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 
Hi Feng,
Hope you’re well! Thanks for sharing such a well-explained recipe. I’m already excited to try it out. Quick questions:
Do I reball the dough right out of the fridge after cold fermentation? I mean, should I give the “cold dough” a reball?
If I want to make just one dough ballTop of Form, do I reball after BF and then transfer it in the fridge, or straight to the fridge with no further touch?
Thanks again!
Hi Mahdi, yes! You reball the dough immediately out of the fridge. You’ll find it very easy to handle when it’s cold. Take care to seal the bottom of the dough ball so you don’t get a weak spot later.
If you just want to make one dough ball, reballing it after BF is optional. Reballing basically acts like a round of stretch and folds – creating more strength in the dough.
If you’re going through the trouble of making dough, you also have the option of making 2-3 dough balls which will each keep up to 10 days in the fridge! When using dough that’s been in the fridge past 4 days, you can use a tiny bit of flour when reballing before final proof just to give it a little boost and it’ll be as good as 3-day dough. 🙂 Hope this helps and happy baking!
Hi Feng,
Thanks so much for sharing your recipes and all your tips. As a beginner it was all so helpful in getting into pizza.
I know the recipe makes 3 dough balls and usually I don’t need to make 3 pizzas every time I make dough. Would you have any tips on how much longer I can keep the dough in the refrigerator and in the freezer as well? At what point can I freeze the dough ?
Thank you!
Sam
Hi Sam, I’m so glad I could help! The dough will keep in the fridge for up to 10 days. When using dough that’s been in the fridge past 4 days, you can use a tiny bit of flour when reballing before final proof just to give it a little boost and it’ll be as good as 3-day dough.
Alternatively if you’d like to freeze your 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!
This is all so so helpful! Really appreciate it! The freezing tips would allow me to make pizza just for myself hahaha
Really looking forward to learning more about pizza. I was really so intimated to start this journey until I found your videos. Thank you again 🙂
You’re so welcome! Happy baking – you got this!!!
Hi Feng – if i’m using wholemeal flour, do I need to add more water? i made my first batch with plain flour and it turned out perfect but the wholemeal flour seems to absorb the water more?
Hi Winnie, you’re absolutely right – wholemeal tends to be more absorbent! Feel free to bump the hydration up by 3-5% to see if you like it better.
Dough made from wholemeal flour can also benefit from an autolyse (which is mixing just the flour and water together first and allowing the flour to soak it up for an hour, before mixing in yeast dissolved in a tiny bit of water and salt). This softens the bran of the wholemeal flour, which can otherwise cut the gluten strands in your dough. Hope this helps and happy baking!
Hi Feng,
Thanks very much for the recipes, I’m learning a lot from your website and videos!
I’ve got a question about the Intro Pizza Dough recipie!
Is it good idea to throw in an extra autolyse step? Some of your dough making videos discuss the benefits of autolyse, but the introductory dough recipe here doesn’t mention it.
How could I modify your intro pizza dough recipe to include autolyse?
Thanks!
Andrew
Hey Andrew,
I’m so glad you find what I share helpful! The reason why an autolyse is not included is because this recipe introduces only the absolutely necessary steps – I wanted this recipe to be as accessible as possible for someone who’s never made dough. That being said, you can absolutely add in a bonus autolyse step and reap its extra benefits. 🙂
To do so, combine flour and water (omitting 5g of water from the total amount needed which will be used to dissolve the yeast later), mix briefly to combine then allow to soak for 30 mins – 1 hour. Then, dissolve the yeast in 5g of water and mix into the autolysed dough. In the final 2 minutes of the mix, add in salt then proceed with the rest of the process as usual!
Hope this helps and happy baking!
Hi Feng,
Thanks for your informative website. I have a Roccbox and I’m looking forward to trying your intro recipe after having some mixed success with various other recipes on the internet.
A question before I get started…what water temperature do you recommend at the start of the recipe? I’m in Perth, Western Australia where the average temperature indoors at this time of year is around 26 degrees.
Thank you in advance!
Hey Tom! Congratulations on your new oven! 26 degrees is great. This recipe is quite forgiving with water temp, as long as extreme temperatures are avoided. Hope you have fun making my dough soon!
