Grandma Pizza Dough Recipe (2024)

Today, I’m excited to bring you my recipe for grandma pizza dough as well as my hearty homemade pizza sauce to go with it.

Inspired by Peter Reinhart’s book, Perfect Pan Pizza, I’ve been tinkering with my own formulas for pizza dough, like my easy pizza dough for thin crust pizza.

But grandma pizza is maybe my favorite kind, so I am happy to report that this pan pizza dough is fantastic! For another thick-crust pizza, check out my Cuban sandwich pizza, too.

For ease of browsing, you can find all my pizza recipes in one place. Now let’s get to it!

Watch my grandma pizza dough web story here.

What Is Grandma Pizza?

Grandma pizza originated in Long Island and probably has never been heard of in Italy, the home of pizza.

That’s just fine with me–hooray for Italian American inventions!

Grandma pizza gets baked up in a parchment-lined half sheet pan that you coat liberally with olive oil.

The bottom of the crust basically fries to a crisp, golden brown in the oil while the interior is puffy but light.

Go easy on the toppings because

• you don’t want to weigh down the airy crust and
• with a crust this delicious, you want to be able to taste it

What Is So Great About This Recipe?

While you can technically use any pizza crust recipe for grandma pizza, this easy, 4-ingredient recipe requires no fancy equipment to make.

It bakes up crisp and chewy and pillowy and airy. So, so good!

Here’s what I like about it so much:

• You don’t need a mixer to make the dough
• It requires no kneading, just a few folds
• It’s a very wet dough, which means it develops a beautiful, open, airy crumb
• The flavor is excellent
• There’s almost no way to mess it up. I promise.

How To Make Grandma Pizza Dough

Ingredients

As with most breads and flatbreads, the ingredient list for pan pizza dough is very basic:

• bread flour: you can substitute all purpose flour with a high protein content (such as King Arthur), but you may need to cut back on the amount of water you use by just a smidge
• water: allows the gluten to develop. This is a very wet dough and can almost better be described as a very thick batter
• salt: keeps the yeast from running wild so you don’t end up with flabby dough and adds flavor
• instant yeast: provides the rise. You can substitute active dry yeast 1:1. Just proof it in a portion of the water (warm the water first) for a few minutes to make sure it’s alive). Then add it in with the rest of the ingredients

Why no oil in this dough?

You can absolutely add some olive oil to your dough if you’d like. With some experimentation, I’ve found that the dough bakes up simultaneously lighter and chewier without oil.

Since the dough basically fries in oil, sometimes too much of a good thing is too much.

A Note About Hydration

As written, this dough is 83% hydration. What this means is the weight of the water in the recipe is 83% of the weight of the flour.

This makes for a fairly loose batter, but it is “handle-able,” if you approach it in the right manner.

Since this is a very slack (wet) dough, be sure to oil your hands or wet them well with cold water when working with it. Don’t add flour–just oil or wet your hands.

Wet your hands really well with cold water before handling the dough. It’s almost magic how the dough doesn’t stick to wet hands. You can also rub your hands with some oil instead of getting them wet. Your choice. Just don’t add extra flour.

Procedure

Making the dough is a straightforward process. First, here’s a collage of step-by-step photos:

1. Mix flour, instant yeast, salt, and water together until shaggy.
2. Spread a thin layer of olive oil over your work surface.
3. Plop the dough out onto the oiled counter and, with oiled hands, press the dough out into about a 15″ square-ish shape
4. Using your bench knife to help you, stretch and fold the dough in thirds, like a letter
5. Fold the dough into thirds the other way.

From there, put the bowl you made the dough in over the dough like a little dough cave, and let it rest about 20 minutes.

Repeat the pressing out and stretch-folds 3 more times at 20 minute intervals.

After the last fold, oil the dough, and put it in a lightly-oiled bowl. Cover with a lid or with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least overnight or up to 3-4 days.

If it’s cool in your kitchen (say 65-67F), you can give it a long, slow rise on the counter and then shape your pizza the following day.

Alternate Technique: Coil Folds

If you are comfortable working with a very slack (wet, loose) dough, you can perform coil folds on the dough right in the bowl.

In that case, you will wet your hands very well, and you won’t need to use any olive oil until after completing all the folds.

NOTE: Always use two hands to do coil folds. I used one this time so I could take photos. The bottom right photo shows how to make that actual fold is clearly as possible. See how, when I let the dough go, it will basically be folded into thirds?

