Overnight Thin Crust Pizza Dough (With Baking Steel Instructions)

If you love a thin crust pizza with perfectly chewy edges and a crispy, sturdy-yet-foldable crust, this is the thin crust pizza dough recipe for you.

A long overnight rise in the fridge makes this pizza dough easy to stretch super thin, and the low-hydration dough is designed to make fantastic thin crust pizzas your a home oven on a baking steel.

This is the same pizza dough you'll find me using in most of the unique pizza recipes you'll find on my site. So if you're looking for pizza inspiration, check out some of my most popular pizza recipes like my breakfast pizza, homemade hot honey pizza, or my classic supreme pizza recipe.

Jump to:

• About This Recipe
• Why an Overnight Pizza Dough?
• Pizza Dough Ingredients: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, Sugar, Oil
• High Hydration vs. Low Hydration for Thin Crust Pizza
• Autolyse and Why It Matters for Pizza
• The Pincer Method: Incorporating Salt and Yeast
• Kneading and Bulk Fermentation
• Dividing, Pre-Shaping, and Overnight Rise
• How to Freeze Pizza Dough
• A Note on Temperature and Dough Rising
• How to Hand Stretch Pizza Dough
• Substituting Active Dry Yeast for Instant Yeast
• Equipment for Making Pizza Dough
• Using a Stand Mixer
• Practical Tips & Recipe Notes - Timing, etc.
• Recipe FAQ
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

About This Recipe

There's a lot of things to like about this pizza dough. But the most important thing is that it makes a great thin crust pizza. The dough stretches whisper thin with a gorgeously bubbly crust, is very easy to work with, and has a great pizza dough flavor.

If you're new to the world of dough — bread, pizza, or otherwise — this recipe is a great way to familiarize yourself with many commonly used techniques for mixing and developing dough structure.

You'll learn what an autolyse is and why it matters, and how to knead the dough, and get used to measuring ingredients by weight instead of volume.

It's also a great, sturdy dough ideal for practicing the basics of shaping and hand-stretching pizza dough.

Credit: This recipe borrows dough mixing techniques and philosophies from Ken Forkish's book Flour Water Salt Yeast and The Elements of Pizza, includes oil and sugar as recommended in Joe Rosenthal's New York-style pizza guide, and calls for storing shaped pizza dough balls in round deli containers as recommended by Andris at Baking Steel which makes it easier to stretch the pizza in a circle shape.

Why an Overnight Pizza Dough?

While there are plenty of same-day or even one-hour pizza dough recipes out there, you just won't get the same flavor and elasticity from them that you'll get from a dough with a longer rise time.

The longer, slower rise gives the gluten network inside the dough time to both relax and strengthen, allowing you to stretch the dough for a thin and crispy pizza crust.

An overnight pizza dough works really well for most schedules — it only takes about an hour and a half of work at night (mostly resting time) and then goes into the fridge so it's ready to use the next evening.

Since this pizza dough has olive oil in it, which helps with browning and flavor but also slows down yeast activity, the slow overnight rise in the fridge is super important. It gives the yeast plenty of time to work and the dough plenty of time to build flavor before you use it!

This recipe makes enough for 4 medium pizzas. You'll want to use or freeze the dough within 24-72 hours of putting it in the fridge for the final rise.

Pizza Dough Ingredients: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, Sugar, Oil

Here are the ingredients you'll need to make this overnight thin crust pizza dough! Ingredient quantities can be found in the recipe card (at the end of the blog post).

• All-Purpose Flour - I use King Arthur Flour's all purpose flour which has a higher protein content than most all purpose flours. If you're using a store brand or generic brand of flour, you may find you get better results with their bread flour, due to its higher protein content.
• Instant Yeast - Instant yeast does not need to be bloomed or proofed in water before use. This is sometimes also called "rapid rise" or "bread machine" yeast.
• Salt - I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt which half as salty as other brands by volume. If measuring by weight, it doesn't matter what brand or type of salt you use. But if you're measuring by volume (teaspoons) and using a different brand of salt, even a different brand of kosher salt, cut the amount of salt in half.
• Water - Warm water, not hot water. Aim for about 85F. If it's too hot you risk killing the yeast and your pizza dough won't rise.
• Sugar - A small amount of sugar helps the crust brown and adds flavor to the dough.
• Olive Oil - A small amount of olive oil also helps with flavor and browning. Olive oil helps control the elasticity of your dough and gives you more control over how it stretches.

