Pizza Dough Recipe with Plain Flour – Bread flour vs All-Purpose Flour for Pizza

What if the world runs out of bread flour or 00 flour? What’ll happen to your pizza cravings? Seems like I am pushing you in a Sci-Fi or fiction movie story but have you ever tried pizza dough recipe with plain flour?

You may think preparing a pizza recipe with all-purpose flour will be a disaster. But it’ll be a Hurray moment for the chefs whose kitchens run out of the “pizza flour” and they don’t want to rush to the market, it’s actually possible to make a pizza with all-purpose plain flour.

So, let’s roll your sleeves and get to your kitchen countertop.

Pizza Dough Recipe with Plain Flour – Bread Flour Vs All-Purpose Flour for Pizza

Before we get into ingredients and how to section, let it know why bread flour is the most suitable base for pizza dough.

Well, the main game revolves around gluten structure. Protein richness in the flour results-in the quality of gluten structure. The finer the quality will be, the more elastic and stretchy your pizza dough will be. With that said, this is the main difference between or battle between bread flour vs all-purpose flour for pizza.

As the pizza dough will be stretchier, you’ll find yourself in a great position to play with the dough. The weaker gluten structure forms a sticky and less flexible dough that’ll face way more wear and tear than the elastic one.

That’s why bread flour or mostly known as 00 flour in many countries experience the chef’s love due to high protein content.

To the exact value, mostly brands produce bread flour with 14g of protein per 100g serving. This becomes the 14% part if we break down the flour contents. However not significantly, this number varies from brand to brand and you can see even 18%-22% of protein ratio in some pizza cultures. 

In contrary to this, All-purpose flour contains somewhat 8-10% of protein content that doesn’t work efficiently with the requirements of pizza chefs. You should pick bread flour with at-least 14% of protein content.

What Happens When You Use All-Purpose Flour for Pizza Dough Recipe?

Don’t worry, the world order won’t change, but few things would happen with your pizza dough recipe;

• The dough will not be as shiny as it supposed to be in the case of bread flour
• Less elasticity for sure
• It’ll rise but not that much, in fact, you’ll see a slightly flattened pizza with a difference in taste from regular bread flour pizza dough.
• The pizza will be stuffed and fluffy.
• It’ll require a pizza pan or other pot as a base, so you can save it from tearing. 

Fast Pizza Dough Recipe With All-Purpose Flour:

The finest thing about this recipe is you won’t need any fancy ingredients rather the basic 5 ingredients will work from start to finish.  And what the pizza will be called as after this recipe. You can name it as per own choice but most people know it as “Margherita pizza.”

Ingredients:

• Plain Flour: Take as per serving, but for one large or two small pizzas, 100-200g is suitable
• Yeast: Only active dry yeast. If you are in a real hurry, Instant yeast will be the choice. 7g Sachet
• Olive Oil: I use 1-2 tablespoon
• Salt and Sugar: Half tablespoon or as per your liking
• Warm water: 125-150ml of water
• Nutritional Values: 570-670 Kcal

Approximate Time To Get Ready:

• Preparation Time: About 15 minutes (including mixing and kneading the dough).
• Rising Time: Approximately 1 hour (for the dough to double in size)

How Do You Roll Out The Margherita Pizza Recipe?

Do warm the water:

First thing first, you need to test the yeast. For that purpose, you need to warm the water to approximately 105-115F. Mix the sugar and yeast in that hot water. Keep this mixture for some minutes and we need to see bubbles in the Yeasty fluid as a sign of yeast activeness. Leave this side for some minutes and come to the other side.

Gather all other ingredients in a bowl:

The remaining ingredients including plain flour, salt and olive oil should be mixed in a bowl. Now check the yeast mixture. If it shows a bubbly condition, it’s ready to go in the flour.

Make a Paste:

Now combine all the mixture and you can mix it with bare hands and through a stand-alone dough mixer. Two conditions can come up in front of you;

• If the mixture turns out to be dry, add water gradually to form a nice soft paste
• If the mixture remains liquid or somewhat wet, add flour as per the condition.

Knead it for Some Time:

Now shape the mixture in a ball, then place this structure on a lightly floured kitchen top surface, and start kneading it. Remember, the dough will show all the similar properties of bread flour dough when it reaches a fine limit of kneading, except the exceptional elasticity due to less protein and gluten content.

Knead it for 2-4 minutes and place it covered at room temperature for 30-45 minutes for proofing purposes. You can give it more time to proof but as per your appetizing needs, the last 30 minutes will do the trick. 

Let’s Get Ready for Ingredients Topping:

After the proofing period, make sure your dough has risen to some extent. Put the dough on the kitchen top, dust it with flour, and let it stretch according to the pizza size you want. Put it in a pizza baking tray or iron cast pizza pan to save it from tearing.

Make a Fine crust and paste the passata over the dough. Let the passata season and sprinkle the other ingredients over the round shape of the dough base.

Cook It, Eat It, Be Proud of Yourself:

When you are done with the recipe, put this whole crafting in a preheated oven and let it cook for 10-20 minutes in a domestic microwave. Wood-fired oven can reduce this time. After it reaches the baking finesse, pull it out, slice it, and enjoy it.

Key Takes Using an All-Purpose Flour for this Recipe:

Remember, the key difference you’ll see is the elasticity, I am mentioning again. Secondly, the longer the dough ferments, the more flavor gets induced in your recipe. And gluten structure is something that is the base of long fermentation. The strong gluten structure allows dough to sit longer.

So, here in the case of a pizza dough recipe with all-purpose flour, the weak gluten structure won’t get you too far. You need to put the finely crafted recipe in the oven while not taking much long. So, with that logic, your pizza will be somewhat flatter, chubbier and fluffier.

The Bottom Line:

So, pizza dough recipe with all-purpose flour can be fun learning for home-chefs. The difference isn’t much significant in shape and style. But definitely texture and taste are something that’ll be noticed by your taste buds. Overall, when you really want to turn things fast into your hunger killer, this can be your “under 30-minutes go-to” recipe.