WRITTEN FEB 2021 · UPDATED JAN 2024
Leopard Crust Pizza Dough
If you’re looking to make pizza with spotty crusts and beautiful flavour, welcome! There are two main recipes for you, which I developed over the last 3 years and over 900 bakes as shared on my Instagram:
Intro Dough
A beginner-friendly recipe where you get a beautiful dough with minimal effort. Perfect if this is your very first dough or if you don’t have a sourdough starter and you’re not emotionally available for one right now.
Jump to recipe ›
The Sourdough Train
For those who have a sourdough starter and have already earned their baking stripes!
Hop aboard ›
Intro Dough
25 minutes hands-on effort
Prepare 1-3 days ahead
This slow dough is your ticket to getting a pizza with spotty crusts and beautiful flavour, with the absolute minimum effort. We’ll use a tiny bit of instant yeast, so make sure yours is still active if you bought it a while ago or you won’t get a rise. (How to check your yeast)
This recipe is about letting time do all the work for you! All you put in is about 25 minutes of work. Then, it’s over to your yeast and fridge to do the heavy lifting. Good things take time, and the more time you allow your dough to develop, the more flavourful it gets!
Ingredients for 3 dough balls (270g each)
| 468g strong 00 flour or bread flour with minimum 12.5% protein (100%) | High protein means your dough will be easier to handle (heaps less sticky) and also less prone to tearing (no holes in your pizzas). You can check the protein % on the nutritional info label on the packaging. |
| 14g sea salt (3%) | Strengthens gluten and brings out the flavours that the dough will develop naturally. |
| 1g instant yeast (0.2%) | The longer your dough takes to rise, the more time for flavour and aroma to develop within. Using such a small amount of yeast gives your dough the chance to reach its true, tasty potential. |
| 327g water (70%)1 | 70% hydration is a sweet spot. It’s fairly high, while still being decent to work with. If this is your first pizza and you don’t want to take any risks, start with 65% hydration (304g) so that the dough is easier to handle. You can switch to 70% for more tender crusts once you are confident in handling dough. |
10 minutes of work
1. Mixing
In a large bowl or container, combine water and yeast. Stir until the yeast has dissolved.
Add flour and salt3 and mix it all in with one hand, inside the bowl while your other hand holds the bowl in place. The dough will start out as a clumpy mess, but as you keep mixing and stretching, it will start to form a silky dough after about 5 minutes. Keep kneading, so that you’ve worked the dough for a total of 10 minutes.
Cover your bowl with a lid or cling wrap, so that the surface of the dough doesn’t dry out.
Nailing the fermentation
Before moving onto the next step, take a bit of dough out to put in a smaller container and mark the level at which your dough fills it. This allows you to easily keep tabs on how much your dough has risen, because it’s hard to be exact when eyeballing it in a bowl.
Can I use a KitchenAid or stand mixer?
Easily, here’s how4, along with a few tips to avoid overmixing and overheating the dough.
Yeast does the work
Takes around 16 hours if your room temperature hovers around 28°C or 24 hours in a colder climate. This also depends on how active your yeast is.
2. Bulk ferment
Now we wait and let the yeast do its thing! This is called bulk fermentation (BF). It officially starts as soon as you bring yeast and flour together, and we move on to the next step when the dough is almost doubled in size.
- Do not rush this step! Give the yeast time and your future, pizza-eating-self will be glad you waited.
- Don’t let the dough go past double, because you run the risk of over fermentation5 (which will leave you with a sticky mess).
- Don’t stress if you don’t see anything happening for the first 6-10 hours, especially if you already tested your yeast to make sure it’s active. Yeast grows exponentially, so it really picks up the pace after it’s had time to multiply.
How do I know when the dough is ready?
Your small test-dough should look something like this. You can see it has almost doubled in height, and developed lots of nice, little bubbles.
The surface of your main dough should be smooth and stretched out like a doughy balloon.
How long does BF take?
The time it’ll take mainly depends on how active your yeast is and your room temperature. Some people with very active yeast have reported that their dough doubled in just 6 hours!
Your turn again!
15 minutes of work
3. Dough-balling
Once the dough has doubled, it’s time to make dough balls. Divide your dough into 270g pieces, and roll them up into dough balls. Place them into an air-tight container.