High Hydration vs. Low Hydration for Thin Crust Pizza

In baking, hydration is the amount of water in a dough relative to the total amount of flour, expressed as a percentage. (So a recipe with 100 grams of flour and 75 grams of water is a 75% hydration dough.)

This pizza dough is a relatively low hydration pizza dough (65%) for a pizza made in a home oven on a baking steel. A lot of the pizza doughs you see these days are designed for home oven use are high hydration doughs (70%+). This is because they're trying to replicate those unpredictably bubbly, airy, thicker crusts typical of Neopolitan pizzas.

Neopolitan pizzas, which are typically made with a low hydration dough (50-60%), bake up in 2-3 minutes at 900°F. A home oven, even with a preheated baking steel, can reach 500°, maybe 550°F.

This lower temperature means home oven pizzas take longer to cook (yes, 5-8 minutes is long when it comes to pizza), and the water in the dough has more time to evaporate. Adding more water helps keep the crust from drying out and contributes those giant, unpredictable bubbles across the surface of the pizza.

But that's not the type of pizza dough I was after with this recipe.

I was chasing something a little closer to a New York-style pizza (also traditionally made with a lower hydration dough) with this thin crust pizza dough recipe. I didn't want a thick, bubbly, ballooned pizza crust. I wanted a chewy, well defined crust around the outside of my pizza, with an evenly thin center and sturdy, crisp bottom all the way across.

Dropping the hydration to 65% and adding a small amount of oil and sugar (also typical of New York-style pizza dough) helps keep this thin crust pizza dough from drying out when it cooks, and keeps the dough from bubbling up where you don't want it to.

When I first starting making pizzas at home on the Baking Steel I was surprised by how hard it was to find instructions for how to actually bake the pizza. Most recipes stop once the dough is made. That’s because depending on your toppings, oven heat, whether you’re using a steel or a stone, the baking times can change.

But I didn’t want to leave you hanging, so I’ve included instructions for using this pizza dough on a baking steel that should work with pretty much any sauce or toppings you choose.

Autolyse and Why It Matters for Pizza

Wait—come back! Don't be scared. Autolyse might sound like a fancy scientific (or French?) term but it's actually a very simple part of the mixing process.

The first step step of this recipe is an autolyse step and you don't even need to know what "autolyse" means to do it, but I want to explain it so you know why it makes a difference. Because #KnowledgeIsPower.

Autolyse just means mixing your flour and water together and giving them a chance to rest (anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours) before you add salt, yeast, or any other ingredients.

Autolysing your pizza dough gives the starches in the flour a chance to hydrate and start forming gluten strands (which makes the dough strong!) before you add other ingredients. If you added salt, yeast, or sugar at this stage, they would tighten the gluten network instead of helping it relax. And if you added oil during the autolyse stage, it would prevent the starch molecules from binding to each other, inhibiting gluten formation.

So water and flour get mixed first, then salt, sugar, and yeast get incorporated in the second step, and oil is added during the final kneading step, so it coats the gluten network instead of getting in its way.

Whew! Enough information. Let's get into what this actually looks like in practice. It's easy, I promise.

The pizza dough isn't shiny or smooth or even kneadable during the autolyse stage. It's just a messy, stiff mixture of flour and water.

I like to start mixing with my dough whisk or a spatula, and then, once the water has absorbed, switch to using my hands. Smush the dough together into one mass of dough in the bowl, cover and let it rest for 10 minutes.

It's a small thing, but allowing it to rest like this for just 10 minutes gives your pizza dough more flavor and will make it stretchier, which is really important for a thin crust pizza dough.

That's it, that's the autolyse stage! I told you it was easy.

Instant yeast doesn't need to be proofed, but in this case we're giving it a bit of a head start so when we add it to the dough it can get to work right away.

The Pincer Method: Incorporating Salt and Yeast

To incorporate the salt, sugar, and yeast, we're using a technique Ken Forkish refers to as "the pincer method." (You can see him demonstrate it in this video around the 1:50 mark)

The dough will be very wet and squishy. There will be embarrassing, funny squelching noises. It's okay, you can laugh about it. This is how we force that salt, yeast, and sugar to incorporate evenly into the stiff autolysed dough.

Grab one tail end of the pinched dough and fold it in half. It will be wet and slippery. It might tear a little. That's okay. Rotate the bowl so the folded edge is facing away from you. Then use the pincer method to pinch across the dough again.

Alternate pinching and folding, until the water has absorbed and you don't feel the sharp granules of salt between your fingers when you pinch.

Shape the dough into a wet, messy ball as best you can. Then cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 20 minutes. It's been through a lot.

