Easy overnight pizza dough: the dough that makes itself

This easy overnight pizza dough is truly fall off a log easy: with about 2 minutes of active time and a handful of ingredients you probably already have, you can truly make this practically on demand.

Actually it’s better than that. Once your yeast gets active, you can toss the dough into the fridge for a couple days and it’ll still be great. For someone whose plans often get sidetracked because of other people’s plans, this is my favorite kind of recipe. And once you’ve made this a couple times, I’m guessing it will be for you too.

The best thing about overnight pizza dough is that you can top it with just about anything you have on hand. As long as you can crank up your oven, you can make good pizza at home, repurposing leftovers for toppings or using better quality toppings than what you could get in takeout pizza (and still saving money).

If this dough is in the fridge, you have an easy FAST meal at your fingertips that’ll make everyone happy. This is the kind of win you need!

Grab a pinch of yeast, and let’s make some overnight pizza dough.

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Easy overnight pizza dough

Why this will become your favorite pizza dough

1. Cheap!: Flour, water, a pinch of yeast, a little olive oil, and salt. All very affordable ingredients. Shoot, you could buy fancy imported 00 flour and it’s still cheap!
2. Stupid easy: where’s the Staples voiceover guy hitting the giant red easy button? You need almost no skills to make this dough. Handling it takes a little more practice, but I have hacks further on here.
3. Better flavor: the long slow cold fermentation develops flavor you can’t get in a quicker rise. Yes, I too run short on time and take shortcuts with the dough as I do in my BLT pizza or by using my pita bread as a base for pizza. Still, by planning ahead just a tiny bit, this overnight dough will give reward you with much tastier dough.

What’s the best kind of flour to use for overnight pizza dough?

Pizza makers get into heated arguments over this question. Are there finer points that have validity? No doubt.

Still, I’m a Mom with 4 kids, and if you’re here, I suspect you too have better things to do with your life than argue about the perfect flour for pizza.

The truth is, that you’ll never make pizza at home if you’re afraid of using the flour that you have on hand.

Hear me now: regular all-purpose flour makes perfectly edible pizza. Is organic better? Yes. Is organic 00 flour better–absolutely, but if buying better flour keeps you from making pizza, just stop it.

Use what you have! If I had to recommend flours, here’s what I’d use from favorite to least favorite. Know that I’ve used them all and none of my family members rejected any of them.

Flour recommendations (if you’re twisting my arm)

1. Organic 00 flour: I buy mine from Central Milling. If you buy a giant bag, it’s actually pretty affordable if you think of it in terms of how many pizzas you can make from the flour. If you buy it from the mill and not Amazon, you’ll also save some money.
2. Unbleached Bread flour: I use either King Arthur Unbleached Organic Bread Flour or Bob’s Red Mill Bread Flour.
3. Organic unbleached all-purpose: I get this at Costco. I always have at least 20# on hand for all my baking.
4. Conventional all-purpose flour: once in a while someone will gift me with a bag of this. I don’t waste flour, but this is not my favorite. Bromated bleached flour has an off chemical taste to it that I do not love. Again, if this is what you have, use it. Learning how to handle the dough is more important than the flour you use for it.

Ingredients for the best homemade pizza dough

• flour
• water
• yeast: I’m using instant, and just enough to get the dough started.
• olive oil (not in traditional Neapolitan pizza dough, but it makes it easy to handle and adds more flavor)
• salt

How to make overnight pizza dough (the magic of time)

1. Make the dough: Stir the flour, water, and yeast together. Knead a few times just to incorporate everything. Cover the dough.
2. Add oil and salt: Once the yeast is bubbly and active, squish the olive oil and salt into the dough. You don’t want to add the salt initially as the salt can slow down the work of the yeast or kill it all together. Adding the oil at this stage will also loosen up the dough, making it easier to incorporate the salt.
3. Cover and sit: I like to let the dough continue to work at room temperature for a few hours. This allows the yeast to continue to rise in a comfortable temperature before you slow it down in the fridge.
4. Fridge time: Resting the active dough in the fridge lets it develop more flavor and gives you flexibility in when you need to bake. The dough is really best used within 2 days, but I’ve used it up to 4.

Tips for making the best pizza

• Screaming hot oven: crank your oven up as high as it can go. Heat=more flavor and faster cooking time.
• Stone: I know a lot of people love their baking steels. For me, they’re too expensive and far too small. Baking on a hot stone transfers the heat to the pizza, giving you an airy crust with a lot of good color. I bought my stone from California Pizza Stones. You can buy a reasonably priced insanely strong stone from them that’s the literal size of your oven rack. If you’re like me and squidging the dough onto the hot stone is not your strong suit, a bigger target is better. I love the larger stone too because I can bake 3 pita bread at a time.
• Parbaking: I very often bake my pizza in a sheet tray first until it’s firm enough to pull out of the pan easily. From there, you can add your toppings or continue baking them directly on the stone. Parbaking the crust means for easier handling of the crust and ensures that you’ll get a crisp crust by the time that the toppings are finished cooking.
• Use your favorite toppings: my Gram’s pizza sauce was just pureed canned stewed tomatoes (underrated and delicious). This plus mozzarella and pepperoni or good salami is about all you need. Pick a sauce, add a meat, add a cheese. Try not to overload your crust with too much stuff, especially sauce. Nobody likes soggy crust!
• Use good tongs or a big spatula: Pizza making is hot work. Use long BBQ tongs or a big spatula to move the pizza into place if it gets unruly on you.

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