Good dough is what makes or breaks a pizza. Formed from the simplest ingredients using methods unchanged for millennia: Water, flour, salt, and yeast combined and allowed to ferment. The result can be a stinking gooey mess, or a silky smooth pleasure to work with.
I am of the opinion that you should not make dough with strict adherence to a recipe. There are too many environmental variables to say that X amount of water added to Y amount of flour will always work. You have to adjust on the fly to get the optimal dough, so keep that in mind if you choose to use any of the dough formulations presented here.
Here are some general observations of making dough. As a rule, when a recipe calls for a certain amount of water, you should hold back around 20%. Mix the rest and see if it needs the remainder. The dough I prefer is very wet until it goes to the bench to be folded. After the ferment, it will still be wetter than normal but very workable so long as you use a lot of flour on the work surface. Do not be afraid of too much flour on the dough, it will not absorb any more than it is able.
A few words I use when describing dough have a meaning specific to me, and others are pizza jargon. "Bench" is the work surface upon which you prepare dough. "Fold" means specifically to me, to form the dough ball into a slightly flattened elongated shape, then fold one end over onto the other. It is then flattened, and folded again, 7 times in total. The purpose is to trap air in the dough and begin the development of gluten. "Double" is the process of allowing the freshly mixed dough to rise for an hour +/-, before it is divided into smaller portions for the fermentation period. "Balling" is the term for using both hands to create a spheroid of the dough. It is done by cupping the dough in both hands and using the thumbs to pull dough outward on top and the other fingers to push it inward on the bottom, rotating the ball as you go. Here is a crappy video of the entire dough making process:
This dough is used in wood fired ovens and Frankenstein type modified BBQ grilles at temperatures from 600-1000.
This type of dough can be used at any temperature, from 450-1000 degrees.
