The Secret to Incredibly Easy Homemade Pizza

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Follow the ingeniously simple no-knead method to save time and money and become the pizza hero at your house. PHOTO: TIM NAUMAN PHOTOGRAPHY/WWW.TIMNAUMAN.COM

What’s the secret to easy homemade pizza from scratch? Make a big batch of dough to store in the fridge for a couple of weeks, pull off a chunk whenever you need it, roll it out, and bake for 10 minutes or less. There’s no resting or rising time required, and your active participation will be less than five minutes. The best part? Your stored dough will develop tasty sourdough flavors as it ages in the refrigerator, making each pizza better than the one before it.

Classic Pizza Margherita Recipe

Thin-crust Pizza Napoletana (Neapolitan-style pizza) is our touchstone for great pizza. The standard version — with mozzarella, tomato and basil — is known in Italy as Pizza Margherita, after Italy’s Queen Margherita, for whom this patriotic pie topped with the three colors of the Italian flag was developed in 1889. It’s crispy, thin and delicious.

The crispest crusts are those baked right on a hot baking stone, having been transferred there from a pizza peel (see Pizza-Making Supplies: Build Your Arsenal for our recommended pizza products). The trick to getting the pizza to slide right off the peel and onto the stone is to minimize the time the dough spends sitting on the peel. That calls for one crucial step: Have all of your toppings prepared in advance. You can also bake pizza on a sheet of parchment or a cookie sheet. The following easy homemade pizza recipe makes enough dough for at least 8 pizzas about 12 inches across. It freezes well, and is easily doubled or halved.

3 1/2 cups lukewarm water*
1 tbsp granulated yeast
1 to 1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt
7 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/3 cup tomato topping (Use sliced, garden-fresh tomatoes, Italian-style plum tomatoes straight from the can, or prepared tomato sauce, with or without seasonings.)
Fresh mozzarella, cut into 1/2-inch chunks or slices
6 fresh basil leaves, whole, thinly slivered or torn
Olive oil for drizzling over pizza
Flour, cornmeal or parchment for pizza peel 

* Substitute 1/3 cup of olive oil for 1/3 cup of water for a marvelously flavorful, slightly richer dough.

Mixing and Storing the Dough

1. Warm the Water Slightly. It should feel just a bit warmer than body temperature, about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Using warm water will allow the dough to rise to the right point for storage in about 2 hours. You can use cold tap water and get a great final result, but the initial rise will take longer. (Some people prefer the flavor of slow-risen dough.)