I know what you're thinking - 3 days to make pizza? It's the perfect Artisan Pizza Dough you'll love to make Dutch Oven Pizza with!
I love making pizza at home! We do consume gluten, but we find that our tummies enjoy it more when it's made at home, from fresh ground wheat. There's just something about letting the wheat hydrate and sour a bit over time that makes it easier to digest!
Split the dough up into smaller portions and use smaller pans and everyone can make their own individual pizza! It's also great when cooking in batches, such as when the hunters are coming in and out of the woods. Make the kids' pizza first so it cools while yours heats!
If you're headed out hunting, or even to the backyard, this is also a perfect recipe for cooking over a campfire or even on the grill. Campfire Pizza lets you bring a taste of home out with you, and you don't need to rely on packaged snacks and meals.
Key Ingredients
Flour - I'm using a mix of fresh ground wheat berries and bread flour, which gives us the perfect chew in the dough.
Yeast - Active dry yeast is activated by water, and we then give the dough a loooong proof to create some really nice flavour!
Toppings - Shred some cheese, grab some sauce, and whatever else you enjoy.
How to Make Artisan Pizza Dough
***See recipe card below for precise measurements and instructions.***
Step 1: Let the yeast hydrate and allow the dough to long ferment overnight.
Step 2: Add remaining ingredients and stretch and fold several times over the next few hours, before setting it aside for 2-3 days!
Step 3: Pour out to a floured surface and gently knead and coax into a smooth ball of dough.
Step 4: Divide into desired portions.
Step 5: Cover dough to proof again over a long period.
Step 6: Preheat the oven with the Dutch oven inside. Then very carefully assemble your pizza in the hot Dutch oven.
Step 7: Add desired toppings and of course cheese!
Step 8: Bake until crispy and done!
More Pizza to Enjoy
Looking for more pizza? It hits all the food groups with carbs, protein, and fat - and you can easily get some veggies into everyone. How about slicing open bread to make French Bread Pizza? My boys also love making Focaccia Bread, which can either be its own dish or a pizza crust!
Sourdough Breadsticks can again be a side dish for any meal, but I know many love to get breadsticks with their carryout pizza. Feel free to customize with your favourite cheese or seasonings, or even some Fermented Garlic. Dip in marinara sauce or one of our best dips, Homemade Ranch.
Tips and Tricks
- Preheat the Dutch oven in the oven for at least 30 minutes. Placing your pizza into a hot vessel helps the crust crisp on the bottom.
- Feel free to use smaller cast iron skillets for the kids. They can assemble on the parchment so you can safely transfer to the hot pan.
- Shred your own cheese! Even if you don't make your cheese from scratch, shredding it yourself will give you optimal meltiness.
FAQs
Because we are using yeast, you must use hard wheat berries, not soft. Both red and white work well, but red has a stronger, heartier flavour that not everyone loves. You can always remember hard vs soft by thinking that "yeast is hard" meaning difficult, so you need hard wheat. Combined with bread flour, you have a high-protein dough which gives you that chew and perfect crumb. You can use all-purpose in place of bread dough, just being aware that your crumb will change slightly.
We are combining yeast and water before anything else, which will give you a good idea. I like recipes like this for novice bakers, because you will know if your yeast is active before wasting a bunch of ingredients. You should see it start to foam up and bubble within five minutes. If you don't, get fresh yeast and start again.
The sky's the limit here! You can use any types of meat and veggies or even pineapple. I do recommend using cooked meats, whether that means cured like pepperoni or cooking up ground sausage in a skillet first. This pizza cooks fast, meaning your raw meat won't cook in time. If you prefer softer veggies, you'll want to cook those ahead of time as well.
