Perfect Thin Crust Pizza Dough

The best thin crust pizza dough. Cold rise, thin crust, crispy, perfect pizza. You will never need another pizza dough recipe.

Ah, pizza.  One of the best foods ever invented.  Am I right?  Of course I am.  Everyone loves pizza.

Because it’s amazing.

I have been on the hunt for the perfect pizza dough recipe for years.  YEARS.  I have tried so many recipes, and none of them have quite measured up.

Many years ago (I feel really old when I count how many so I’m not even going to bother) I spent about 6 months living in Germany and attending a Bible college there.   There were a few things that I remember eating there for the first time and loving – donairs, apple pastries and chocolate croissants among them.  But the other thing that was just fantastic was the pizza.  It was in the south of Germany so close enough to Italy to get the real thing maybe?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that there was a little pizza place a couple blocks from the school where I had thin crust pizza for the first time.

Before that, I’d only ever had the usual takeout pizza, and thin crust wasn’t really a thing at the time at home (I told you it was a long time ago).  The pizza in that little restaurant was the best pizza I had ever eaten.  So of course I’ve been trying to recreate it (and/or find it somewhere) ever since.

This is it.  Perfect thin crust pizza dough.

So good that I’m not even trying to adapt it in any way, shape or form.  I found this recipe in one of my favourite cookbooks, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhardt.  And loved it.  So I decided that there is no reason to make another version of it as this one is perfect.  So it’s lucky for me (and you!) that he is allowing me to share his recipe here, because otherwise you’d all be missing out.  And we can’t have that.

If you’ve been searching for the perfect thin crust pizza dough recipe too, look no further.  This is it.  It does take some planning ahead, as it needs to rise overnight in the fridge, but trust me, it’s worth the time.

I also just found out that Peter Reinhardt has another cookbook all about pizza.  Fairly certain I need that in my life soon!

Tips for make perfect thin crust pizza dough:

• if you have a kitchen scale I would recommend using it for this recipe as yeast doughs always turn out better for me when weighing the dough rather then measuring it by the cup – if you don’t have one, use the scoop and sweep method to measure your flour (scoop the measuring cup through flour that has been fluffed up and then sweep the excess off with a knife, without shaking the flour down into the cup)
• it’s easiest to stretch the dough using your knuckles, stretching slowly with the backs of your hands (well floured) – but if that seems too tricky, you can also just roll it out with a well floured rolling pin
• this pizza dough will bake best with a preheated pizza stone, but an upside down cookie sheet is a reasonable substitute if you don’t have one
• you can bake it either directly on the pizza stone (use cornmeal and a pizza peel to transfer it) – or just shape and top your pizzas on a piece of parchment paper and slide the entire thing onto the stone, baking it on the parchment on the preheated stone (this is my preferred method because using a pizza peel I inevitably get cornmeal all over the floor and my oven!)
• check out some of our favourite pizzas to make with this dough: Caprese Pizza and Buffalo Chicken Pizza and the easiest ever blender Homemade Pizza Sauce

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