Today, we’re making homemade pizza dough that will last us for a couple of months.
By preparing eight crusts at once, we can set ourselves up for quick and easy pizza nights whenever we want them. Let’s dive right in!
Ingredients for Homemade Pizza Dough
Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
- 6 cups of warm water
- 1/4 cup of sugar
- 3 tablespoons of instant yeast
- 1/2 cup of olive oil
- 14 cups of flour
- 4 teaspoons of salt
Video Tutorial: Making Dough for Pizza Crusts
If you’d rather watch than read, here’s our video tutorial:
How to Make the Dough
First things first, let’s proof our yeast by combining warm water, sugar, and instant yeast together. We store our yeast in bulk for years at a time, so I like to do this just to ensure my yeast is active.
If you’re using fresh yeast, feel free to skip this step as it won’t be necessary.
Once the yeast is nice and bubbly with a foamy texture (indicating its activation), add half a cup of olive oil into the mixture.
Next, add all fourteen cups of flour into a very large bowl (like a 16 qt or higher) along with four teaspoons of salt.
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You may notice that I don’t bother sifting the flour for this recipe. Since we’re making pizza crust, a light and airy texture isn’t our goal here. If that’s important to you, by all means, sift the flour first.
Give everything a good stir. If you prefer to use a stand mixer, just divide the mixture into groups of 2 or 3, depending on the size that your mixer can handle.
Knead the Dough
At this point, I like to get my hands dirty (quite literally) and start mixing the dough together.
Flour your hands before diving into the sticky mess! Don’t be alarmed if it’s still very sticky—that’s completely normal.
Transfer the dough onto a floured surface and begin kneading for about five minutes or until you achieve a smoother, less sticky consistency.
Keep in mind that environmental conditions can affect how much flour your dough will need. So keep some extra flour nearby for adjustments as needed.
(If you knead for 5 minutes straight, and it’s not getting any smoother or less sticky, add more flour.)
As you continue kneading, aim for a soft and smooth texture similar to marshmallows. This indicates that your dough is ready!
Dividing and Freezing Your Pizza Dough
Now comes an important step: dividing our dough into four balls.
You can use a knife or, even better, a dough cutter:
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Remember when I mentioned making eight pizza crusts earlier? Well, since my family needs two pizzas per meal, each ball creates two medium-large pizza crusts—a perfect size between medium and large pizzas.
If you only need one pizza at once, feel free to divide it into eight balls now instead of four.
To ensure our future meals stay fresh while stored away in the freezer for up to two months, let’s coat each individual crust with olive oil before packaging them up:
- Pour some olive oil onto your hands
- Spread it evenly over each pizza crust
- Slide each coated crust into a freezer-safe Ziploc bag
- Don’t forget to add a little olive oil inside the bag as well before sealing it shut
Since I do a lot of meal prep and don’t like one-use plastics, I use these reusable freezer bags:
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These pizza crusts are now ready for the freezer! No need to let them rise or sit just yet—straight into the freezer they go.
When you’re ready to use, simply take a dough ball out in the morning and let it thaw on the counter throughout the day. This will give it plenty of time to both thaw and rise a bit.
I hope this guide has been helpful in your meal prep journey.
Making homemade pizza crusts in bulk is an excellent way to save time and enjoy delicious meals whenever you want.
If you want a quicker pizza crust recipe, check out this Crazy Crust Pizza.
Feel free to experiment with different toppings and sauces for endless flavor combinations. We even use our dehydrated & canned foods for toppings—onions, mushrooms, peppers, and more. Enjoy!
