The Short Answer: You can buy pizza dough at grocery stores like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, from your local pizzeria, or you can skip all of that and order our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix,organic Central Milling flour, just add water, and you'll have better dough than any of those options in 72 hours.
I've bought pizza dough from just about everywhere. Grocery stores, pizzerias, frozen food aisles, even gas stations (don't ask). When I was first testing the Baking Steel back in 2012, I couldn't make enough dough to keep up with my experiments. So I became a regular at Bertucci's, walking in two, three times a week, buying bags of dough like it was my second job.
The manager finally asked me what I was doing with all that dough. I told him I was building a pizza steel. He thought I was nuts. Then he invited me into his restaurant one afternoon to test my steel inside his wood-fired oven. We had the Baking Steel sitting right on the floor of his oven, going head-to-head against the brick. The oven was running around 700°F, which was actually a little too hot, the steel was scorching the bottoms. But it was a fun afternoon, and it proved something important: the steel transfers heat faster than anything else.
Point is, I've tested dough from every source you can imagine. Here's what I've learned about each one, and what I'd actually recommend.
About the Author
Andris Lagsdin is the founder of Baking Steel. He invented the original Baking Steel in 2012 after spending 15 years in his family's steel business, Stoughton Steel, in Hanover, MA. He's taught thousands of students how to make pizza at home through free weekly classes and has been obsessing over flour, dough, and crust for over 13 years. In 2026, Andris launched the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix, the same recipe he's been teaching for over a decade, now in a bag.
1. Your Local Pizzeria
This is the move most people don't think of, and honestly, it's one of the best options out there. Walk into your neighborhood pizza shop and ask if they sell dough. Most will sell you a ball for $3-5. Some might look at you funny. Keep asking.
Here's why pizzeria dough is good: it's fresh, it's been properly fermented, and it's made by someone who works with dough every single day. That Bertucci's dough I was buying back in 2012? It was solid. It had been proofed correctly, the hydration was right, and it stretched beautifully on the steel.
The downside? You don't control the recipe. You don't know the hydration. You don't know what flour they're using. And most pizzeria dough is designed for their oven, not yours. A shop running a 600°F deck oven makes dough differently than what works best at 500-550°F in a home oven on a Baking Steel. But for a Tuesday night when you didn't plan ahead, walking into your local shop and grabbing a ball of dough is a great play.
2. Grocery Stores: Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Beyond
This is where most people start, and there's nothing wrong with that. Trader Joe's sells fresh pizza dough for around $4-5, and honestly, it's not bad. Whole Foods has options in their bakery section too. Most major grocery stores carry either fresh dough in the deli/bakery area or frozen dough in the freezer aisle.
A word of caution though: When you buy one of those big blobs of dough in a plastic bag, don't just unwrap it and start stretching. That's a recipe for a tough, uneven crust. You need to divide it into smaller portions, I'd say 250-280g balls for a standard pie — and let each ball do its final proof at room temperature for at least 2-3 hours. This lets the gluten relax and the yeast wake up. You'll get a much better stretch and a much better pizza.
If you want to learn how to handle store-bought dough like a pro, I wrote a full guide on that: How to Make Store-Bought Pizza Dough Better.
3. Frozen Pizza Dough
Frozen dough is convenient, but it requires patience. You'll find brands like Trader Joe's, Wewalka, and various organic options in most freezer aisles. The biggest mistake people make with frozen dough is rushing the thaw. You can't microwave it and expect magic.
Here's the right way: move it from the freezer to the fridge 24 hours before you want to bake. Then pull it out and let it come to room temp for 2-3 hours. If you skip either step, you're fighting cold, tight dough that won't stretch and won't bake right.
I've been freezing and thawing dough since the early days of Baking Steel. If you want my full method, check out How to Freeze Pizza Dough (and Thaw It Perfectly).
4. Make It Yourself
I'll always believe the best dough is the dough you make yourself. You control everything, the flour, the hydration, the fermentation time, the salt. And once you've made a few batches, it becomes second nature.
My 72-hour pizza dough recipe is the one I teach in every class. It's four ingredients — flour, water, salt, yeast — and 72 hours of cold fermentation in your fridge. That long, slow ferment is what develops the flavor, the texture, and the digestibility that you'll never get from a store-bought blob in a bag.
If you want to make a lot at once, I break that down in my Pizza Dough in Bulk guide. Make it on Sunday, bake all week.
5. Our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix, Shipped to Your Door
Here's where my journey with buying dough comes full circle.
Back in 2018, we actually ran a Kickstarter for frozen pizza dough, shipped to your door, ready to thaw and bake. We raised $27,000 and learned a ton about how to package and ship dough that travels well. It was a fun experiment, but the logistics of shipping frozen dough across the country are brutal.
So we took a different approach. We took the exact recipe I've been teaching for over a decade, the same 72-hour cold ferment dough, and worked with a co-packer to put it in a pouch. Organic flour from Central Milling, the same flour I use in my own kitchen. You add water, mix, and let it ferment for 72 hours. That's it.
It's called the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix, and it's the easiest way to make dough that's better than anything you'll find at a grocery store or pizzeria. No measuring flour. No guessing on hydration. Just add water and wait.
If you've ever wanted to make your own dough but felt intimidated by the process, this is your entry point. And if you're already making dough from scratch, try a side-by-side. I think you'll be surprised.
So Which Should You Buy?
Here's how I think about it:
In a rush, no planning ahead: Walk into your local pizzeria and buy a ball. It's fresh, it's fermented, and it's $4-7. Hard to beat for zero effort.
Planned ahead a little bit: Grab dough from Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, but divide it into balls and give it time to proof. Don't just unwrap and stretch.
Want the best results with minimal effort: Order our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix. Add water, wait 72 hours, and you've got dough that's better than 95% of what's out there. Plus it ships right to your door.
Want complete control: Make it from scratch using our 72-hour recipe. Source your own flour, dial in your hydration, and own the entire process.
No matter which route you choose, the one thing that'll make the biggest difference in your pizza isn't actually the dough, it's what you bake it on. A ripping hot Baking Steel preheated for an hour will turn any of these doughs into something special. That's why I invented the thing.
Got questions? Come hang with us in our free online pizza classes , I'd love to help you dial this in.
