What's the Best Pizza Dough for a Baking Steel?
The Best Pizza Dough Recipe for a Home Oven
There are thousands of pizza dough recipes on the internet. Most of them were written for a generic home oven with no special equipment. They work. But they're designed for average results.
This recipe is different. It was built around a specific setup, a home oven running at maximum heat with a Baking Steel inside. That combination changes everything about what the dough needs to be.
If you're making pizza at home and you want the best possible result, this is the recipe.
Most pizza dough recipes are written for a pizza stone. Or a sheet pan. Or whatever's sitting in your oven right now.
This one isn't.
This dough was built for a Baking Steel, and that distinction matters more than most people realize.
Why Steel Changes Everything
When I invented the Baking Steel in 2012, I wasn't just building a better pizza stone. I was building a heat battery. A 1/4-inch slab of solid carbon steel that conducts heat 18x faster than ceramic, stores it, and transfers it directly into your dough the moment it hits the surface.
That changes what your dough needs to be.
A pizza stone is forgiving. It's slow. It gives your dough time to catch up.
A Baking Steel is not forgiving. It's fast. It punishes weak dough and rewards great dough.
So what does great dough look like on a steel?
High hydration. Long ferment. Simple ingredients. Time.
That's it. Four variables. I've tested all of them. Here's what works.
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The Recipe
This is a 72-hour cold ferment dough. Four ingredients. Minimal kneading. No stand mixer. Just patience, and a Baking Steel.
Ingredients (makes 3 dough balls, about 288g each)
- 500g Central Milling High Mountain bread flour (13.5% protein)
- 350g room temperature water (70% hydration)
- 15g fine sea salt
- 1g active dry yeast
Instructions
- Whisk together flour, salt, and yeast in a large bowl until evenly combined.
- Add room temperature water. Mix until no dry flour remains, then knead by hand for 2-3 minutes until the dough comes together into a rough, cohesive ball. It will be sticky. Don't add more flour.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for 24 hours.
- Transfer to the refrigerator for 24-48 hours. Don't touch it.
- Three hours before baking, remove from the refrigerator. Divide into 3 equal portions. Shape each into a tight round and place on a floured surface. Cover with a damp cloth, or covered in a dough container.
- Let rest at room temperature for 3 hours before stretching.
Pro tip: No need to bloom or dissolve the yeast. Whisk it directly into the flour with the salt. Room temperature water, straight in. The 72-hour cold ferment does all the work.
Why 72 Hours?
The cold ferment does two things that no amount of kneading can replicate.
First, it builds flavor. The slow fermentation produces complex organic acids that give the dough depth, the kind of depth you taste in a great Neapolitan pie and wonder how they did it.
Second, it builds structure. The gluten develops slowly and evenly over 72 hours, creating a network that stretches beautifully without tearing and holds up to the intense heat of a Baking Steel.
You can rush bread. You cannot rush pizza dough. Not this kind.
Why 70% Hydration?
High hydration dough is harder to handle. It sticks to your hands. It spreads when you try to shape it. Most beginner recipes drop the hydration to 60% or lower to make the dough easier to manage.
We don't do that here.
70% hydration is what gives you the open crumb, the leopard spots on the cornicione, the blistered edges that people photograph and argue about in the comments. It's the difference between a pizza that looks homemade and a pizza that looks like it came out of a Neapolitan wood-fired oven.
On a Baking Steel, this hydration level is essential. The steel's intense heat hits the bottom of the dough fast, so fast that the moisture inside the dough turns to steam almost immediately, creating those air pockets and that crunch. Drop the hydration and you lose that effect entirely.
Why High Mountain Bread Flour?
Not all flour is created equal. We use Central Milling High Mountain bread flour, 13.5% protein, and it's not an accident.
High protein flour builds stronger gluten. Stronger gluten means a dough that stretches without tearing, holds its shape under intense heat, and produces the chew and structure that separates a great pizza from a mediocre one.
13.5% protein is on the higher end for bread flour. Combined with a 72-hour ferment, it creates a dough that performs under the extreme heat of a Baking Steel in a way that all-purpose flour simply cannot match.
