Best Vegan Pizza Dough Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making good pizza dough? ›

There are many tricks to achieving a tasty, homemade pizza dough that rises into a beautiful pizza crust, such as making sure your ingredients are at right temperature, using half bread flour for a stronger dough and half all-purpose flour for a nice rise, substituting honey for sugar to help caramelize the crust and ...

Often times, pizza dough is naturally vegan. The basic pizza dough formula is just water, flour, yeast, and salt. The only times that eggs or dairy are used for a bread recipe is typically just for enriched doughs (like brioche or cinnamon rolls– which we have the vegan options for on the blog!).

Not Letting the Dough Rest

Proofing – which is the process of putting the dough aside and allowing it to rise – enables the yeast to leaven through fermentation, making the dough rise. Not allowing your dough to proof for long enough will result in a hard, dense and just plain gross pizza base.

If you're keen to intensify its flavor even more, enhance the dough further – either with infused oil brushed over top, cheese woven into its edges or a combination of herbs and spices kneaded into it or sprinkled on it.

Flour is the main ingredient in pizza dough, and the type you use can have a big effect on the end result. All-purpose flour will work fine, but if you want a chewier crumb and a better hole structure, you should consider buying yourself some high protein bread flour.

A basic pizza dough recipe is typically flour, yeast, and salt, meaning that oftentimes, pizza dough is vegan. Some store-bought and chain restaurants, however, may include added ingredients like dairy, eggs, and/or honey in their recipes. So it is important to check first!

Start with Our Original Dough

Our original hand-tossed dough is tasty, plant-based and contains no animal products. Nope, not even honey. Note: Our other crust options contain milk and/or egg products.

Now, vegan pizza isn't perfect — vegan cheese and vegan meat are typically very high in fat and salt, after all — but in many cases, it's a healthier alternative to traditional pizza. Thanks to a vegan pie's lack of meat and dairy, you don't have to worry about consuming cholesterol or carcinogens.

Don't let it rise for too long, though.

“A few days' rise is fine and will enhance the taste of the crust, but any more than three days and the yeast will start to eat up all the sugar in the dough and convert it into alcohol, which will adversely affect crust flavor,” Schwartz said.

For Crispy and Chewy Pizza Crust, Use 00 Flour

00 flour is finely ground Italian flour that contains about 12% protein, or 12% gluten. It's the traditional flour used to make Neapolitan-style pizza. Since its gluten content is similar to bread flour, it also produces a pizza crust with chew.

What happens if you don't put sugar in pizza dough? ›

Sugar is an oft-misunderstood ingredient in dough. Some people believe that it's necessary to include sugar to feed the yeast. In truth, yeast is perfectly happy munching on flour. If you don't want to add sugar, you don't have to, and there are plenty of breads where sugar is completely unnecessary.

Before you add the sauce or any toppings, lightly brush the stretched pizza dough with olive oil and prick it all over with a fork. Brushing it with oil will prevent any excess moisture from seeping into the crust. No more soggy pizza crust!

Top 5 Factors that will make your pizza go WoW. Quality of ingredients: Using fresh and high-quality ingredients, such as whole-milk mozzarella cheese, flavorful tomato sauce, and high-quality meats, can greatly enhance the taste of pizza. Crust: A crispy, thin, and chewy crust can greatly improve the taste of pizza.

You don't add enough salt

As Bon Appétit's senior food editor pointed out, without the addition of salt, flour isn't very tasty. Given that traditional pizza crusts (you know, not the cauliflower and kale versions) are made nearly entirely from flour, salt is essential.

Pizza dough loves warmth, so if you can find a way to add some extra heat, your dough will rise faster. One way to do this is to preheat your oven to the lowest setting (usually around 200 degrees Fahrenheit) and then turn it off. Place your pizza dough in the warm oven for 10-15 minutes until it begins to rise.

Nail the sweet spot — warm enough to rise at a decent rate, yet cool enough to develop flavor — and you're golden. Studies have shown that the optimum temperature for yeast to grow and flavor to develop is 75°F to 78°F.

Although oil in pizza dough is not required, it may be helpful. The oil improves the dough's stretchability while also keeping it hydrated. When you bake the dough, you can see how this process works, and the oil keeps the dough supple even after cooking.

If you're in a hurry, skip the rise and make the pizza right now. It will make a thin-crusted pizza with a cracker-like flavor. Option 2 — Let the dough rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If you're planning to make pizza today, then give the dough a rise.