You don’t have to be a great baker to make homemade dough. Although there are hundreds of dough recipes, you don’t have to master all of them. Most are just variations of the basic dough recipe. The basic recipe is easy to make and takes little preparation time. You can use this dough to make bread for family meals or pot lucks. You could also make the dough into a pizza crust by flattening it out and going easy on the yeast. While you may not be a prize winning baker, there is no reason you shouldn’t know how to make a great basic dough recipe.
Step One
Grab your sifter and place it over the mixing bowl. Slowly pour your flour into the sifter 1/2 cup at a time. Add a teaspoon of yeast to the first 2 cups of sifted flour. Every 1/2 cup, stop and stir quickly for about 2 minutes. Do this until all the flour is into the mixture.
Step Two
Dump the sugar and salt into the water and stir until dissolved. Next you will add the flour. You will not just dump the flour into the mixing bowl like you did the sugar and salt, however.
Step Three
Turn your tap water to warm and fill a measuring cup with 2 cups of lukewarm water and dump the water into the mixing bowl.. This water should not be too warm. You don't want to kill the yeast with heat.
Step Four
Sprinkle an ample amount of flour onto a table or counter top. This will be your nonstick surface to work with the dough. Place the dough on the surface and roll it out until it is slightly less than 1 inch thick.
Step Five
Cut the dough into 3 even sections. The sections don't need to be perfect. You can simply eyeball it. Knead, squeeze, push, and pull each section for 5 minutes.
Step Six
Put the kneaded dough into an oven at 150 degrees to rise for 45 minutes. After this time, you can do with it as you please.