The Crucial Tip That Will Make Or Break Homemade Pizza Dough

When making pizza dough from scratch, there's an often-overlooked, deceptively-simple step that can make the difference between a subpar pie and a restaurant-worthy crust, and it comes before the ingredients are even mixed together. According to Tony Gemignani (@capopizza on Instagram), a chef, 13-time World Pizza Champion, and owner of many restaurants, including Tony's Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco, measuring your ingredients with precision is paramount.

"There is a phrase I often use is 'weighing is the way,' which I talk about in my book, 'The Pizza Bible,'" Gemignani said. "You can always be much more precise by weighing your ingredients rather than measuring. This is so important when it comes to making your dough more consistent." It's a simple philosophy that's the gold standard for Italian pizzaiolos, but far less common for the home cook. You see, with weight-based measurements, you'll always know exactly how much of each ingredient you're putting into the recipe (so long as you make sure your kitchen scale is properly balanced). 

For example, if your recipe calls for 8 ounces of flour, the equivalent of 1 cup, you can precisely measure it out using a kitchen scale. The same logic applies to water or other wet ingredients, which can be measured in weight for the highest level of pinpoint accuracy. While volume-based measurements are commonplace in baking, they are incredibly inconsistent, so your pizza dough will vary in quality and consistency from batch to batch.

Measuring cups are super convenient, and most recipes (at least in the United States) list dry ingredient quantities in volume, not weight. But, as previously mentioned, it's tough to get a consistent measure from recipe to recipe, even when using the same measuring cups again and again. The amount of air in each scoop of flour, or other dry ingredients, can vary, which can bring about unexpected results in your pizza dough. According to the King Arthur Baking Company, a densely-settled bag of flour can hold up to 160 grams per 1 cup, whereas that same scoop, after the flour has been fluffed and leveled, can hold 120 grams. That's a 40-gram difference! For wet ingredients, measuring cups unfortunately aren't your friend, either. 

Many home bakers might assume that dry and wet ingredients can be measured with the same measuring cups, but this couldn't be further from the truth. For liquids, the proper way to measure them is to examine the bottom of the meniscus, which is the little concave curve on top of the liquid. With dry measuring cups, it's difficult to see the meniscus properly. Even with a specialized liquid measuring cup, if you view the meniscus at the wrong angle, you could potentially throw off your pizza dough's consistency in the end. That being said, weight is the way to go, no matter what.