Bread Machine Pizza Dough

Homemade pizza is one of our family's favorite treats. The dough can be the most difficult part of making homemade pizza. Unless, you have a bread machine. I love that I can just add the ingredients into the bread pan, use the dough cycle and forget about it. About an hour and a half later, I have fresh, delicious pizza dough waiting for me! It doesn't get any easier than that.

Recipe Link

INGREDIENTS
1 CRUST:

3/4 cup warm water

1 Tablespoon oil

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cup bread flour (all-purpose will work, too)

1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

1 Tablespoon dry milk

1 teaspoon active dry yeast 

2 CRUSTS:

1 2/3 cups warm water

2 Tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon salt

4 1/2 cups bread flour (or all-purpose)

2 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons dry milk

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Plus extra flour for rolling out and corn meal if using a pizza peel

Pizza sauce, shredded cheese and toppings of your choice

DIRECTIONS

1. Place ingredients in bread pan in order listed. Use the dough setting; press START. When setting is complete remove dough from bread pan.

2. If using a pizza stone, place in oven first, then preheat oven to 425 degrees F. for conventional or 415 degrees F. for convection.

3. Roll and press dough into a round greased pizza pan; raising edge of dough.
4. Or, if you're using a pizza peel, sprinkle yellow corn meal on top of pizza peel (this keeps the dough from sticking to the peel). Roll out dough about 14 inches on a clean counter sprinkled with extra flour to keep from sticking, transfer dough to the pizza peel. Fold over the edges about 1 inch and press. If you are using a pizza peel, make sure your pizza stone is already preheating in the oven.

5. Spread pizza sauce over dough. Sprinkle with cheese and toppings of your choice.

6. Bake in preheated oven. Check after about 15 minutes in a conventional oven. Pizza is done when crust is golden brown around edges, approximately 15-25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool 5 minutes before cutting. I use a convection oven set to 415 degrees and my pizza is usually done around 15 minutes. I think convection helps bake a crispier crust.

Adapted from a recipe I received from my mother in law

I add the ingredients into the bread pan and then forget about it. I let the bread machine do the rest of the work.

An hour and a half later, the dough is ready. So easy!

I turn it out onto a clean counter dusted with flour and knead it a few times into a ball.

Then, I roll the dough out into about a 14 inch circle

Fold the circle in half and transfer to a pizza peel sprinkled with yellow corn meal. The corn meal keeps the dough from sticking to the peel. So, it will be easy to transfer the pizza onto the stone in the oven.

Take the edges and roll and press them in. This helps form a crust and make a barrier to keep all the toppings from rolling off.

Yum! Homemade pizza dough is the best!

Spread on your favorite pizza sauce. We make our own sauce with one 15 oz. can of tomato sauce, one 6 oz. can of tomato paste. Along with lots of oregano, basil, a little garlic powder, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper and a touch of sugar. Just whisk that all together. Adjust amounts to your taste.

I usually buy a large bag of 50/50 grated mozzarella and provolone. I store it in the freezer to keep it fresh longer. I pull it out and sprinkle the cheese right onto the pizza frozen. No need to thaw it, then I put the bag of cheese back in the freezer for next time.

Use your favorite toppings. We like to buy the Italian stick pepperoni and slice it up ourselves.

This pizza had pepperoni, bell peppers, red onion, and olives. If I have some grated parmesan I like to sprinkle some on the very top of the pizza before I put it in the oven to bake.

I bake our pizza on a stone in a convection oven. This helps the crust bake up nice and crispy.

Time to eat!

The Results...
Bread Machine Pizza Dough bakes up crispy on the outside and soft inside. I use my bread machine more often for pizza dough than I do for bread. We make 2 pizza crusts at a time for our family of 6. One supreme pizza for the bigger people and a just cheese pizza for the little ones. We still have some slices left over for lunch the next day. We LOVE homemade pizza. I make it at least twice a month.

If you need more dough for LOTS of pizza, you can make batches ahead of time and store the dough in the refrigerator for a day or two. I pull out the dough and let it warm up to room temperature before rolling it out. We've done this for pizza parties. You can have your guests roll out the dough and make their own personal pizzas.

Enjoy!