It's the same flour we use in our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix. We didn't choose it by accident. We tested a lot of flour before landing here.
Pizza Flour Comparison: Which Flour is Best for a Baking Steel?
Not all flour performs the same at high heat. Here's how the most common pizza flours stack up, and why we landed on High Mountain bread flour for this recipe.
| Flour | Protein % | Best For | Works on Baking Steel? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central Milling High Mountain bread flour | 13.5% | High-heat home oven pizza, long cold ferment | ✅ Our pick |
| 00 Flour (Caputo, Central Milling) | 11-12.5% | Wood-fired ovens 800°F+, Neapolitan style | ⚠️ Better at higher temps |
| Bread flour (generic) | 12-13% | NY style, longer ferments, chewy crust | ✅ Good substitute |
| All-purpose flour | 10-11% | Overnight doughs, thin crust, everyday baking | ⚠️ Works but less structure |
| Whole wheat flour | 13-14% | Rustic, hearty crusts | ❌ Too dense for steel |
Why 00 flour isn't our first choice for a home oven Baking Steel
00 flour is the gold standard for Neapolitan pizza, but Neapolitan pizza is baked at 800-900°F in a wood-fired oven in 90 seconds. Your home oven maxes out at 500-550°F. At that temperature, 00 flour's lower protein content means less gluten development, which can result in a crust that's soft where you want it crispy.
00 flour is exceptional. But it's optimized for a different oven than the one you have.
Why all-purpose flour falls short
All-purpose flour works. We won't pretend it doesn't. But at 10-11% protein, it doesn't build the gluten structure that holds up to the intense heat transfer of a Baking Steel. AP flour will not hold a long fermentation well. You will want to cap that around 24 hours. You'll get a decent pizza. You won't get leopard spots.
Why High Mountain bread flour is our pick
13.5% protein gives you maximum gluten development during the 72-hour cold ferment. The dough stretches without tearing, holds its shape when it hits a 550°F steel, and produces the open crumb and blistered cornicione that makes people stop and take a photo before they eat.
On the fermentation side, High Mountain can go 3,4 5 days or even longer. We find the sweet spot around 3 or 4 days.
Organic matters too. Central Milling's High Mountain flour is grown and milled without pesticides or additives. Cleaner flour, cleaner flavor. When your recipe has four ingredients, every one of them counts.
Baking on the Steel
- Preheat your Baking Steel on the top rack, 6-8 inches from the broiler, at your oven's maximum temperature (500-550°F) for 45-60 minutes.
- Use the broiler hack: switch to broil for 2-3 minutes while you're topping your pizza, then switch back to bake right before you launch.
- Apply the Rule of 22 , dough weight in grams equals diameter in inches times 22. A 12-inch pie needs 264 grams of dough.
- Top lightly. Launch onto the steel. Bake 4-6 minutes.
- Pull when the cornicione is blistered and the bottom is charred.
Skip the Measuring
If you want this dough without the math, we bottled the recipe. Our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix uses the same Central Milling High Mountain flour, the same formula, pre-measured and ready to go. Just add water and wait.
Same dough. Less work.
The Bottom Line
This recipe exists because of the Baking Steel. The hydration, the ferment time, the flour choice, every variable was tested on a steel inside a home oven at maximum heat.
The steel deserves the right dough. This is it.
About Andris Lagsdin
In 2012 I was sitting at my desk at the end of the day in our family steel shop in Hanover, Massachusetts, reading the Wall Street Journal. One line stopped me cold, steel conducts heat better than stone. I put the paper down, walked into the shop, and started looking for a piece of steel that would fit inside my oven.
That piece of steel became the Baking Steel®, the original pizza steel for home ovens, now used by hundreds of thousands of home cooks around the world. Every steel still leaves our family shop. Every one arrives pre-seasoned and ready to cook.
I've been making pizza on steel for 14 years. I teach free weekly pizza classes. I created the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix because great dough shouldn't require a culinary degree.
But the mission hasn't changed since that moment I walked off the shop floor with a slab of steel under my arm. I still just want to make a piece of steel feel alive. Read the full story →