Photos by Dante from Shire by the Sea
More Dutch Oven Recipes
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Dutch Oven Pizza
Ingredients
Dough Starter:
- 70 grams freshly milled hard wheat flour
- 280 grams bread flour all-purpose flour may be used
- 350 grams water at 45°F
- ⅛ teaspoon active dry yeast
Pizza Dough:
- 350 grams water at 55°F
- ¼ teaspoon active dry yeast
- 130 grams freshly milled hard wheat flour
- 510 grams bread flour
- 20 grams fine sea salt
Pizza:
- Sauce
- Cheese
- Toppings as desired
Instructions
Day 1:
- Mill wheat berries for starter. Mix starter ingredients together in a bowl, sprinkling yeast over water. Mix until all the flour is wet and sticky.
- Cover with towel or wrap for 24 hours at room temperature.
Day 2-3:
- Starter should be ready and yeasty smelling.
- Mill dough wheat. In a mixing bowl add starter mix, dough water, and sprinkle yeast over starter mix. Then add both dough flours and salt.
- Mix by hand until everything is incorporated. Cover and let sit for 20-30 minutes to hydrate.
- With wet hand, reach under the dough grabbing one quarter of it and stretching and folding it over the other side. Repeat this step 3 or 4 more times.
- Cover dough and repeat fold process 2x over the next hour.
- Cover tightly overnight to develop more flavour until doubled or tripled in size in refrigerator. If you are wanting to use dough sooner, leave at room temperature for 4-5 hours before shaping.
Shaping:
- Lightly flour your hands, work surface, and bench scraper, but don’t flour the dough to keep it soft.
- With your hands, gently scrape the dough onto work surface large enough to work dough. Pick up and ease down dough into workable shape.
- With your bench scraper, divide the dough into either large sections of 3-4 or smaller ones of 5-6. You could weigh for consistency but eyeballing works fine too.
- As above for the shaping of the dough mass, except with lightly floured hands, reach under the dough grabbing one quarter of it and stretching and folding it over the other side. Repeat this step 3 more times and then cup hand around the dough ball and pull it across the surface of the work surface with no flour, tightening the ball.
- Repeat the pulling and tightening action another 2-3 more times to get a well formed ball with gasses intact.
- On a lightly floured tray or baking dish, place balls seam side down, lightly flouring or oiling tops and allowing enough room for expansion during proofing, cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 6 hours.
- Over the next day dough will develop more flavour. Dough will keep for 2-3 days. You can also bring your dough camping by keeping them cold in a cooler.
To Cook:
- Make sure your dough is removed from fridge for at least an hour or two before shaping pizza.
- Preheat oven to 500°F (your Dutch oven will heat in your oven for at least 45 minutes after you shape and prepare your pizza) .
- Grate cheeses and prep all your ingredients.
- On parchment paper cut to size of your Dutch oven with enough length to lift pizza in and out, take your first dough ball and on a lightly floured cutting board start shaping it out with your fingers to the approximate size of the bottom of the Dutch oven. If you like more crust, leave a large edge of pizza disk.
- If you need to shape your pizza more, pick up the dough and rotating it let the pull of it downward help stretch it out and keep carefully rotating it while being careful not to tear it. It takes practice! Do this until you have about a round flat dough and then lay back down on your floured pizza paper
- Gently stretch the dough to the edges without tearing and making too thin. If holes appear, fold over a bit of dough and work out till thin but not torn. Make sure dough is not larger than the Dutch oven!
- When you are satisfied with the size and shape of the disk, carefully pull Dutch oven off the fire with heavy gloves and take lid off.
- Add sauce (leaving at least ½ inch around the edges), cheese, and toppings to the dough, being careful not to overload it on the paper. Lift cutting board with pizza carefully and gently slide or more carefully lift assembled pizza into pre-heated Dutch oven. Place the lid back on.
- Bake until cheese is satisfactorily melted and crust baked.
- When finished, pull Dutch oven out of oven. Pull out pizza extra carefully and put on a cutting board for slicing.
- If you’re baking more than one pizza, repeat steps above, but Dutch oven should be sufficiently heated after each round.
Notes
- Will make 6 medium or 3 large pizzas. You can adjust to any size you like.
- Use cooked meats to ensure they are safe to consume, as the pizza might not cook long enough to cook raw ingredients.
- Use cooked veggies if you prefer softer toppings.
- Nutrition facts are for artisan pizza dough only.
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