I use this dough recipe from Nick Stellino, but I do the mixing in a bread machine on the dough setting. Activating the yeast in warm water with a bit of sugar is important, to make sure you have live buggies in there. If the yeast mixture doesn’t look like the top of a cappuccino after 10 minutes, try again.
Hell, after I make the dough and let it rise, I chop it into blobs and freeze them in individual bags. A day on the counter and they perk right back up (i.e.: puff up a bit and bubble, they won’t double in size again.) Hell, even if you don’t get good rise, it’ll still be better than frozen pizza.
Other Annie pizza tips:
-roll it out, save the hand tossing to the professionals
-don’t freak if it’s not perfectly round. Most of my pizzas look like Australia.
-Most canned sauces are too sweet. Try mixing tomato paste with water until you get a desired consistency, then mix in some dry oregano.
-precook the veggie toppings a bit before assembly. The home oven doesn’t get as hot as a commercial pizza oven-your tiles will bake the crust but the topside may need some help.
-I can’t use the pizza peel with any reliability, so after I roll out the dough to required size I place it on a sheet of parchment paper. Once pizza assembled, you can pick up the parchment gently by either side, and plunk the whole thing on the stone. As long as the pizza doesn’t burn, it won’t stick. Discard parch. before slicing.
-preheat that oven with the stone in for at least half an hour at 500 deg. Give that stone time to heat up.
-top pizza with pesto sauce, thinly sliced onion and drained ricotta (in that order). Then invite me over 