- Individual 2-cup capacity containers work well and allow you the flexibility of using dough balls across a few days. I only recommend a dough tray if you have made enough dough balls to fill it6
- We want it air-tight, so that your dough can keep its moisture. If it’s drafty, it’s going to dry out and form a skin – not ideal!
Wait, but how?!
Here are 2 simple tricks for shaping your dough balls. If you’re not used to handling dough, you may find it a bit sticky at first, so check this out!
Fridge does the work
4. Cold ferment
Transfer your dough to the fridge. This marks the start of the cold fermentation process. Even more flavour development happens here, while you sit back and don’t do anything at all!
You can move onto the next step to make pizze with your dough whenever you like from this point. However, letting it continue developing flavour in the fridge for 2 more days is worth the wait!
The best day of the week
5. Pizza day
Take the dough balls out of the fridge to begin their final stage of fermentation: final proof. If they were kept in individual containers, give them a reball and place them in a dough tray with space between as they will expand. If you don’t have a dough tray, place each dough ball on a dinner plate and use a bowl to cover.
Two important things happen during final proof:
- Your dough relaxes and warms to room temperature making it easy to stretch
- The yeast gives a final push to make your pizza more airy and tasty!
As your room temperature affects the speed of fermentation, allow 3-4 hours ahead of pizza time in warm climates and 4-6 hours in cold climates.
Here are some visual cues for how to know if your dough is ready:
30 minutes before pizza time, preheat your pizza oven to 400°C / 750°F stone temperature. (If using a home oven, check this out!)
Every pizza maker has their own personal take on what an ideal pizza should be – and that’s what makes pizza so great. There’s SO much room to play around and make it your own! Happy baking and I hope you enjoy luscious pizza, made by you!
To stretch your dough…
Check out my tutorial on how to stretch your dough into a pizza base; focused on achieving a puffy crust! I tried to pack in as much useful info as possible, in under 5 mins!
Q&As
1 Why 70% hydration?
More water in your dough means more steam is created when the pizza’s in the oven, which then makes a PUFFY crust! On the flipside, the wetter your dough, the harder it is to work with and also the stronger your flour has to be to keep it together.
For reference, most Neapolitan pizza recipes are 60% hydration and then there are canotto-style pizzas that are 80%+ but a *#@& to work with unless you have the right flour, some experience and a brave heart.
2 What are the percentages?
These are called baker’s percentages. They tell you how much of all the other ingredients to use, relative to the amount of flour. This makes it easy to scale baking recipes up or down. For example, if you wanted to make 5 dough balls with this recipe:
Current recipe makes 3 dough balls, so to find the multiplier divide 5 / 3 ≈ 1.67
1.67x flour = 781g
Then multiply the total flour against the percentages of other ingredients:
Instant yeast (0.2% of 781g) = 1.56g
Water (70%) = 547g
Salt (3%) = 23.4g
3 Won’t the salt kill the yeast?!
Salt acts to slow down the yeast, but in this case, that’s a good thing because time creates flavour!
If your room temperature is winter-cold then it may be worth mixing the flour, yeast and water first to give the yeast a head start, before adding the salt.
Another reason why recipes advise adding salt later is to avoid overdeveloping the gluten, which leads to a rubbery pizza. In this recipe, we avoided that by hand kneading (instead of using a machine) and not performing stretch and folds during the bulk ferment. Plus, it’s more convenient to mix everything together in one go.
4 Can I use a KitchenAid or dough mixer?
Yes! For machine-mixing: combine water and yeast in the mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the yeast. Add flour and mix on low speed for 9 minutes. Add the salt in for the final minute of kneading.
Be careful not to overmix the dough which will result in weakened gluten strands!
Machine-kneading also tends to heat the dough more than hand-kneading so it’s worth keeping an eye on the temperature of the dough to ensure it does not exceed 26°C / 78°F. If your dough starts to overheat, stop mixing and allow it to rest for 5 minutes before continuing. Then, next time, form the dough using cold water instead of room temp.
5 Help! My dough over fermented
This helpful video by Vito Iacopelli will have your dough sorted in 3-4 hours. You got this!
6 My dough balls flattened out into pancakes during cold ferment
If you cold fermented your dough in a dough tray (instead of individual containers) the dough balls will gradually flatten out as they relax. If there was too much space between the dough balls, they may relax to the point of becoming flat. To fix, give them a reball at the start of your final proof (step 5). Reballing gives dough a boost of strength while getting them back in shape. However, reballed dough requires a longer final proof time. The dough will need to relax again so you can stretch it easily and the yeast needs time to create more CO2 to replace the air that was knocked out.
