The Best New York Style Pizza Dough and 14 Tips for Success!!
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This NY style pizza dough recipe has been winning over home pizza makers for nearly 15 years, earning rave reviews from professional pizzaiolos and native New Yorkers alike. Many years ago, my own quest for the perfect crust lead me to this tried-and-true formula based on wisdom from the pizza masters at www.pizzamaking.com and the late great Dough Doctor, Tom Lehmann. With thousands of successful bakes and countless testimonials from both pros and Big Apple natives who say “this is the real deal,” this recipe continues to help home bakers achieve that authentic New York pizzeria experience in their own kitchens.
Important Variables
Making NY style pizza dough is definitely somewhat of an art form. There are so many variables that can be changed aside from the ingredients alone. For example, these variables include:
- oven temperature
- temperature of the water used to make the dough
- proofing methods (room temp vs cold rise)
- order of adding the ingredients (yes, this makes a big difference!)
- mixing time
- use of autolyse
- use of poolish (I don’t do this or the one before, although I have in the past)
And then of course, the toppings which can be simple or as complex as you’d like. But don’t worry too much about all of this – my method is easy and straightforward. Plus, you will make better dough than 99% of the pizza chains out there. You will not want take out anymore!
The Big Secret (How You Proof the Dough)
My all-time favorite dough is NY style dough, which really is classic pizza dough that is stretched out into a thin crust pizza. This type of pizza dough contains water, flour, salt, instant yeast, and olive oil (and sugar especially when baking in a home oven, to help browning).
After it is mixed, it is proofed (left to rise/ferment) in the refrigerator for a minimum of 24 hours and up to 72 hours (it can also be frozen) – this is the big secret. I’ve used the dough up to 5 or 6 days afterwards, so you can essentially prepare dough for the week.
This recipe produces a crisp yet foldable crust that is tender, light, and flavorful and will make enough for four 14-inch pizzas. You can easily double or half the recipe to make 2 or 8 pizzas.
Fourteen Tips for Success
Tip 1: Choosing the flour
Use high-quality flour – I like to use King Arthur’s all purpose or bread flour; higher protein (ie, bread) flours work best. However, I prefer all-purpose flour because I like a lighter, airy crust.
Tip 2: Adding the yeast
Do not add instant dry yeast (IDY) directly to cold or cool water – you may shock the yeast (add the IDY to your flour instead) (please note that IDY differs from active dry yeast, which must be activated by adding it to water).
Tip 3: How much yeast?
Use only enough yeast to “get the job done” – yeast eats the sugar in your flour to produce its leavening effects – I find that if you use too much, your dough will be tasteless (this is just my opinion); however, it is a fact, that too much yeast can make your dough taste bad. Most recipes out there, some of them in well known, published books contain too much yeast!
Tip 4: Cold ferment that pizza dough!
Always use your refrigerator. The best NY style doughs “ferment” or “cure” in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours and up to 48 72 hours. This is called a “cold rise” (vs warm rise on your kitchen counter).
The refrigerator is used to retard (or slow) the dough’s fermentation, allowing that distinctive flavor to come through (ever wonder why some pizza crust tastes different than others, despite the fact that they are both made from just about the same exact ingredients? – this is a big reason why!)
When your dough rises too quickly, the flavor will not develop optimally. Slow rise = MUCH better flavor.
Tip 5: Weigh those ingredients!
Use a scale to weigh the flour instead of using a measuring cup – it is much more accurate and will yield superior results. I’ll admit, I resisted doing this for a loooong time. Just do it. You’ll be glad you did and your dough will be more consistent and much improved.
Tip 6: Add oil last
Mix the oil in as the last step, after the flour has all been incorporated. This is important to allow the flour to hydrate properly.
Tip 7: Flour your dough balls
Before tossing or opening your dough balls, flour them *very* well on each side (if you are a beginner) to ensure they do not stick to your counter or pizza peel. I sometimes use a bit more flour after I begin spreading them.
Tip 8: Keeping those rims a bit puffy
Take care not to “degas” the rim of your pizza as you are spreading your dough! Do NOT ever use a rolling pin! There are many different methods to spread/open your dough ball. I hope to add a few pictures someday of this process.
Tip 9: Baking pizza in a home oven
Ensure that your oven is preheated for a sufficient amount of time (about 1 hour) and bake the pizza within 6 to 8 inches of the top of your oven (ie, your broiler) so that the tops browns sufficiently in conjunction with the bottom of the pizza.
