Looking for a fun, practical Amish Friendship Bread recipe? This Amish Friendship Bread Pizza Dough, shared by Kitchen Friend Jennifer Werth, is easy and perfect for pizza dough, stromboli (pizza rolls), braided spaghetti bread, meatball bubbles and more!
You’ll want to make sure your starter is active and bubbly, having been fed today or in the past 24 hours.
A drafty or cool kitchen will prevent the dough from rising properly. If you’re working in a cold or drafty kitchen, place the bowl of dough on a low setting heating pad to help the dough rise. You can even set it outside in the sun just make sure it’s covered to prevent bugs, and keep an eye on how quickly it rises. You can also do a slow fermenting rise (see my No-Knead sourdough bread to learn more about this).
After the first baking this recipe for Amish Friendship Bread Pizza Dough you can freeze the crust. You can use this dough recipe to make several recipes and freeze them until you are ready to bake. And when you are ready to bake your pizza dough, top it with this delicious homemade pizza sauce!
Amish Friendship Bread Pizza Dough
Ingredients
- 2½-3 cups flour
- 1 cup Amish Friendship Bread Starter active and bubbly
- ¼ to ½ cup warm water
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, mix flour and salt.
- Add in Amish Friendship Bread Starter and oil. Mix well with your hands.
- Add water as needed to get a good dough consistency. It should be well-mixed, but not too sticky.
- Add more flour as needed.
- Knead dough 10-12 times.
- Place your dough in a well-oiled bowl in a warm, draft-free area.
- Let dough rise all day (if you mix in the morning) or all night (if you mix in the evening.)
- Then punch dough down and knead again a few times.
- Divide dough depending on your size of cookie sheet or use.
- Flatten dough into crusts on a greased cookie sheet.
- Bake dough in a 350° F (175° C) preheated oven for 5-8 minutes or until dough loses its sheen.
- Remove crust from oven, add pizza toppings.
- Bake for an additional 10-12 minutes.
- ENJOY!
Notes
- Your starter should be active and bubbly (fed today or in the past 24 hours).
- If your starter hasn’t been active for the past couple of days, it’s best that you give it a feeding and then make the dough the following day. Also, make sure your kitchen is warm. To learn more about active Amish Friendship Bread starters click here: https://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/tutorial-how-to-get-a-bubbly-active-amish-friendship-bread-sourdough-starter/
- As you get to know your starter and your kitchen conditions (warm? cool?), be patient with rise times! You can help your dough rise by making sure it’s in a draft-free, warm area, or do a long ferment in the fridge overnight.
>> Have you tried this? Share your best pic with us or leave a comment below and let us know how it worked for you!
This is the second thing I made from the starter. My family and I did like the pizza, but we all thought the crust was a little too sweet. I think the next time I try it, I will try using Olive Oil and maybe some Italian seasoning. If anyone have any suggestion please let me know.
Ware can I buy Amish Friendship Bread Starter
Hi David! You can make your own Amish Friendship Bread starter here: https://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/amish-friendship-bread-starter/
Any substitutions for oil. I cant have oils and butter. Need fat free or VERY low fat.
Can you use a cup every day from your starter?
The pizza dough was very good!
Hi Chris! You can, with some caveats: skip down to the part that says “If you’ve gone through the 10 days…” https://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/faq-how-soon-can-i-bake-use-my-amish-friendship-bread-sourdough-starter/
I was very pleasantly surprised by this recipe! I fed my starter yesterday using the usual 1 cup each of milk and flour, but halved the sugar, and made the dough this morning. While the starter was nice and bubbly this morning, it didn’t rise very noticeably over the course of the day in my warm kitchen, but the dough was nice and quite elastic when I kneaded it before baking. I rolled out the dough and brushed with butter, garlic, and italian seasoning and sprinkled with mozzarella cheese to make some excellent cheese sticks. The dough was a bit sweet, but it was a nice accent rather than overpowering. I will definitely make these again!
This is my issue sometimes when I make dough. I don’t know what I am doing wrong that it doesn’t rise?!
I just started my Friendship Amish Bread starter and I can’t wait to try these recipes. Thanks for sharing them
This recipe announces it is yeast free but then to make the bread you need a starter which is made from yeast. Yeast is unavailable at present and so am unable to make this bread.
Hi Elaine! Yes, all the recipes here use 1 cup Amish Friendship Bread starter. If you don’t have a starter that you received from a friend, then you need to make your own, and it does require 1 packet of yeast. If you have a sourdough starter, you can use that (see this post here: https://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/tutorial-make-an-amish-friendship-bread-starter-from-a-regular-sourdough-starter/).
If you don’t have time to make a starter (a traditional sourdough starter doesn’t use yeast), here’s a quick pizza dough recipe that should work:
1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 cup fat-free milk, plus extra as needed
2 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon of fresh dried herbs (oregano, rosemary, marjoram, basil)
1/ In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and garlic salt. Slowly add milk and oil until a soft dough forms.
