I struggled to find a good pizza crust recipe. I came up with
this recipe while looking for a good naan recipe. Yogurt turned out to
be the magic to making a crispy yet soft and tender pizza crust for a
16" pizza.
Ingredients
| 3 | cup | Flour course ground |
| 1 | tsp | Salt |
| 1/2 | cup | Warm water |
| 1 1/2 | tsp | Yeast |
| 1 | Tbs | Olive Oil |
| 2 | tsp | Sugar |
| 1 1/2 | cup | Milk |
| 1 | cup | Yogurt |
Steps
Dissolve the yeast & sugar into the warm water and let stand 5 to 10 minutes until bubbly. If the yeast does not form bubbles, the yeast is not good and needs replaced. It is important that the warm water is only warm to the touch. If it is too warm it will kill the yeast.
In a large bowl mix flour with salt.
Reserve 1 cup of flour in a small bowl for later.
In a second small bowl, mix the milk, oil, yogurt & yeast mixture.
Pour milk mixture into the large bowl of flour. Using your hand (latex gloves work wonders) blend them thoroughly.
Add a sufficient amount to the flour from the small bowl of reserved flour to the large bowl to make a sticky but somewhat of stiff dough.
Let dough stand for 30 minutes.
Flour your bread board and hands.
Roll the dough onto the board and flour. Kneed the dough several times (about 5) adding minimal flour to keep it from sticking. If you kneed it long enough, it will always become really sticky. The idea is to not do this. Just allow it to be a little sticky. Too much flour will make for a tough crust! The flour on your hands will help keep them sort of clean.
Put the dough back in the bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Repeat the kneading process once more.
Put the dough back into the bowl and let it rise for 30 to 60 minutes.
Turn the oven on (with the pizza stone on the bottom) and set the temperature to 400 F (200 C ). The temperature can probably be set higher to help make a crispier crust, but be careful!
Dust the top of the dough in the bowl with flour.
Roll the dough (floured side down) out onto the center of a piece of parchment paper large enough to hold the entire pizza. Dust the dough with flour.
By hand or a rolling pin, stretch the dough out to the size you want the pizza. You may need to dust the dough with flour and flip it over every couple of minutes to keep in from sticking.
Add the toppings to the pizza.
slid the finished pizza, with the parchment paper onto the pizza stone on the bottom of the oven.
Bake 15 to 30 minutes. The cheese should be melted and the crust should be browned.