into your dough keeps it really nice and soft so you get a nice soft dough rather than a hard dough when it’s finished baking. Now all we have to do is mix our wet and dry ingredients together. Pour your wet ingredients straight into your dry. You can use a spatula to mix your dough together but I prefer to use my hand because you can tell if you need to add more liquid or how dry it is at any stage. Mix it together until your wet dough starts to form. This is incredibly easy. You do not need a machine, you do not need to wait for it. It’s a really fantastic way to make good-quality bread, and really good flavor too. When all the flour is wet and there’s no lumps of dry flour hanging around, you dough is done. So all we’re going to do is take a spatula and scrape down the sides of the bowl and get all the dough together down there. Place some cling wrap over the top bowl, nice and tight to make sure that no air gets in there. I have a nice, clean tea towel that I’m going to place on top to keep my dough nice and snug. And that is it. That is your incredible pizza dough. What’s going to happen now is we’re going to let it rest for 12 to 18 hours, 12 hours minimum. And what’s going to happen is it’s going to ferment, it’s going to create a lot of gas and bubbles and that is going to give you beautiful texture, great flavor, and unbelievable dough that you have to work with. I’m going to leave my dough out at room temperature and out of direct sunlight and let it do its thing. Here’s a dough that I made yesterday and has been fermenting for the last 18 hours. I want to show you at this stage what your dough should look like. If you can see this, you have all these beautiful big bubbles. The dough has grown I’d say probably three or four times the size. This is exactly what you want. You can see on the top of your dough that the bubbles are almost bursting in front of your eyes. And if you touch it and pull it, you can see all of that lovely texture. You have to remember that when working with yeast, it’s a living thing so the amount of work and care that you put into dough is what you’ll get out of it at the other end. Gorgeous. I’m going to turn this out on a floured surface. You can see when you turn it out all of those beautiful gluten strands that we developed over time. That’s what’s going to give your pizza crust really good texture. Look at all that, beautiful. I’m going to divide my dough into four because it makes four pizzas that are around 10-12 inches each. Now all I want to do is just shape these doughs into rounds. Very gently, just going to do it in my hands. Look at that, my dough is a beautiful soft texture. It’s not too wet, however if you find that yours is too wet, just add extra flour to the surface. As always, the recipe for the pizza dough can be found on biggerbolderbaking.com along with some special variations that I gave you for pizza toppings that I used to make for my underground pizza restaurant. Now that we’ve shaped our dough, I’m going to put a towel over it so no air gets in. And then we’re going to leave it to relax for around 10-15 minutes. And what this does is lets the gluten relax so when we come back, it’s much easier to roll. Our dough is nice and rested so now is the time to shape our pizza. I find it best if you shape your pizza dough on the tray that you’re going to use to slide it into the oven. It just means that you have to move it around less and you get to keep the lovely shape and it doesn’t rip on you. Dust your tray with either flour or semolina. To shape your dough, feel free to use a rolling pin but I like to use my hands. And just what you’re going to do is work your way around your pizza. Kinda work from the middle out and just give it a little bit of a shape. If you want to put a little flour on your hands, that’ll be a good idea so it doesn’t stick. And you’ll see it’s starting to stretch and work with you. You know what as well? I’ve never been the best at getting a perfect round pizza. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. At the end of the day, you made a beautiful homemade pizza. Who cares what shape it is? If you find that your dough is pulling back when you’re trying to work with it, it means it needs a little bit more time to rest so just give it another 5-10 minutes with the tea towel over it. If you see any little rips come up, don’t worry about it, just give it a little pinch with your fingers. Ok we have our pizza dough shaped and now we’re going to go on with our toppings. To top our pizza, I’m going to put on my homemade pizza sauce and this recipe can be found on biggerbolderbaking.com as well. It’s really good. When it comes to toppings on your pizza, less is more. If you put too much on, you will not get it off the tray. Believe me, I know. Next, our very important ingredient, mozzarella. On top of the cheese, I’m going to add some freshly ripped basil. Smells so good, I love basil on pizzas. As a finishing touch, I like to add a little bit of olive oil on the crust. I just think it makes it nice and soft and also beautiful and shiny. Ah lovely, look at that homemade pizza. Totally from scratch. If you think it looks good now, wait till you see it come out of the oven. For the best results, slide your pizza onto a prebaked baking tray or a pizza stone. Bake in a very hot oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit or 225 degrees Celsius and resist opening the oven while it’s baking to keep in all the heat. I see that our crust is going a beautiful golden brown and the cheese is bubbling so it’s ready to be taken out. Our pizza looks fantastic. As you can see, the crust is a lovely golden brown and if you push it, you can feel all the air bubbles underneath. And as you can see, it’s nice and crispy underneath too. It all adds up to a fantastic pizza. You have to get up close to see all those lovely air bubbles in the crust. They’re all the way around and it makes for such a fantastic base. There’s only one way for me to describe this pizza and that is “legit.” I mean, just look at it. It is perfection. And one of the reasons I love this dough so much is if you don’t use it and bake it off straight away, it can last up to four days in your fridge, totally fine. And you can bake it off whenever you want fresh pizza. I give you my guarantee, this will be the best pizza you ever make at home. A huge thank you to all of you out there who have created this bold baking community. And thank you for your continuous support towards my channel, I really appreciate it. I will see you back here every Thursday for more Bigger, Bolder Baking.