Do not place the stone near the bottom of your oven. I made this mistake for too many years.
After your stone has been preheated sufficiently, the heat from the stone will cook the pizza from the bottom and you can switch the broiler on if you find you need more browning on the top (I now use the broiler to bake my pizzas…more on this sometime in the future).
If you find that your cheese is browning well before your rim attains sufficient color, use partially frozen cheese (ie, place shredded cheese in the freezer while the oven is heating up) and cold sauce or you can drizzle just a bit of olive oil on top of cheese.
Tip 10: Use a pizza stone or steel
Use a pizza stone if you have one. The stone with draw moisture out of the dough and produce a beautifully crisp crust. I use a pizza steel because my stones kept breaking.
Tip 11: Use just the right amount of sauce
Do not use too much pizza sauce – it will make your pizza soggy
Tip 12: Find the right kind of cheese
Do not use low fat cheese to top your pizza or pre-shredded cheese (the former will not melt sufficiently and the latter contains additives that prevent the cheese from sticking together and therefore does not melt very well). The best is low-moisture, whole milk mozzarella.
If you must use pre-shredded cheese, I’ve found that adding the sauce on top of the cheese helps with the melting. Also, do not use too much cheese; apply it sparingly so that you can achieve that mottled NY pizza appearance.
Tip 13: Flour your pizza peel
Use semolina or flour on the bottom of your pizza peel to prevent the pizza dough from sticking but be careful not to overdo it because it will burn.
Tip 14: Learn to launch that pizza
Give the pizza peel a few very small quick jerks to make sure the pizza will easily slide off your pizza peel before attempting to transfer pizza to the oven, and more importantly, rub flour into the peel before placing the dough on top.
Stretching the Pizza Dough
A nice video (from The GoodFellas Pizza School of NY), showing how to stretch the dough:
Freezing the Dough
- After mixing dough and dividing into balls, place dough in refrigerator for at least 24 hours.
- Place dough balls on baking sheet lined with plastic wrap or parchment paper, cover loosely with plastic wrap and freeze until firm (~ 2 to 3 hours or up to overnight).
- Wrap frozen dough balls individually in plastic and store in zipper-lock bags for up to 4 weeks.
- When ready to bake, transfer unwrapped dough into the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours before making pizza.
- Bring dough to room temperature for 20 to 60 minutes before baking (less time for hot kitchen/summer and more time for cool kitchen)
Pizza Dough Calculator
Need more dough? Less dough? Try out our new Pizza Dough Calculator to calculate the weights to get it just right!
More questions? Please see my NY Pizza FAQ
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The Recipe
📖 Recipe
The Best New York Style Pizza Dough
Equipment
- pizza stone or pizza steel for baking
- Standing mixer optional or hand knead
- kitchen scale highly recommended instead of volume measures
Ingredients
Original Recipe for Four 14-Inch Pizzas; want to make more or less? Use the pizza dough calculator
- 6.5 cups (796 g) all purpose flour or bread flour (weighing is most accurate!)
- 2 1/4 cups (493 g) water barely cold water (17.4 oz per 2 1/4 cups)
- 1 teaspoon (3.5 g) instant dry yeast
- 2.5 teaspoons (15.6 g) salt
- 2 teaspoons (7.8 g) sugar
- 1 tablespoon (11.8 g) olive oil
1 Pound of Dough (~454 grams) (use the pizza dough calculator to make more or less dough)
- 2 1/4 cups (274.5 g) all purpose flour or bread flour
- 3/4 cup (170.2 g) water
- 1/2 teaspoon instant dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
Instructions
Mixing the Dough
- Place water in mixing bowl.
- In a separate bowl, mix salt and yeast (and sugar if using) into flour
- Combine flour/salt/yeast mixture into water and mix until all the flour has been incorporated.
- After flour has been totally incorporated, add oil and knead for about 4 to 5 minutes (see note)
- Test final dough temperature, which should ideally be between high 70s to low 80s (optional)
Dividing and Rising
- Divide dough into 4 equal pieces (using a digital scale if possible; each ball should weigh 11.5 oz [~326 grams]), shape into a ball, and place in greased, sealed quart-sized container or oiled/greased freezer bag and refrigerate overnight or up to 72 hours (After much experimenting, I have concluded that I like 3 days best but day 2 is good too).