Leopard Crust Pizza 
Thanks a lot for your advices and options to bake a great pizza. I’m a pizza lover and a I want to become a pizzaiolo.
Hi Alex, I’m glad that you found my site helpful and thank you for leaving a lovely comment. All the best in achieving your dream of becoming a pizzaiolo and I hope I get to try your pizza someday! 🙂
Hello! Huge fan here and used your beginner pizza dough recipe (published in collab with Gozney) for my first ever pizza!
Attempted this pizza dough recipe last night, but after about 12 hours in a 28degC room overnight (am in SE-Asia like you!), the bulk fermented pizza dough looked very airy with bubbles that were bursting when I shook the bowl. Might this have been over-proofed? I’ve since made the dough balls but they’re really soft, so am holding my breath to see if they’ll puff up come baking time!
Would just like to clarify on the yeast amount used – this recipe calls for 0.2% yeast and a 16-24h bulk fermentation time. The beginner recipe used 0.1% yeast, with a 45min bulk ferment + 6hrs proof time. Was wondering why the longer bulk fermentation dough used double the yeast amount, and whether that would result in a yeasty taste in the pizza?
Finally, I’ve used your autolyse method to knead this 70% dough and after letting the water and flour incorporate for about 45min, I’ve found that the dough came together really quickly with quite minimal kneading after. Had better results than with a stand mixer!
Thanks so much for all your pizza making tips!!!
Hi Sam! Thanks for such a lovely comment and glad you’re into the autolyse magic!
It sounds like that dough has overproved as 12h is a long time for yeast to party at 28C, but there’s hope if your flour is very strong!
For your second question, the recipe in the Gozney ‘Pizza at Home’ video is actually Gozney’s simple dough recipe – not my recipe here. The main difference, as you noticed, is the amount of yeast! I’m all about slow-doughs to develop flavour, while the Gozney recipe gives you a dough that you can use much sooner.
Hope this helps and I really, really hope that batch of dough pulls through with some great pizza! 🤞🙏
Hello thanks for the recipe! May I ask how would you adjust your recipe for a 5-6 day cold ferment?
Hey there, great question! Doughs using instant or fresh yeast tend to be more forgiving than sourdough, when extending the cold ferment. However, to play it safe, you could reduce the bulk ferment time by moving on to step 3 once the dough has increased in size by 50% (instead of doubling, which is 100% increase). Hope this helps!
Cool! I typically use a poolish starter but was inspired after I saw your insta to try a longer rest (some day)… One more question – Have you tried adding EVOO (~1%) to the dough and what are your thoughts? 🙂
Yes! Apart from adding flavour, EVOO in dough helps the dough to relax faster (by inhibiting some gluten formation) and can also help with getting your pizza to crisp up a bit more. I don’t often use EVOO in my dough because I’ve been focusing on experimenting with various flours and blending them; but if it would help you get the specific results you’re after, EVOO can be an absolutely wonderful addition! ✊
Hi there, ive followed the recipe and and ive used instant yeast, although i didnt seem to get the leopard crust as desired, pizza cooked at 420°c, should i be using fresh yeast ?
Hello! No need to switch yeast as long as yours was active. A dough with instant yeast, baked at 420°C can get the leopard crust you’re after! A couple of things to try:
1) After launching, only turn the pizza once you see the first couple of spots on the area of crust nearest to the flame, repeat on the remaining sides. If you turn the pizza too early, you will get an evenly browned crust without spotting.
2) The leopard spots are air bubbles that char in oven, so give your dough time to develop (during bulk ferment and final proof) until it’s nice and airy. Be gentle when stretching the pizza base to keep as much air in the crust as possible.
Hope this helps! 🙂
Can’t thank you enough for your user-friendly YT vids.
Also, totally did the same…”As a kid, I used to gut the middle of a baguette and eat that part first, so I guess this is where this preference comes from.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to write your kind feedback! Bread-middles really are one of life’s simple pleasures! 🥰🥖
Hi
Do you have a video using a kitchenaid for your dough recipe?
Hi David, unfortunately I don’t have a KitchenAid video as I prefer handkneading dough (with some good music on) and feeling the gluten development first-hand (pun intended, I’m so sorry.)
