Why we ferment dough 48 hours
People ask why they can't just make our dough same-day. They can — it just won't taste like ours. The difference isn't the flour or some secret. It's time.
A pizza dough is a living thing. The second you mix flour, water, salt, and yeast, fermentation starts: the yeast eats sugars and throws off gas and flavour compounds. Rush it, and you get bread that's puffy but bland. Slow it down in the cold, and you get depth, stretch, and that blistered, chewy crust you actually want to finish.
What 48 cold hours actually does
We mix our dough, ball it, and park it in the fridge for two full days before it ever sees the oven. Three things happen in there:
- Flavour builds. Slow fermentation develops acids and aromatics that a fast rise never reaches. That faint tang and wheaty sweetness? That's the fridge talking.
- The gluten relaxes. A rested dough stretches thin without tearing or snapping back, so you get an even, airy base instead of a tight, doughy one.
- The crust chars right. Slow-fermented dough holds just enough residual sugar to blister and spot in a 900° oven without burning.
Good pizza is mostly patience you can taste.
Steal our home method
You don't need a coal oven to use this. You need a fridge and a plan.
Step 1 — Mix, don't fuss
Per dough ball: 250 g bread flour, 160 g water (that's a 64% hydration), 5 g salt, and just 1 g instant yeast. Mix until shaggy, rest 20 minutes, then knead 3–4 minutes until smooth. Less yeast plus more time beats more yeast plus less time, every time.
Step 2 — Ball & cold-proof
Shape into a tight ball, seal it in an oiled container, and refrigerate for 48 hours. It'll rise slowly and smell faintly beery — that's exactly right. Don't crowd it; give it room to expand.
Step 3 — Warm up, then stretch
Pull the dough out 2 hours before you bake so it comes to room temperature. Stretch by hand — never a rolling pin, which crushes all that gas out of the rim. Leave a fat edge for the crust to puff.
Step 4 — Bake as hot as you dare
Home oven maxed out, pizza steel or stone preheated a full hour. Most home ovens hit 250–290 °C — get there and you'll pull a respectable pie in 6–8 minutes. It won't be coal-fired, but the dough will carry it.
The one rule
Change nothing else until you've nailed the timing. Same flour, same hydration, same oven — just give it the two days. Once that's muscle memory, then start playing with hydration and toppings. The dough is the whole game.