Assembly and Baking
- The following day, remove your dough balls within 1 hour or less of baking and allow the dough to come to room temperature. (the dough will tend to blister more if the dough has not been allowed to come to room temperature however, I often bake coldish dough without problems, just some bubbling)
- In the meantime, place your pizza stone in oven and preheat at 550 degrees (depending on thickness of your stone and your oven’s power) for at least 1 hour
- Open each dough ball using care not to degas, transfer to a pre-floured pizza peel (or on parchment paper), and top with your favorite sauce, cheese, or other toppings.
- Transfer pizza from peel to oven or slide parchment paper onto preheated pizza pan/stone and bake for 4 to 6 minutes each until browned on top and cheese has melted but not burned.
- Enjoy!
Notes
- Use of weight based measurements is highly recommended instead of US Customary. You will need a kitchen scale.
- METRIC amounts DO NOT correspond exactly to the US Customary amounts because, for example, 796 grams equals 6.4 cups (and most can’t measure 0.4 cups or 0.22 cups). Recipe was based on grams.
- Use the Pizza Dough Calculator
- If you want to use the dough the next day, knead a little more (slow speed for about 8 to 10 minutes)
- If you have time to let the dough rest for 3 days, knead for 4 to 5 minutes, low speed or hand knead.
- After mixing dough and dividing into balls, place dough in refrigerator for at least 24 hours.
- Then, place on baking sheet lined with plastic wrap or parchment paper, cover loosely with plastic wrap and freeze until firm (~ 2 to 3 hours or up to overnight).
- Wrap frozen dough balls individually in plastic and store in zipper-lock bags to store for up to 4 weeks (longer may work, but results might vary).
- Before using, transfer unwrapped dough into the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours before making pizza.
- Bring dough to room temperature for 20 to 60 minutes before baking (less time for hot kitchen/summer and more time for cool kitchen).
- calculate your own using baker’s percentages: 62% hydration, 0.4% yeast, 2% salt, 1.5% oil, and 1% sugar or use my pizza dough calculator.
You should have used the word lukewarm or given an explanation for Luke cold. I thought like cold would be on the cooler side; apparently it’s a term that’s interchangeable with lukewarm. Unfortunately, I didn’t look it up until I’d already added cool water and found 24 hours later that the dough hadn’t risen at all.
I will add definition – its “barely cool” where as lukewarm is barely warm. Not the same – you rated the recipe 1 star but have you baked it up yet?? Dough doesn’t rise much it ferments – unless your fridge is running warm
Excellent recipe and tips for making amazing home NY style pizza. The video on how to form your pizza is very helpful as well. Thanks!
I want to add some semolina to this recipe. Do you have any experience with how well semolina will hydrate? More water added or less water? Thanks.
In my experience semolina hydrates similarly to bread flour but it’s not as strong- I might start with 25% or less and make sure you’re using the double milled “rimacinated” semolina. Also some Chicago dough recipes call for semolina – might be an interesting dough to try as well:)
what is consider luke COLD I know luke warm is between 98 and 105?
Cool to the touch..barely cold. I don’t measure temp- hope that helps!
Best ever by far…. have been trying for years…kids always wanted it from the pizza place, not mine. Now they love it…thanks!!!!’
😃😃🎉🎉
La prepare y me salió muy rica, tengo que trabajar en la expansión de la pizza, muchas gracias!!!!
👍🏼
Side note: In your section on “freezing,” it says “after diving,” and I believe it should be “after dividing.” Thanks again.
Thank you!
This was life changing. I had watched a video at some point that called for the cold rise but it never clicked, and as you noted in your recipe, most of the accepted published versions call for 1T of yeast, in only 3C of flour; your 1t/6C ratio and cold rise turned out a dough so stretchy my wife was astonished. For the first time, we had dough that behaved like we saw it on TV, and that alone was worth the effort. Can’t thank you enough for this. Only recipe I’ll be using from now on.
Perfect! 5 stars!!
What size pizza does an 11 1/2 oz. dough ball make? Just need this as a starting point so I can adjust the size of dough ball to make whatever size pizza I’d like……..14″, 16″ or 18″ etc…etc…
Neve mind, I see it now……Sorry
Stretching it out to 14 inching makes a pretty thin pizza much like the NY pizza of the old days. A good starting point if you’re unsure is to use 11 oz for 12 inch pizza and go from there 🙂
Best pizza dough so far. Thin and crispy like NY pizza!
