Mmmm mmmm Pizza Dough!

Pizza dough can be used for so much more than just pizza. You can make calzones of all shapes and sizes, with different fillings such as leftover shredded pot roast and veggies, bbq chicken, even my carnitas! Oh and there are also the bread sticks. All you do is make some garlic butter and coat strips of dough, then sprinkle with a smidge or a ton of parmesan. You can even use this dough to make focaccia, a heavenly italian flat bread that is usually lightly topped with, for example, sun-dried tomatoes, a bit of cheese, garlic, onion, and many other things (not all at once lol!). Personally what I like to do for focaccia is lightly knead in some herbs, cheese, or diced sun-dried tomatoes, and top with a bit of olive oil and parmesan.


Today I am going to try making a refrigerator pizza dough, and I was inspired to try it by this article.

How To Make Pizzas With Your Own Refrigerator Dough

How would you like to mix up the dough for your favorite pizza before you go to bed, put the pizza dough in the refrigerator, and pull it out to make your pizza when you get home from work the next day? You can with this refrigerated pizza dough technique.

One of the international pizza restaurant chains refrigerates their pizza dough for eight hours. We like that concept. Since yeast produces a different flavor profile at low temperatures, refrigerated dough makes complex, yeasty breads. We also liked the convenience--you can mix the dough one evening and make the pizza the next.

So we set off to test the concept.

We used pizza dough mixes but we could have made dough with a recipe. We mixed it according to package directions, left it in a clean large glass bowl, and immediately put it in the refrigerator covered with plastic.

The next day, we removed the pizza dough from the refrigerator where it had partially risen and made the crust. We let it rest and rise for one hour. In one hour, in a warm kitchen, the pizza crust had risen and was no longer dense. We added the sauce and toppings and baked as we would normally at 425 degrees for 15 minutes on a dark pan.

We found the crust extraordinary. With refrigeration, there is definitely an overtone of yeasty flavors almost like sourdough bread. We think you’ll like pizzas made this way.

Kitchen notes:

1. Yeast is very sensitive to temperature and refrigerating dough is not an exact science without precise temperature control. Rising times will vary in your kitchen. In our kitchen, time varied from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. A thinly rolled crust will take considerably less time to warm and rise than a thicker crust.

2. It’s important that you get the dough into your refrigerator immediately after kneading and before the yeast begins to multiply.

3. The dough will rise some in the refrigerator. Yeast will grow as the dough slowly cools stopping completely at about 40 degrees. Make sure that you use an oversize bowl so that there is room for expansion.

4. Be sure that the dough is covered with plastic to keep it from drying out. We very lightly sprayed the top of the dough ball with an oil mister to keep the plastic from sticking to the dough.

5. The dough can sit in your refrigerator for up to three days.

We’ve worked a great deal with refrigerated dough. It takes a little patience to let the dough warm and rise but the results can be fantastic.