With wet hands, wiggle your hands underneath the dough in the bowl from either side until your fingers meet under the dough.

Pull the dough straight up. It may break on the first coil fold, but as the gluten strengthens, it will stretch out beautifully and pick up cleanly.

Once you have the dough lifted out of the bowl, allow the part hanging down the back of your hands to hit the front-bottom of the bowl.

Drag that along the bottom, and allow the dough hanging in front of your hands to hit at the back-bottom of the bowl before gently releasing the dough.

What you have just done, essentially, is to fold the dough in thirds. Repeat that same process at a 90 degree angle to the current direction of the dough, again wetting your hands and pulling straight up, allowing the dough to collapse into thirds.

That completes one coil fold.

Use hands dripping wet with cold water to perform your folds. The dough will barely stick, if at all. It’s like magic.

Do that 3 more times, allowing the dough to rest in the bowl, covered, between each coil fold.

After completing four folds, drizzle a little olive oil over the dough to keep it moist, cover, and refrigerate.

Shaping the Dough

This is easy to do, too.

You do have to be a little bit patient, because gluten naturally likes to spring back when you press it out, but aside from a little patience, this step takes very little skill. Approach your dough with confidence!

1. Note how incredibly stretchy the dough is after a rest in the fridge.
2. Deflate the dough just a bit by pulling the outsides of the dough into the center all the way around.
3. Liberally oil your Lloyd’s Pan with about 1/4 cup olive oil. Plop the dough in the center of the pan and then use your fingertips to dimple the dough and press it out as far as you can get it to go.
4. It may take 2 or 3 rounds of dimpling, allowing the dough to rest for 20 minutes or so between rounds, to get the dough to spread out completely in the pan. Once fully stretched, sprinkle on minced garlic or shake a liberal amount of granulated garlic over the dough. I also added pepper flake. That’s optional, but I like a bit of heat.

Cover the dough and allow it to rest and rise on the counter for about 3 more hours.

I love fresh ricotta on a pizza, so I parbake the pie for 10 minutes and then top with the ricotta, letting it melt on during the last 5-7 minutes of baking.

You may top the pizza however you like, using your favorite homemade or jarred sauce, or give my favorite of the 3 types of grandma pizza I’ve made in the past week, lasagna pizza. Lord it was good!

The Bottom Crust Basically Fries in Olive Oil!

This is one of the things that is so magical about this grandma pizza dough.

Since you’re not baking it on a super hot stone, it doesn’t end up with little bits of char. Rather, since you pan it up in olive oil, the crust fries to a beautiful, burnished, crispy golden brown!

Specialty Equipment

I just bought a Lloyd pan and I am never going back. This thing is magic.

The dark color really directs the heat to the crust, and there is minimal if any sticking.

I no longer have to bake with parchment under the dough.

If you’re serious about your grandma pizzas, invest in one of these bad boys!

More Pizza Topping Ideas

Honestly, I think you’re going to want to stick with this crust recipe once you’ve made it. But that doesn’t mean you won’t want to top it in all different ways.

I topped this one with a mixture of brick cheese, mozzarella, and mushroom gouda, which was an impulse buy at Lidl.

The other toppings were Boar’s Head pepperoni, pepperoncini, and little spoonfuls of ricotta cheese.

Here are some other ideas for you:

• Sausage Gravy Pizza with Peppers and Onions
• Pizza with Ground Beef and Peppers
• Bacon and Pickled Pepper Pizza
• Pulled Pork Pizza

Regardless, remember the secret really is in the crust and not to pile on the toppings too thick so the whole thing will bake through.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.

Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.

If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.

A Note About Measurements

My recipes are almost all written by weight, including liquids, unless otherwise specified.

For accuracy and consistency of results, I encourage you to buy–and use–a kitchen scale.

I promise that baking and cleanup will be so much quicker and easier.

This is the scale that I recommend for home use. I have owned and used one for years.

It will help me and other readers so much if you take a moment to rate and leave a review for this recipe.

You can use the stars to rate 1-5 (5 is best), and leave a review in the comments. It helps me make adjustments if any are needed, and comments help others decide whether the recipe is worth making.

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Thank you so much for taking the time!

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And there you have it, friends. A perfect (honestly!) grandma pizza dough recipe.