PIZZA CRUST: THE FINAL WORD

As I've said before: Crust is everything. I had found many recipes for pizza crust and tried about 6 of them. The one I liked the best is the basis for the final tweaked version I came to after several weeks of adjusting the ratio of ingredients, and adding and subtracting sweeteners. Here's the final version of the crust I've been using regularly and getting consistently stellar results. This will make 3-4 pizzas, depending on how big you want to to make them:

INGREDIENTS:
• 4 1/2 cups of bread flour (not all purpose flour)
• 2 teaspoons of salt (I use garlic salt, but that is not crucial)
• 1 teaspoon of yeast (or one 'packet')
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 2/3 cups water
• 1/3 cup olive oil

DIRECTIONS:
mix warm water with yeast and oil.  Put it aside while you mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Metal bowl works best for me.
Mix wet to dry. I use a hand mixer with dough hooks, but you are welcome to go for it: man up and try it by hand if you dare. Either way, when you're done, it should stick to the bottom of the bowl but not the sides. It seems to help the dough if you mix fully for a solid minute or two. And.... done.
No.  Not done.
Divide the dough into pizza sized portions and work over into dough balls, basically, just get the dough into a nice round shape..  Put each one into a pre-floured container at least 2x it's size.

In all cases, when the dough it fully mixed, it's crucial to cover the dough loosely, and let it rise completely for at least 45 minutes. An hour if you have the time. Overnight for even better results.

Let me spell it out.  Leave the dough on the counter for at least 24 hours and you will have amazing pizza crust.  any earlier, and it's your loss.

Some notes:
Keep the dough in a round bowl after you cut it up into pizza sized portions. This will ensure that the dough stays rounded and ready to easily press into a round pizza. When making the pizza crust, have flour (all purpose flour is ok for this part) on hand to dust the surface with, and to keep your hands and the dough dusted. This will ensure the dough doesn't stick to stuff when you're working it out. Hold the dough in one hand and let it fall over the fingertips of the other hand to stretch the edges, then let it fall over your knuckles. If you are not really sure, or you want to get very serious about your dough, you can watch this video to see how it's done the proper way. This lady is crazy hard core.