No Knead Pizza Dough Recipe (with No Cook Pizza Sauce)

No knead pizza dough is a recipe you’ll save forever because it gives you great pizza dough results with a seriously minimum amount of effort! 

Originally published May 6, 2012.

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With this no knead pizza dough recipe, you’ll never have to buy dough ever again. It only takes minutes to prepare, and tastes so much better than anything you’ll find at a store or shop.

Before I share this recipe for no knead pizza dough, I want to give you options. I have two pizza dough recipes on my site: this one is the easy-peasy recipe. You mix everything together at night, which literally takes less than 5 minutes including measuring the ingredients). Or you can make an authentic Neapolitan style pizza dough which takes more time and requires following quite a few steps, but the results are incredible! If you’re a hardcore pizza fan and have the time, this authentic Neapolitan pizza dough recipe is for you.

This is my copycat recipe from a local LA restaurant with truffled creme fraiche, brie, mushrooms and arugula on the pizza! It’s so good, you’ll be making it on repeat as others who have tried it.

You can top your pizza dough however you desire, from a classic Italian tomato pizza sauce, to a chocolate hazelnut spread, as they often make in Italy as a dessert! 

This was one made by a Neapolitan pizzaiolo at a pizza-making class I attended when I was visiting Naples last year. Nutella is much better quality in Italy, but in the US, I buy other brands like this Pan Di Stelle which has no hydrogenated vegetable oil (Costco also carries an inexpensive one).

When I first shared this recipe, I had joined the Food Bloggers of Los Angeles group where many of the members shared stories of their mothers’ cooking skills, or lack thereof. When one was asked what her mother used to make for dinner, she responded, “reservations”.

My mother’s stuffed artichokes (taught to her by her mother).

Fortunately, I had the opposite problem as my mother is a most wonderful cook! She was born in a tiny village in Southern Italy, between Rome and Naples, and has six older sisters (every single one of whom are also fabulous cooks). One example is my Zia Iolanda and her stupendous gnocchi!  I wrote a post featuring all my aunts and other relatives recipes so you can check out more of them.

I really had a hard time narrowing it down to one thing as I could really choose from hundreds of things that my mother has on her “mental menu.”  Let’s just say I didn’t inherit my sweet tooth from my mother, so I narrowed it down to something savory.

I finally decided on pizza; not just any pizza, but her favorite marinara pizza, which has nothing but a tomato sauce, or chopped tomatoes as a topping. Since she grew up in Italy, one can only imagine that this is not strange, but perfectly understandable, as the flavor of the pizza crust and tomatoes alone is heavenly! You can see a slice of marinara pizza below, from Pizzeria via Florida when I was visiting Rome.

Of course, my pizza can’t compete with pizza made in Italy, but using DOP (Italy’s Federal government certification) tomatoes, top quality extra virgin olive oil, and fresh ingredients, definitely helps.

As with my no knead bread recipe which is from the genius baker, Jim Lahey, this no knead pizza dough is tough to beat in terms of the amount of time and labor expended actually making the pizza. The hardest part is doing the math to figure out when to mix the dough so that it is ready when you want it to be! It’s the same ingredients I’ve always used, but just given much more time to rise with much less yeast (and less work). 

You can even fry this no knead pizza dough and keep it plain. It’s fantastic this way, too, and you can find the pizza fritta recipe here. The one in Naples (above) is deep fried, and topped with tomatoes, cheese and basil and is essentially a pizza donut (it’s called Montanara in Naples).

No Knead Pizza Dough Recipe

dough adapted from Jim Lahey                 makes two large pizzas

FULL PRINTABLE RECIPE BELOW

Ingredients:

• all-purpose flour (to make it even better use 00 flour)
• active dry yeast
• Diamond Kosher or sea salt
• pinch of sugar
• quality extra virgin olive oil
• warm water 

Prep the No Knead Pizza Dough for Use the Next Day

Place all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Make a well and pour in the water. Stir just until everything is thoroughly mixed into a slightly sticky dough. Cover with cling wrap and let rise for approximately 18 hours, or until doubled in size.

Find the best and easiest pizza sauce recipe here (printable recipe card below, too.)

Bake the No Knead Pizza Dough

Prepare two 12×16 (or smaller, if you like a thicker crust) baking trays by drizzling with some extra virgin olive oil, avoiding the edges.

When the dough is ready, knock it down with a spatula, then place it onto a well floured surface and knead for a minute and divide into two equal pieces.

Shape the dough into 12 x 16 rectangles and place on each tray.

 Then drizzle with some more olive oil, and rub all over the dough, again, avoiding the edges.

Let rise for about 10 minutes in a warm, draft-free place.

Heat the oven to it’s hottest setting, minimum of 500ºF (260ºC) then evenly spread the tomato topping on the dough.

When the oven is ready, place one pizza on the very bottom of the oven for 4 or 5 minutes. Then quickly add toppings, if you are using any, and move to the center of the oven for another 5 to 7 minutes. (These cooking times will vary depending on your oven and oven temperature.)

Just lift the pizza with a fork to peek underneath and see if the bottom is brown. The bottom should look like this when it is ready:

The pizza crust should be light brown on top too-I left this one a little pale as I was going to reheat it in the oven later.

Remove the pizza from the oven, and place it on a surface on which to cut it.

Cut the pizza into larger pieces which can be folded in half and eaten this way. This is called “pizza al portafoglio” which you’ll see around Naples when they had you folded pizza (“wallet pizza” is the translation for this style).

You can wrap the bottom part of the pizza in parchment, which is how pizzerias serve their “to go” pizzas in Italy (not necessarily in parchment, but in paper.) Folded pizza is called “pizza al portafoglio“, or wallet pizza. 

Of course you can make any size or shape pizza with this recipe, and add some mozzarella and toppings too, but I hope you give plain a chance. ? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised–and you can thank my mother. I hope you enjoy this no knead pizza dough recipe as much as I do. You can also check out this no knead bread recipe.

Pizzas with toppings: mozzarella, Abruzzese hard Italian sausage, and fried red peppers! Delicious!

And plain mozzarella isn’t too shabby, either.

I hope you enjoy this no knead pizza dough recipe as much as I do.

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