In a rush, but craving pizza? This 1 hour pizza dough with only 15 minutes of active time is perfect for when you don’t have a lot of time. It also saves you from the store-bought pizza crust mix that always flops over and fails to hold your toppings! 

THE INGREDIENTS:

Instant Yeast: Having smaller grains than active dry yeast, instant yeast is able to get more rise in your dough with less time. Traditionally, baked goods such as bread and rolls have two rises. Instant yeast requires only one rise! Who doesn’t love their food to get on their dinner table faster? 

Sugar: When we write only “sugar” we mean white, granulated sugar. Think of sugar as food for yeast-it gives the yeast the energy it needs to work. For this recipe, there is only a little sugar because we’re aiming for savory here! If you omit the sugar, it will be detrimental to this recipe. 

Salt: A basic, necessary ingredient! It adds that savory aspect to the crust. 

Warm Water: Just like sugar is yeast’s food, think of water as a drink for the yeast! The water “activates” the yeast and gets it ready to start rising your flour. However, the “warm” part is also very important! Cold or room temperature water won’t activate your yeast as much, which risks less of a rise. Very hot or even boiling water, however, might be too overwhelming for your yeast and cause it to die. 

Bread Flour: Although bread flour looks the same as all purpose flour, it has different concentrations! Bread flour is a blend with more protein in it than regular all purpose flour. Since more protein is present, that means more gluten is present, too! Bread flour is our secret to better rising and chewy pizza crust. You can replace the bread flour with all purpose flour and still get a nice pizza dough, but it would be best to use bread flour. 

KEY INFORMATION:

How to ensure the best rise: After letting your dough rise in a bowl on the counter for an hour, you might find yourself feeling as if the dough decided to rise just a smidge today. The secret to getting dough that rises well is to keep it somewhere warm (but not hot!) Our favorite way to do this is to turn on the oven, often to 350 F, and set the bowl of dough on top of the stove. As the oven is on, some of the heat moves upwards and makes the stovetop a bit warmer to the touch. We have found that this is the perfect condition for our dough to rise. 

What is proofing yeast? Proofing yeast is when you add your yeast, warm water, and sugar to a bowl and let it sit for 10 minutes. If your mixture looks the same as it did 10 minutes ago, that means that your yeast is no longer active and will not successfully raise the dough. So, when that happens, you have to start over with new yeast, water, and sugar. What you’re looking for is a bubbly or frothy appearance to show that the yeast is ready to go. 

Do I need to knead? Kneading your dough helps the gluten strengthen and develop. Thanks to this gluten caused by our kneading, the dough will rise more and have a lighter, chewy texture. We recommend kneading the dough for 5 minutes by hand. 

Sticky dough: This dough feels a little sticky and wet, but don’t feel tempted to add more flour until it has a drier texture. To handle it better, lightly dust with the flour reserved for that purpose in this recipe and spread your dough so it covers the surface of your pizza pan. If you handle it lightly, you won’t have a sticky mess! This isn’t a one hour pizza dough! Yes, it is a little over the one hour mark. But it’s so close!