Pizza dough

This is a recipe I use for years. Is so simple, so flexible that even if I have dozens of pizza dough recipes that I want to try I usually end up doing the same one.
From the quantities bellow I do 2 pizzas. Half I bake in the same day and the other half I keep it in the refrigerator in a closed bowl for maximum 5 days.


Ingredients:

• 250ml water
• 450g all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons of dry yeast (or 42g of fresh yeast)
• 1 pinch of salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients in the mixer bowl and mix until well combined.
2. Take half of the quantity and refrigerate in a bowl. Take a bigger bowl as the dough will raise in the fridge at least twice.
3. Let the other half in the mixer bowl covered with a lid for 1h30" at room temperature or preferably near a heating source (like a radiator, tv, back of the fridge etc). The dough will raise quite a lot.
4. Brush the pizza pan with a bit of olive oil and stretch the dough in the pizza pan.

From now on, just pick your pizza ingredients and bake it.

If you want just one pizza, divide the quantity of ingredients by 2.

What I like even more about this dough is the fact that I can add some leftover sourdough starter from the feedings. Once, for example, I added even 300g of sourdough starter in it and some extra flour (see calculations bellow). The idea is that if you keep your starter at 100% hydration, in 300g of starter there are 150g water and 150g of flour. The report between water and flour in the pizza dough is almost 1 : 2 (1 part water to 2 parts flour), so this mean that for 150g water (from the starter) you need to add 300g of flour. But 150g are already contained in the starter so you need another 150g of flour extra.
When I feed my starter I keep the remaining one in a jar in the fridge and after collecting it for some days this extra sourdough start creating a liquid on top. What I do usually, I trow away this liquid and I put in the pizza dough only what remains in the jar and I add less flour than 150g. In this way I avoid throwing away the flour I use for the starter feedings. With experience, I leaned how the consistency of the pizza dough should look like and I don't measure anymore the extra flour I need to add after the sourdough. This recipe is anyway so permissive to let you play with it.

When using the second half, just take it out from the fridge and stretch it in the pizza pan. You don't need to let it warm or raise at room temperature anymore because the process is already done in the fridge.