Pizza at Home - Joe's Favorite No Knead Pizza Crust Recipe and Walkthrough

My family loves Sundays because it's always Pizza Day! I have been making a new homemade pizza crust every Sunday and after 30 weeks, I've pieced together my favorite parts of all of them to come up with my favorite pizza dough recipe. 

Instead of making you read all the way to the bottom like so many other recipe pages I've come across, I'm putting everything at the top. 

Makes (2) 13 in pizzas. This is a wet dough, approximately 70% hydration. 
Ingredients: 

• 5 cups of flour (750g) 
• 2 cups of water (515g) 
• 5 tsp of instant yeast
• 2 tsp of salt
• 2 Tbs of sugar
• 2 Tbs of canola oil

Mix everything together in a bowl just until it comes together. No need for a stand mixer and no extra kneading. Let it sit until it doubles. Punch it down, split into two bowls and then rise again. Pour the dough onto a floured piece of parchment and with floured hands, press the dough into the desired shape. Add your favorite toppings, cook at 500F for 13 minutes, and enjoy!

That's it! It's all pretty simple!

Continue reading for an in-depth walkthrough with step-by-step pictures. 

We're going to be making this pizza dough from scratch. The great thing is, it's super simple! There's no need for a stand-mixer, or any special equipment. Just a bowl and a spatula. 

To start, add 5 cups of flour. With the Sams Club 20 lb bag of flour I use, that equals about 750 grams. 

To that flour, mix in the 5 tsp of yeast, 2 tsp of salt, and 2 Tbs of sugar. 

What about letting the yeast bloom? If you've used your yeast recently and know it's alive, there's no need to add the extra step. 

Add all the dry ingredients to the flour. 

Mix it all up with your spatula. 

Once everything is mixed, it's time to add the wet ingredients. 

In goes 2 Tbs of Canola Oil and 2 cups of water. 

Everything was a little too dry for my liking, so I added just a little more water. 

This is what it looks like with 515g of water, or approximately 2 1/8 cups. 

That gets covered with plastic wrap until it has doubled or more. 

Once it has doubled, it's time to punch it down and split it up. 

I sprayed my spatula with oil to keep the pizza dough from sticking to it. 

All the air bubbles are punched down and everything is mixed up again. 

I used a scale to measure equal portions. It ended up being 650g. I covered it with plastic wrap and let it double again. It took about 30 minutes. 

Since this dough is very wet, I'm using a sheet of parchment to stretch and transfer it. I floured the parchment in preparation. 

The dough is very bubbly and we're hoping to keep some of those bubbles in our crust. 

The dough pours out of the bowl and onto the parchment. 

With a little bit of flour on the dough, and a little bit more on my hands, I started pressing the dough out towards the sides. 

My main concern is to keep that fluffy edge moving and thin out the center. The dough is too wet to pick up, so I'm pressing it towards the edges of the parchment. If it gets too sticky, add a little flour and continue. 

Always making sure to keep that edge for the crust. 

Viola! A relatively round pizza dough!

Top with your favorite sauce. 

Sprinkle a little mozzarella cheese. 

Add some pepperoni and you're almost ready to go!

Before this goes into the oven, I need to trim off the excess parchment. 

This is ready to go into the oven. 

I scooped it up with my pizza peel (use whatever you have, like an upside-down cookie sheet) and placed it one my pizza stone. If you don't have a pizza stone, an aluminum pan works fine too. 

My oven has been sitting at 500F for about 30 minutes. If you're using an aluminum pan or pizza stone, make sure they're in the oven while it's coming up to 500F. 

Thirteen minutes later, this is the result! The edges are nice and puffy. The cheese is just starting to brown on top. 

Taking a look at the bottom of the crust, there's some nice browning going on. 

Here's a look at a slice from the side. There's lots of air bubbles in this pizza crust. Because we didn't knead it, it's not particularly chewy. It's almost like a fresh bread base because of all the bubbles. And if you or your kids don't usually like to eat the pizza crusts, you might want to reconsider with this recipe. It's so light and fluffy that my kids call it "a pizza with a free breadstick". 

I hope you give this recipe a try. It's become my family's favorite. Happy eating!