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This is the archived version of the Milk Street website and is no longer up to date.

Please visit 177milkstreet.com to see the current website with all of the latest recipes!

High-Hydration Pizza Dough

2½ pounds dough (enough for four 10-inch pizzas)

4¼ hours (40 minutes active)

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This pizza dough is a wet, high-hydration dough (about 76 percent hydration). It also starts with a preferment—which, in this case, is a mixture of bread and semolina flours, a little sugar, yeast, salt and water that’s left to stand for an hour at room temperature, during which time it becomes active and bubbly. The preferment then is mixed with more bread flour, olive oil, salt and water, then the dough rises for about 1½ hours. The end result is a pizza crust with a rustic, open crumb; a chewy-crisp texture; and bubbles that char in the oven, forming the spotting that’s characteristic of high-end pizzeria pies. The flavor is wheaty and complex yet clean, not yeasty and boozy like drier doughs made with an abundance of yeast. For make-ahead and storage convenience, there are a couple good stopping points in this recipe. After 30 minutes of room-temperature rising, the dough can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours. Or, after dividing into four portions, the dough can be allowed to rise at room temperature for 30 minutes, then refrigerated for up to 48 hours. For topping and baking instructions, refer to specific pizza recipes, but keep in mind you will need a peel for shuttling the pies into and out of the oven and a baking stone or steel. Before baking, we heat the oven and steel (or stone) for an hour at 500°F or 550°F to build up heat, but prior to shaping and topping pies, we switch the oven to broil. The upper heating element browns and chars the surface of the pizza while the hot steel crisps the bottom crust.

2½ pounds dough

(enough for four 10-inch pizzas)

Tip

Don’t be shy about flouring the counter as you portion and shape the dough. This dough is wet—almost pourable—but as long as it and the work surface is floured, it’s very workable. It’s much more compliant than lower-hydration doughs and does not snap back with the same vigor, so it’s easy to shape into rounds.

4¼ hours

(40 minutes active)

For the preferment

  • 137

    grams (1 cup) bread flour

Directions

Reviews
christopher v.
July 24, 2026
Success
I made this and froze the second half, defrosted a few days later, as good as the original.
GARY F.
March 10, 2026
Substitute bread flour with 00 flour?
Do you know how 00 flour would work in this recipe? If ok, are the measurements the same? TYIA
Rosie J.
October 1, 2025
Great recipe
i have made this a couple of times before when I was going to use the dough the next day. Turned out great. Much less snap back than normal recipes. However, I now would like to make a batch (because I have time) but want to freeze it. At which stage do you recommend freezing?
Scott S.
February 19, 2026
don't freeze
Very loose. so after freezing it's too loose. makes for great pizza, just don't freeze.
MARY E.
March 10, 2026
Video or Pictures please!
I will likely give it a try but would be far more confident if I could see that cupping, rotating and dragging!

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