I make dough at least twice a week, and I always make more than I need. That means there is almost always a container of it sitting in my fridge on day four, day five, day seven. It never gets thrown out.
Pizza dough is just flour, water, salt and yeast. Strip the name off it and it is the base for a lot of other things, and most of them get better the longer the dough has been sitting. Fermentation is a flavor lever. Time does the work whether you are making a pizza with it or not.
Here is everything I actually make with it, in the order I reach for them.
Quick answer: what to make with leftover pizza dough
| Make this | Best dough age | Temp | Bake time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pizza | 1 to 3 days | 500°F or higher | 5 to 7 min |
| Ciabatta | Up to 7 days | 500°F | 18 to 20 min |
| Focaccia | 2 to 5 days | 500°F | 12 to 14 min |
| Calzone | 1 to 4 days | 450°F | 20 min |
| Cheese breadsticks | 1 to 5 days | 450°F | 10 to 12 min |
| Garlic knots | 1 to 5 days | 450°F | 12 to 15 min |
| English muffins | 1 to 3 days | 275 to 325°F griddle | 5 to 6 min per side |
| Pizza dough ice cream | Already baked scraps | Frozen steel | 2 min |
Pizza
This is the expected use, and it is still the best one. Same ferment, same fold-don't-knead approach, launched onto a preheated steel for a crisp, blistered crust.
Days two and three are the sweet spot. The dough has enough fermentation behind it to taste like something and enough strength left to stretch without tearing. If you have never made it before, start with the 72-hour pizza dough recipe.
Ciabatta
This is the one that surprises people, and it is where the older dough goes. After about day seven, pizza dough starts to lose a little strength. That is exactly when ciabatta saves the day. Same dough, shaped long instead of round, handled gently so you do not knock the gas out, baked hot.
That craggy, floured top and open, airy crumb is what ciabatta is supposed to look like, and it comes from a dough you were going to make pizza with. No separate recipe, no separate flour. I bake it every week and my kids eat it warm with soft butter before it makes it to the table.
Let it warm up an hour or two out of the fridge before you shape it. Full method, including a from-scratch version if you do not have leftovers: how to make ciabatta bread.
English muffins
This is my favorite thing to make that is not pizza, and it is not close.
These do not go in the oven. English muffins are supposed to be fried, not baked, so they go onto a griddle in clarified butter at 275 to 325°F. Completely different cooking method, completely different occasion. This is not a dinner thing anymore, it is a make-a-batch-and-eat-them-all-week thing.
Leftover pizza dough gets you there. If you want the version I have dialed in specifically for muffins, with a little sugar and butter in the dough, that is the legendary English muffin recipe.
Calzone
A calzone is the easiest thing on this list. One dough ball, stretched to 12 inches, cheese and sauce on half, fold it over, pinch the seam, poke two or three vents in the top so it does not blow out.
The reason this works so well on a steel is that the sealed pocket traps steam while the bottom is getting blasted with conductive heat. The cheese goes molten and the crust still comes out crisp underneath. Ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan at 450°F for 20 minutes. Here is the classic cheese calzone recipe.
Cheese breadsticks
100 grams of dough per stick. Flatten it into a rough 6 inch oval, lay a mozzarella stick in the middle, roll it up like a cigar, pinch the seam and the ends, and bake it seam side down.
These are the fastest thing you can do with extra dough. Ten to twelve minutes and they are gone in five. The cheese breadsticks recipe has the step-by-step photos.
Same technique, one upgrade: add leftover meatballs from the night before and you have cheesy meatball sub sticks. My mother's itty bitty meatballs are what we used the first time.
Garlic knots
Garlic knots were invented out of necessity in New York. Pizzerias tore up the scraps left over from stretching, wrapped them around two fingers, tied them off and threw them in the oven. Butter or oil on top when they came out, dusted with the same herbs that were going into the sauce.
That is the whole idea, and it still works. If you have leftover dough you can skip straight to knotting them. Easy garlic knots.
Focaccia
Focaccia wants a bigger dough ball and a lot of olive oil. Take a double batch, drop it on an oiled sheet tray, let it relax for an hour or two, then press it out to fill the tray with your fingers and make all those nooks.
Here is the part most people get wrong: do not add the oil to the dough during the mix. Add it during the bake. Pour a good amount on top before it goes in, season it, press the herbs and garlic in, and launch the tray right on top of your steel. When it comes out, pull the loaf off the tray and put it directly on the steel for a minute to crisp the bottom. Full method: the ultimate focaccia.
Pizza dough ice cream
This one is a whacky science experiment and I stand by it. Freeze your steel for 24 hours, put scoops of vanilla on the frozen surface, tear up already-baked dough or leftover crust into chunks, then chop and fold it all together with dough scrapers, Cold Stone style.
It does not taste like pizza. It tastes closer to cookie dough ice cream, chewy and salty and sweet at the same time. Use baked dough, not raw. Here is the frozen steel dessert.
The one change that makes all of this easier
If you are working from our 72-Hour Dough Mix, the bag calls for 1¾ cups of water. When I know I am making bread out of it instead of pizza, I go up to 2 cups. That slightly higher hydration is what opens the crumb up for ciabatta and focaccia, and it makes English muffins a little more full of nooks.
Same pack, same technique, a quarter cup of water. That is the whole trick. If you are making pizza, stay at 1¾.
What if you cannot get to it today
Dough does not have to be used the day you remember it is in there.
- How long pizza dough lasts in the fridge, and what it looks like when it has gone too far.
- How to freeze pizza dough and thaw it properly. Up to three months, thaw overnight in the fridge, then let it come to room temp.
- Reviving over-proofed dough, for when it went flat and slack on you.
Frequently asked questions
What can I make with leftover pizza dough?
Ciabatta, focaccia, calzone, cheese breadsticks, garlic knots and English muffins all work with the same dough you would use for pizza. Older dough, four to seven days, is best for ciabatta and focaccia because the extra fermentation adds flavor. Fresher dough, one to three days, is better for pizza and calzone because it still has the strength to stretch.
Is pizza dough the same as bread dough?
Close enough that you can use one for the other. Both are flour, water, salt and yeast. The differences are hydration and shaping. Bread doughs are usually wetter, which is why bumping the water up a little is the one adjustment worth making when you are turning pizza dough into a loaf.
How old can pizza dough be before I should not use it?
Seven days is about the edge in the fridge. Past that it starts losing strength, the gluten breaks down, and it will not hold a stretch. That is not a failure, it is a redirect: that dough makes great ciabatta. If it smells sharply of alcohol or has gone grey, let it go.
Do I need a Baking Steel for any of this?
No, but it changes the result on everything that goes in the oven. The bottom crust on a calzone, the oven spring on ciabatta, the crisp under a focaccia, all of that comes from conductive heat hitting the dough from below. A Baking Steel Original is what I use for all of it. The English muffins go on a Griddle.
Can I use store-bought dough?
Yes. Let it come fully to room temperature first or it will fight you when you try to stretch it. It will not have the flavor a long ferment gives you, but the techniques all work the same.
About the author
I invented the Baking Steel in 2012 after reading a single paragraph in the Wall Street Journal about Modernist Cuisine. I was standing in my family's steel fabrication plant in Hanover, MA and thought: steel conducts heat 18x better than ceramic. What would that do to a pizza?
Fourteen years later I am still in the kitchen, still obsessing over dough, and still convinced the best results come from removing complexity, not adding it. That is the whole idea behind the 72-Hour Dough Mix too. One mix, pre-measured, no guesswork, the same dough I make at home.
One mix. One mess. Just add time.