The sugar and salt and pinching have just cut through the gluten network we started building in the autolyse stage. Before we can add the oil, we need to give the gluten network some time to rest, relax, and reconnect.

Kneading and Bulk Fermentation

Finally! We have reached the last mixing step. It's time to add the olive oil. Prepare to be amazed by how quickly this dough goes from being a wet, sloppy mess to an absolutely joy to handle.

You really only need to knead the dough for about a minute for it to smooth out and come together.

Kneading is one of those hard-to-describe things that just takes practice until you get the hang of it. Fold the dough over itself, use the heel of your hand to seal it together, and rock it forward. Rotate the dough a quarter turn and repeat. Keep going until the dough feels smooth and soft.

Dust in additional flour only as needed if the dough is very sticky — too much flour will prevent the dough from sticking to itself.

Shape the dough into a ball by tucking all the edges underneath to create surface tension on the top of the dough. Place it back inside the mixing bowl.

If it's particularly dry where you live, drizzle it with about ½ teaspoon olive oil and use your hand to brush the oil all over the surface of the dough.

Cover and let it rest at room temperature (70-75F) for an hour. This stage is known as "bulk fermentation." The dough will rise but won't quite double in size.

Dividing, Pre-Shaping, and Overnight Rise

A previous version of this recipe called for letting the dough rise overnight and dividing it in the morning. But having time in the morning to divide and shape pizza dough balls isn't always practical.

So instead we're going to divide and pre-shape the dough at night. By the time you go to bed, the pizza dough will be in the fridge and need no additional attention until the next day until you're ready to use it.

This shift comes straight from Ken Forkish's The Elements of Pizza. He wrote about a visit with Neopolitan pizzaiolos in Naples, Italy, who showed him the benefits of dividing and pre-shaping the pizza dough about 2 hours into the bulk fermentation stage.

Shaping a ball of dough can take some practice — be patient with yourself if you're new to it. If you have a method of shaping dough balls you like better, you can absolutely use that too.

Once your dough balls are shaped, pop them into lightly oiled round 16 ounce deli containers with the lids on. This is a tip I picked up from Andris over at the Baking Steel site, and it makes such a difference in how easy the pizza dough is to stretch.

The round shape of the containers trains the dough to stay in a circle shape as it relaxes, so it knows to keep that shape when you stretch it. The deli containers are also just easier to stack in the fridge.

Let the pre-shaped dough balls rest in the containers for an hour at room temperature before you pop them into the fridge. The dough balls will expand slightly and begin to fill out the bottom of the containers.

This gives the yeast and gluten network a chance to get used to their new shape before you slow down their activity in the fridge overnight. They won't rise much at all during this time.

The next day, take the dough balls out of the fridge about 60-90 minutes before you plan to stretch the dough and let it rest somewhere warm.

This loosens up the gluten network just enough to make the dough stretchy and elastic to work with, but not so stretchy that the dough tears when you handle it.

This final rise is when you'll finally see the dough double in size. It may not be as dramatic as what you see in the photo below (this batch of dough had exceptional main character energy) but you will see it rise and fill out the container even more as it warms up.

How to Freeze Pizza Dough

At any time after the overnight fridge rise, you can transfer the dough, in the plastic deli container, to the freezer. I recommend using it within 3 months of freezing, otherwise you might notice the gluten network starting to break down when you try to stretch it. It's not impossible to use after 3 months in the freezer, it's just more likely to tear.

Defrost it in the fridge before use, and make sure to let it sit at room temperature for 60-90 minutes before stretching it.

A Note on Temperature and Dough Rising

Temperature is the main factor in determining how quickly or slowly your dough rises. This includes the temperature of ingredients, as well as the ambient temperature of the room where you leave your dough to rise.

Depending on how cool or warm your water was, and how cool or warm your kitchen is, your dough may rise faster or slower.

• Warmer temperatures increase yeast activity.
• Cooler temperatures slow yeast activity.

If your kitchen is cold and your dough is rising slowly, find somewhere warmer to put your dough to rise. If your kitchen is very warm, your dough might be ready before the time given in the recipe. The recipe can't tell you when to do this — you'll have to keep an eye on your dough and move it when needed.

In baking, "room temperature" is generally somewhere around 70-75°F.

Just because the dough isn't ready right at the times given in the recipe doesn't mean it's not working — there might be other factors affecting how quickly or slowly it gets there! What the dough looks like and feels like is more important than following the specific timing guidelines.

How to Hand Stretch Pizza Dough

Hand stretching pizza dough is crucial to getting your pizza dough to bake up with a crispy thin crust.