I used a whole packet of yeast to speed up the process to just a few hours, but ended up baking the next day
Outstanding recipe. Best dough I’ve tried yet. Only got to let it sit 27 hours but already looking forward to next pizza night to get the full 72 hours in.
I’ve been making pizza for years using an old recipe and I always struggled to stretch and shape the dough but I have to say, THIS IS THE BEST PIZZA DOUGH EVER, it’s very light and super easy to work with. Thank you!
Hi
Just trying this out.
Do you let the dough sit at room temp for a while to let rise before putting
into fridge as most recipes call for ?
is that even necessary I wonder.
Thanks
I don’t only because the dough will continue to rise until it equalizes to your fridge temp plus you will leave it at room temp out before baking. Maybe try to leave a few of the dough balls out for an hour before refrigerating to compare? The only thing to consider is that some people’s fridge temp is a bit warmer than others so you may continue to get a rise. My fridge is pretty cold at 33F or so
Just a got stone and have been trying out different NY style dough recipes/stone heights/sauces/cheeses. This is the first recipe that I’ve tried that the pizza looked as good as it tastes(leopard spotting on bottom and golden brown on top – beautiful) . I think I’ve found a winner and will use this recipe for a long long time! Thank you so much for the work you do so we don’t have to.
So… say someone has been meaning to try this recipe out for MONTHS and planned on making pizza tonight, but didn’t realise it has to sit in the fridge overnight. I know it won’t have the same flavour but you can still do this by letting it rise at room temp for a few hours, right? Will try to be better with timing next time!
I’m sure it’s been done 🙂…maybe make double (so you can bake the rest after a few days) and compare the results you get?
This seems like a fantastic recipe! I did all the prep work and will bake it tonight. I have a couple questions, and an observation:
At only 62% hydration, do you find that it gets a bit dry? The oven and steel/stone might be quick to transfer heat, but I suspect a 900 degree wood oven would bake quicker. I added a little more water to bring it to 74% and it seems to be holding up, although it was a bit challenging to manage the stickier dough. Have you tried the recipe with higher hydration?
Also, I plan to leave the dough out of the fridge for 3 hrs prior to baking, rather than 1, because I’ve heard that 2-3 hrs is the optimal amount of time to let it settle. Just wondering why you limit to only 1 hr — have you tried longer, and do you find it makes a difference?
Finally, I made a mistake and witnessed an interesting phenomenon: After mixing all the ingredients with cool water, I kneaded the dough for around 4 mins and was ready to ball it up, when I realized I’d forgotten to add the oil. So I added the room-temp oil and kneaded for another 4 mins. Suddenly I realized that the dough was starting to feel very warm in my hands! So I balled it up and put it in the fridge. Within 2 days, the dough had grown in the fridge, to 3 or 4 times its original size!!! Not sure if that will affect the taste, but just a warning to folks not to over-work that dough and oil, or the yeast will be all partied out before the dough has had a chance to ferment. Fingers crossed that I haven’t messed it up.
Hi Brian! Nah, I don’t find it dry at all…it’s a decent hydration. Not overly hydrated but not that low either. I do other doughs like sourdough with higher hydration and also a pan pizza with a 74% hydration. I only leave the dough out for 1 hour because it gets it to room temp. Otherwise, if you bake it cold, it will bubble up like crazy. I haven’t tried leaving it out longer but again for other styles like Neopolitan pizza I do. I don’t think you messed up your dough although that is one reason for using cool water and a short mix – once you put the warm dough in the fridge it will keep rising until it cools down. It’s also the reason why some people don’t get much of a rise while others get a huge rise. Either way, the dough ferments in the fridge over time and tastes so much better!
Thanks Marie. The pizza turned out great! So I did a little more research, and it turns out that my city (Calgary) is considered to be high-altitude for baking, and requires a few concessions. That means that my flour is going to be drier, and that’s probably why my instinct was to boost hydration to 74%. I wouldn’t want to go any lower (and maybe not much higher either). As for the crazy dough expansion, apparently that is also because of high altitude! So I’m told that the trick is to use slightly less yeast or slightly cooler water, let it rest in the fridge for 15-30 mins, knock it down, and then finally put it back in the fridge for another 72 hrs.
It’s sort of crazy how altitude affects baking.
That is crazy! Interesting to hear..thanks for the info and happy baking!