Dough for a hot oven
Published Sep 1, 2026 · 7 min read
At 450°C a pizza bakes in ninety seconds, and the dough has to be built for that.
Dough that's wonderful in a kitchen oven is wrong for a pizza oven, and the reverse is true too. At 450°C a pizza bakes in ninety seconds, and the dough has to be built for that: enough water to stay soft inside while the outside chars, enough time in the fridge to develop flavour and stretch, and a flour that browns rather than burns. This is the one recipe we use for everything in this notebook, with the numbers that make it work and the reasons behind each.
The recipe, for six pizzas
- 1,000 g flour — Italian "00" pizza flour if you can get it, or a fine strong white flour at 11-12.5% protein. Not bread flour at 13-14%: it holds too much and burns before it opens up.
- 650 g water (65% hydration), cool from the tap in summer, lukewarm in winter.
- 25 g fine salt (2.5%).
- 2 g instant dry yeast (0.2%) — yes, that little; the fridge does the work.
Dissolve the salt in the water, stir in the yeast, add the flour, mix to a rough shaggy mass with a hand or a spatula, and rest ten minutes covered. Then knead — by hand on the counter for eight to ten minutes, or in a mixer on low for six — until smooth and elastic and it passes the windowpane test (a piece stretched thin goes translucent without tearing). Rest thirty minutes covered at room temperature.
Balling and the fridge
Divide into six pieces of about 280 g each and roll each into a tight ball, dragging it against the counter to tension the surface. Place the balls in a lightly oiled tray or box with room to double, cover, and refrigerate for 24 to 72 hours. This cold ferment is where the flavour, the blistering and the extensibility come from; a dough used the same day will bake fine but tastes flat and fights you when stretched. Forty-eight hours is our sweet spot. Take the balls out two hours before baking so they come to room temperature and relax.
Why 65 percent. Lower hydration (55-60%) makes a dough that's easy to handle and bakes dry and cracker-like in a hot oven. Higher (70%+) makes a gorgeous open crumb and a dough that sticks to everything, which is a nightmare on a peel until you're practised. 65% is the beginner's line: soft enough to puff and stay tender at 450°C, firm enough to launch. Move up in 2-3% steps once launching is boring.
Opening the base
Generous flour on the counter and on top of the ball. Press the centre with fingertips, leaving a 2 cm rim untouched — that rim is the future crust, and every press into it is a flat edge later. Push the air from the centre toward the rim, turn, repeat, until you have a disc about 20 cm. Then lift it onto the backs of your hands and let gravity stretch it, rotating, to about 28-30 cm for a 12-inch stone. No rolling pin: it flattens the rim and knocks out the gas the fridge built. Thin in the middle enough to see light through it, thick at the rim, and done in under two minutes so it doesn't dry out.
Flour matters more than you'd think
Sugar burns and so does the enzyme-rich bran in wholemeal flour; at 450°C both go black in seconds, which is why enriched doughs and wholemeal bases come out bitter. Fine white pizza flour is milled to brown gently at high heat, and it's why the same recipe with different flour gives a different pizza. If "00" isn't sold near you, a plain strong white flour at 11-12% protein is the next best. Semolina is for the peel (Bake 04), not the dough.
Keeping and freezing
Balls keep three days in the fridge and get better for two of them. Beyond that they over-prove and flatten. Freeze extras after 24 hours in the fridge, individually wrapped; thaw overnight in the fridge and give them the two hours out. Frozen dough is slightly less lively but makes a completely respectable Tuesday pizza.
Questions from the counter
Can I use a bread machine or a stand mixer?
A stand mixer with a dough hook, yes — low speed, six minutes, then finish by hand for a minute to feel it. A bread machine's dough cycle works but tends to over-warm and over-work; if it's what you have, use the cycle for mixing only and do the fridge stage yourself.
The dough is too sticky to handle.
More flour on the counter and hands, not in the dough — and a longer rest. A dough that's sticky straight out of kneading relaxes a lot in thirty minutes and again after the fridge. If it's still unworkable at 65%, drop to 62% next batch and creep back up.
Sourdough?
Lovely, and a different notebook: replace the yeast with 100-150 g of active starter, reduce the water by 60 g, and expect a longer, more variable ferment. Get the commercial-yeast version right first; the technique transfers and the oven doesn't care.
Base opened — now the moment everyone dreads: launch and turn.