If you were to just plop the dough ball on the counter and take a rolling pin to it, it won't bake up as a thin crust pizza. So, yes, you absolutely can use this dough to make a pizza with a thicker crust.

But if you're aiming for a classic thin crust pizza with the defined crust and crisp bottom, how you stretch it makes all the difference.

Hand stretching pizza dough takes practice. Don't be upset if you don't get it right on the first try.

Use plenty of flour, be patient, use a light touch so the dough can stretch through your fingertips, and let gravity do the work. If the dough tears, just pinch it back together and let it rest for a few seconds before you continue.

Below I've included some gifs to help you get started, but there's a lot more guidance in my post about How To Hand Stretch Pizza Dough if you need it.

Substituting Active Dry Yeast for Instant Yeast

Active Dry and Instant yeast are technically the same thing — meaning, they are both saccharomyces cerevisiae, a single-celled living organism used for leavening bread and doughs.

The only difference between the two types of yeast is that Active Dry yeast granules have a little coating around them which needs to be dissolved to reveal the yeast inside.

Because of this extra little shell around the Active Dry yeast granules, you'll need to use slightly more Active Dry yeast to get the same effect as using Instant.

To calculate how much Active Dry yeast to use, increase the amount of Instant yeast by 25%. For this recipe, you'd be using 2.5 grams of active dry yeast. Use a jeweler's scale to measure precisely, or just use 3 grams of active dry yeast. It'll be fine.

Equipment for Making Pizza Dough

• Kitchen Scale - You need a kitchen scale (I use this kitchen scale) in order to measure the ingredients for this pizza dough. The ratio of ingredients is very carefully balanced and if you don't measure accurately, this can make a big difference in how easily and how thin the dough stretches. If you're a beginner baker, using a kitchen scale is one of the best things you can do to improve your baking. For weighing the ingredients with smaller quantities, a jeweler's scale can be useful but isn't necessary.
• Baking Steel - A baking steel is a thin sheet of steel that you preheat in your oven. Steel retains heat really well, which helps your oven reach and sustain the high temperature needed for pizza to cook quickly. A baking stone or pizza stone will also work, but you can read about why I don't recommend them in my review of the original baking steel.
• 16 ounce Plastic Deli Containers - These are the perfect size and shape for letting your pizza dough balls rise without expanding outward too much. These are the deli containers I use.
• Dough Whisk - A dough whisk has a stiff coiled wire at the end designed for cutting through thick or wet doughs. It breaks up sneaky clumps of flour easily. It's also great for mixing things like muffin batters that you don't want to over mix. You don't need one to make this dough, but I usually start mixing the flour and water for the autolyse with one.

Using a Stand Mixer

If mixing and kneading by hand aren't for you, you can use a stand mixer to make this dough. I recommend doing it by hand as it helps to be able to feel the dough change as you work it. But I know that's not always a possibility for everyone.

• Use the paddle attachment to mix the flour and water in the autolyse stage. It is a very tough, dense dough. You will still need to use your hands to smush it together in the bowl.
• Switch to the dough hook to incorporate the salt and the water, yeast, and sugar mixture. Be patient here, the mixer will take longer to do this than if you did it by hand. You may need to pause and fold the dough over itself a few times while mixing.
• Use the dough hook again to incorporate the oil and knead the dough into a smooth ball.

From there proceed with the recipe as written!

Practical Tips & Recipe Notes - Timing, etc.

• My overnight pizza dough schedule usually looks like this: 7:00 p.m. autolyse, 7:10 p.m. pincer method to incorporate salt, yeast, and sugar, 7:35 p.m. knead in the olive oil and bulk ferment, 8:45 p.m. divide, and pre-shape into the containers, 9:50 p.m. pop the dough in the fridge. 5:00 pm the next day, take it out of the fridge. 6:00-6:30 p.m., shape and bake my pizzas.
• Alternate schedule: After kneading in the olive oil, leave the dough to bulk ferment at room temperature for two hours before dividing and pre-shaping it in the containers. It can go directly in the fridge after that, no need to rest at room temperature again.
• This pizza dough, like all pizza doughs, is best when cooked on a scorching hot baking steel (use code TPK10 for 10% off!). If you have a pizza stone, you can use it the same way but baking steels get hotter and cook the pizza faster — just like wood fired pizza ovens do.
• I can't stress enough how important pre-shaping and hand stretching this dough is for getting a nice thin crust. Be patient, don't rush the shaping steps, give the dough plenty of time to stretch and relax, and you got this!

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