Same-day no-knead pan pizza

Name: Same-day no-knead pan pizza
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 18 min
Total time: 4 h 28 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Pan
Ingredients: 400 g Gold Medal Bread Flour; 300 g water; 9 g salt; 4 g yeast; 12 g oil; 1 ball Pizza dough (see formula above) (One 30 cm round pan's worth); 20 ml Olive oil for the pan (Yes, that much — the base fries in it); 200g Crushed tomatoes; 2 cloves Garlic (Grated); 3 g Fine sea salt; drizzle Extra virgin olive oil; 250g Low-moisture mozzarella (Cubed, not shredded — pre-shredded is coated in starch); 20 g Pecorino Romano (Grated, added in the last 3 minutes); handful Fresh basil (After the bake, never before); freshly cracked Black pepper

Mix at lunchtime, eat at dinner. A 75% hydration no-knead dough, four folds half an hour apart, and a crisp fried bottom from a well-oiled pan.

Recipe by Priya Patel · Published August 22, 2026

Prep + bake 38 min · Dough schedule 3 h 50 min · Total 4 h 28 min4 servings

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This is the recipe I hand to people who tell me they don't have time for pizza. It is a mix-at-eleven, eat-at-four dough: no mixer, no kneading, no cold ferment — just a high dose of yeast, four folds thirty minutes apart, and a heavily oiled pan. What you give up is flavour depth, because there is no substitute for time. What you get back is a reliable, crisp-bottomed pan pizza on the same day you decided you wanted one — and when you do have three days, the 72-hour version is where that flavour went. Two failures account for nearly every message I get about this dough. The first is a dough that never moved, which is almost always cold water in a cold kitchen — dough that didn't rise walks through the checks. The second is a pan pulled from the oven too early. Give it the full bake. Gold Medal Bread Flour is a deliberate choice here: it is already in most supermarkets, and 12.3% protein is plenty of structure at 75% hydration in a pan.

Flour: Gold Medal Bread Flour (12.3% protein) — read the review

Dough Formula

Dough formula in grams and baker's percentage
Ingredient	Grams	Baker's %
Flour (12.3% protein)	400 g	100.0%
Water	300 g	75.0%
Salt	9 g	2.3%
Yeast	4 g	1.0%
Oil	12 g	3.0%

Makes 1 ball of ≈725 g

Ingredients

Dough

•1 ball Pizza dough (see formula above) — One 30 cm round pan's worth
•20 ml Olive oil for the pan — Yes, that much — the base fries in it

Sauce

•200g Crushed tomatoes
•2 cloves Garlic — Grated
•3 g Fine sea salt
•drizzle Extra virgin olive oil

Toppings

•250g Low-moisture mozzarella — Cubed, not shredded — pre-shredded is coated in starch
•20 g Pecorino Romano — Grated, added in the last 3 minutes
•handful Fresh basil — After the bake, never before
•freshly cracked Black pepper

Instructions

1
Whisk the yeast into the flour. Add water at 30-32°C (86-90°F) and the olive oil, and stir with a spatula until no dry flour remains, about a minute.
💡 Warm water is the whole schedule. Cold tap water at 15°C (59°F) can add two hours to a dough that is supposed to be done in five.
2
Sprinkle the salt over the top, cover the bowl, and rest 20 minutes before touching it again.
3
Do four sets of stretch-and-folds in the bowl, 30 minutes apart, with a wet hand. Each set is four folds — grab an edge, stretch up, fold over, rotate.
💡 This replaces kneading entirely. By the fourth set the dough should go from shaggy to smooth and slightly domed.
4
Cover and leave at room temperature for another hour, until the dough is airy, jiggly and roughly doubled. Total elapsed time so far, 3-3.5 hours.
5
Pour the olive oil into the 30 cm pan and swirl it up the sides. Tip the dough in, turn it once to coat, and press it gently toward the edges.
💡 If it springs back before it reaches the rim, stop and wait 15 minutes. It will get there on its own.
6
Cover and proof in the pan 60-90 minutes, until the dough fills the pan and the surface is covered in small bubbles.
7
Heat the oven to 260°C (500°F) with a steel or stone on the lowest rack for at least 45 minutes.
💡 The pan goes directly onto the preheated steel. That contact heat is what crisps the bottom before the cheese overcooks.
8
Stir the crushed tomatoes with the grated garlic, salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Do not cook the sauce.
9
Dimple the dough with oiled fingertips, scatter the mozzarella cubes to the very edge, then spoon the sauce over in loose pools — do not spread it flat.
💡 Cheese to the edge gives you a caramelised rim. Pooled sauce lets steam escape between the pools instead of soaking the crumb.
10
Bake 15-18 minutes on the steel, until the cheese at the rim is deep brown and the base lifts on a spatula with a stiff, crackling edge.
11
Add the pecorino for the last 3 minutes. Slide onto a rack, add basil and pepper, wait 5 minutes, then cut.
💡 Out of the pan immediately. Leaving it in traps steam and undoes the crisp bottom you just spent 18 minutes building.

Tips

→Hands-on time is about 20 minutes spread over an afternoon; the rest is waiting.
→The yeast is intentionally high at 1% of flour — that is what makes a same-day dough possible.
→You are trading flavour depth for speed — a 72-hour cold ferment tastes better; this one tastes good tonight.
→Cube the mozzarella. Shredded cheese has anti-caking starch that goes greasy and grainy.
→Cast iron beats a cake pan if you have it — more thermal mass, browner bottom.
→If your kitchen is below 20°C (68°F), find the warmest corner and add an hour.

🎬

How to Make Same-day no-knead pan pizza

Video coming soon

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Flour
Gold Medal Bread Flour
The cheap bag that is almost as good. At about 12% protein with added enzymes it makes a New York or pan crust most people could not pick out of a line-up against King Arthur.
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Ingredient
Cento All Purpose Crushed Tomatoes
Crushed in the tin instead of by hand, and sold as one can rather than a case — the low-commitment way in when a six-tin case is what stops you buying at all.
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Ingredient
Polly-O Low Moisture Whole Milk Mozzarella
Thick enough to cube for a Detroit rim, where shreds burn to lace — and four ingredients against a coating of rice flour, cellulose and natamycin that no bake removes.
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Ingredient
SAF Instant Yeast
Instant, so it goes in dry with the flour: no warm-water step means no step at which the yeast can be cooked, which is where an active-dry dough most often dies.
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Equipment
Greater Goods Single Sensor Baking Scale
One model behind one listing, on the maker's own page: 5 kg (11 lb) of capacity, reading down to 1 g. What the listing sends is what the maker documents — rarer here than it ought to be.
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Equipment
Original Baking Steel
6.4 mm is the home compromise: enough stored heat to bake two pies back to back, in a slab that will never crack the way a cordierite stone eventually does.
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