However, I use a mixer to mix doughs when I need large batches for pop-ups, so if it’s any help, here’s how I do it:
1 min on low-speed to combine (setting 2 on a KitchenAid)
7 mins on medium (setting 4)
1 min on high (setting 6) to finish!
Two things to watch out for when using a machine to mix:
1) While mixing will strengthen the gluten, over-mixing tears it. The dough will turn into a puddle if it happens. 😦
2) If the weather’s hot, be careful that the dough doesn’t overheat during the mix. You can use ice water and even refrigerate the flour, if needed, to offset the heat generated by the friction of machine-mixing. Ideally, you want your dough temp to be 26C – 28C (80F – 83F) at the end of mixing.
Hope this helps! 🙏
Hi,
With regards to bulk ferments and proofing dough balls (second leavening). Does the time in each stage make a difference or is it the overall time. For example I have seen 24 hour Neapolitan pizza recipes split into a 12 hour bulk ferment and then a 12 hour dough ball leavening all at room temp (18-20 degrees celcius). But then I’ve also seen it split into a short 2-4 hour bulk ferment and then the rest of the 24 hours were made up with the proofing of dough balls, what will be the difference in these results and also what do you best recommend.
Kind Regards
Hey Michael! Ah, we already chatted about this but I’ll share the answer here too in case others were wondering the same thing!
The time in each stage makes a difference!
For example, if you made a dough with a short bulk ferment (BF) and long final proof + another dough with a long BF and short final proof; both with the same total fermentation time, you’d get different results.
Each pizza-maker’s recipe optimises for a different set of factors: like what suits their pizza preferences, schedule and space best (e.g. storing dough balls in the fridge v.s. one mass in the fridge.) To settle on a recipe, I recommend trying a few that jives with your personal ideal pizza to find the process that you enjoy the most.
For me, between those two examples you mentioned, I prefer the latter (short BF and long final proof) because I like a lot of air in my crust and long cold fermentation creates more flavour in the dough. The short BF allows me to leave the dough in the fridge for many days without it becoming too weak, which means I can make a batch and then eat pizza over the course of a few days!
Hope this helps and that you find a method that is perfect for you. 🙂
can you proof in a warming box or the proof setting on the oven?
You can! If you do that, just make sure you know the temperature of that environment so you can predict how fast the fermentation will happen. 🙂 In cold weather, I’ve had great results putting the dough in the oven with just the oven light switched on (no heat!!) I checked the temp using a thermometer gun and it was 29C (85F) in there! Hope this helps.
Are you able to freeze the dough balls to use at a later date?
Hey Tom! Freezing a dough made with yeast is a good call and easily possible.
To freeze dough:
Follow the recipe as normal until step 3. After forming the dough balls, give each a light coating of extra-virgin olive oil. Put each dough ball into its own zip-loc bag or air-tight container before transferring them to the freezer. (If using a zip-loc bag, try to leave as little air in the bag as possible before sealing.)
To thaw:
The day before you want to make pizza, take the dough balls you need out of their bags/containers and place in a lidded dough box or individual air-tight containers (with a little room for them to grow) in the fridge to gently thaw. Continue from step 4 onwards in the recipe as if nothing happened. 🙂
Hope this helps and happy baking!
Thank you for your detailed instructions and videos, and sharing what you know after doing so many dough experiments! I tried my first 65% hydration dough this weekend, and loved watching the bubbles form in the dough over the 3 days. Unfortunately the max temperature of my oven is 275C, and whilst I got a delicious pizza by cooking it in my la crusset dutch oven, the dough took longer to cook and turned out crunchy on the outside, rather than having a typical pizza dough texture. What tips would you give to someone without access to a pizza oven? Can leftover dough also be used into making a bread loaf?
Hi Joanne,
Ah, it sounds like you used a clear container if you got to watch the bubbles form – I love watching that too!
Please find my guide on using a home oven to bake pizza here: https://leopardcrustpizza.com/home-oven-pizza/
Leftover dough can absolutely be used into making a bread loaf! The night before baking the dough into bread, you can reshape a single dough ball or multiple into a loaf shape that suits the proofing container you’d normally use and store it back into the fridge until you’re ready to bake. If you wanted, you can even stretch out cold, leftover dough to laminate extra ingredients into before rolling it into a loaf.
Hope this helps! 🙂