Thank you for the reply!
I’ve just mixed the dough using 65% hydration. I mustn’t have done something right. After mixing the ingredients in the bowl, the dough was very sticky when I took it out onto the bench top. It took about 20 minutes of working the dough before it had properly come together and wouldn’t stick on either my hands or the bench top. I tried stretching and folding. In the end, when I tried to do the windowpane test, it would stretch a bit but then tear before i could see the light through the dough.
Probably I need to work on my mixing and kneading technique.
Practice makes perfect. There’s always something to learn!
Hi Feng,
Thanks for the great recipe and super informative website!
I have made this dough a couple of times now and when I work the dough I am struggling to get a silky finish and to pass the window pane test. The recipe says this should take about 10mins but I have worked the dough for 20mins before getting close. I must be doing something wrong, any pointers? Maybe it’s my poor kneading/stretching technique Or maybe I’m overthinking this step as the gluten will continue to develop over the long bulk ferment?
Any help or pointers are greatly appreciated 😊
Thanks!
Hey Sam, thanks for writing in! It sounds like it’s either the kneading or the strength of your flour preventing your dough from getting to where it needs to be in 10 minutes. As you mentioned, the gluten will continue to develop during bulk ferment, so as long as you haven’t had issues with your pizza base tearing then your dough is fine. 🙂
Another thing you could try is to knead for 10 minutes initially then incorporate a couple of rounds of stretch-and-folds during the bulk ferment, about 1-2 hours apart. Allow your dough to relax and level out in the bowl before each round of stretch-and-folds.
Hope this helps and happy baking!
first thanks for all those cool recipes and tips!
I’m wondering what would be the best way to fully control when the dough is ready after the final proofing. For instance I’d love to do most of it before putting it out for the fridge, that way I can control with absolute certainty my timing for when I can start preparing the pizza, instead of hoping it double in a certain amount of time…
what would you recommend?
Hey, in climates where room temp fluctuates, I like to use a home oven with just the oven light on as a makeshift proofer. 🙂 Mine gets to 26-28C (which is a really nice proofing temp) just with the oven light on and door shut! Hope this helps.
Hi Feng! Thank you for making things so approachable and easy – I can’t believe you’re responding to every comment.
I’m trying to stay pretty committed to ambient temperature fermentation since I want to make larger batches of dough and have limited fridge space in a small apartment. Like you, I live somewhere warmer with an ambient temp of 25C+ inside.
I’ve tried making a sourdough batch with a young (2 week old) starter, and using a small amount of active starter with standard yeast in another batch to see if I could get better flavour results with more predictable fermentation. Both batches were about 62% hydration, and though the batch with yeast was kept in a cooler spot, the dough still tore! Both batches had an overnight bulk ferment and were balled in the morning of use (late afternoon/early dinner bake time).
Could it be that the gluten structure was too weak? or did my dough over ferment? It seemed to bounce back just fine in both cases.
Thanks for your help! Sep
Hey Sep, I’m glad you’ve found my resources easy to follow! Thank you for your kind feedback. 🥰
It sounds like both batches could’ve used a shorter bulk ferment AND shorter final proof, as yeast/starter moves quickly at 25C+ ambient temp. I recommend trying a 6-7h BF and 4h final proof for your next batch and seeing how that goes. Hope this helps!
Hi Feng
Having a little trouble with the dough and not sure what I’m doing wrong, everything is fine until I get to the final proof. I give it a reball then the dough just gets sticky and flat after a few hours should I leave my dough out longer, it’s roughly 17-19C here.
hoping you can help
Hey Dean,
It could be that your flour is too weak (if your flour is over 12.5% protein, then you’re fine) or you could also try doubling the yeast since 17-19C to have the dough ready faster in final proof. It sounds like it needed a bit more time in final proof and also a little bit more kneading at the start to boost the gluten development. 🙂 Hope this helps!
Hi Feng,
Thankyou for getting back to me, I’m using capitol classica 00 flour, the protein content is 12g per 100 23%, I did knead the dough at the start for 10 to 15 minutes until the dough it reached an internal temp of 21C, I thought it could possibly be the flour, perhaps I’ll try doubling the yeast to making the rising times a bit quicker.
Thankyou for your help