3 Chef-Recommended Ingredients For Ultra Flavorful Pizza Dough

There is one critical component that separates decent pizza from excellent pizza, and that's the dough. A good dough will crisp up nicely in the oven, provide a stable base for your ingredients, and tear apart like tissue paper when you bite into it. A good dough will also bring its own unique flavors to the pizza party. We talked to 13-time World Pizza Champion and chef-owner of Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco, Tony Gemignani, to get his expert advice on how to pack a little more flavor into your pizza dough.

Chef Gemignani, who has been slinging pies since 1991, is all about experimentation when it comes to developing new flavors. Gemignani recommends, "Adding a little bit of beet powder, spinach powder, or dandelion green water to give it a vibrant color and subtly different flavor." Finding ways to add your own unique spin on pizza dates back almost as far as the dish itself, with delicious variations taking off across the globe, so we are big advocates of trying out veggie powders and flavored water in your dough.

Pizza dough is made with a base of five ingredients — flour, water, yeast, salt, and oil — with most alterations happening to the toppings. However, to give Chef Gemignani's uniquely tasty ingredients a try, you'll have to be willing to experiment during the dough-making phase.

If you want to use the beet or spinach powder, we recommend subbing out ¼ cup of flour from your recipe with the veggie powder of your choice. Make this change when you're mixing together the dry ingredients, after which, you can continue with the recipe as instructed. You should be able to find beet or spinach powder at your local health store, but if not, Z Natural Foods Organic Spinach Powder or Organic Beet Root Powder by Chérie Sweet Heart are both popular powdered vegetable brands.

Adding dandelion green water is also a matter of ratio swapping. You can cook down the dandelion greens in boiling salted water and use them as a pizza topper later in the recipe while saving the flavored water to add to your dough (instead of plain, warm water). These small changes will make a world of difference in your dough, they'll also give you bright colors for a more festive pizza, which is a win-win in our book.