2/ Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for one minute. Shape dough into a ball and cover loosely with oiled plastic wrap or dishcloth. Place in a warm area of your kitchen and let it sit for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
3/ Turn the dough back onto the floured surface and roll a 12-inch circle. Transfer to a baking sheet (dust with cornmeal if you have).
4/ Bake for 8 minutes, then remove and add sauce and toppings.
5/ Return to oven and bake for another 15-20 minutes, or until a light golden brown.
6/ Enjoy!
Let me know if this works for you, Elaine! Stay healthy and safe.
After baking dough for 5-8 minutes, it puffed way up and made it hard to put on toppings. Baked with toppings for 25 minutes, but dough was heavy and gummy….any suggestions??
Mine does this as well, doesn’t rise but does when it bakes. I hope someone has an answer.My kitchen today was a steady 82 where I let it sit since this morning. NO rise active bubbly starter though.
Yum! Now I am craving chicken! I love roasting whole chickens on Sunday evenings, and I always use the bones to make a broth. It’s a great way to have a surplus of broth in the freezer, and it’s so handy when anyone in my house gets sick! I will try this recipe the next Sunday I roast a chicken 🙂
This was my third 10 day bake and my first fail. Dough didn’t raise at all. Seems like you should add yeast. Don’t think I’ll try this again.
Hi Mary, I’m so sorry to hear that! Is your kitchen cool? You can always add yeast to give a recipe a boost, but this recipe uses the yeast in the starter to rise. Your starter needs to be active (well-fed and bubbly, ideally), and your kitchen needs to be warm during the rising and baking period. This post might help: https://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/tutorial-how-to-get-a-bubbly-active-amish-friendship-bread-sourdough-starter/.
How many pizza crusts does this recipe make?
Hi Pam! Two 10-12″ crusts, depending on how thin you roll it out.
One change I make is to use olive oil instead of vegetable. I have to add an extra tablespoon, but I think the flavor is more pizza-y 🙂 I also use olive oil to oil the bowl it rises in and add a smidge to the top of the dough so that it stays moist on top.
I would love to make this for my hubby and our kids! We love homemade pizza!
I love home made pizza! I made this for my mom and dad!
I’d love to try this recipe for my family. We make pizza at home frequently and I’ve had a hard time getting good results from some of the recipes I’ve found online. I’m always looking for a new one to try and think this would be excellent!
I want to try this recipe. I love that you have savory recipes for the starter. I never knew it could be used like this.
We love pizza, and this was the perfect dough for my hungry family!
I left my dough on the stove warmer all day and it didn’t budge. Not sure what I did wrong, but I couldn’t get this dough to rise or have any elasticity.
Hi Michelle!
Its possible the stove warmer could have been way too warm. I know my stove warmer gets warm enough to kill a culture pretty quickly.
Thank you, Jennifer! I asked, in part b/c, if I set the dough to rise in the evening, it will likely be easily 10 hours before I get back to it, thanks to morning schedules with children. But letting it rise overnight, and getting to the rest of the dough in the morning, when I have more energy, sounds appealing. Now, I have 3 starters on the counter (I ended up with about 6.5 to 6.75–I had to toss the extra–from this first batch) ready for some attention. I’ve never tried pre-making stromboli before, and I really like the idea of having that on hand!
No problem Robin! Glad to help! I am a junkie for having meals made up ahead of time that I can just get out of the freezer either in the morning to thaw, or right before I need to throw it in the oven. With young children, its a MUST! =)
reply to myself. I plan to make the pizza dough, load it for stromboli, wrap and freeze. on “stromboli/pizza” day, I will take it out in the morning to defrost for 7-8 hours, and bake in time for supper. I will let you know how it turns out.
How forgiving is the rising time? I presume all day or overnight means approximately 8 hours? is 9-10 still going to work? thanks in advance.
Hey Robin! As far as I know you could probably freeze either before or after rising. If you are freezing a dough ball for pizza, I’d do it before the rise. If you are going to freeze it in crust form, I form the crust and pre-bake it for 5-10 minutes then freeze. That works awesome for me!
I make all of my stromboli up ahead of time and then freeze it. Depending on your ingredients, I’ve even popped it into the oven fully frozen and it has come out beautifully!
Yep, rise time is eight hours. I think 9-10 would still work since you wouldn’t be going for a second rise. Since you won’t need the culture to sustain itself through a second rise, then a longer rise time shouldn’t affect it at all. =)
If I freeze the dough before rising, what do I need to do when I want to use the dough? Does it need to thaw and will it rise or just thaw and roll out to pizza dough, bake crust and continue?
thanks for the help. I’ve made stromboli before, always using premade dough. so I know you’re not supposed to bake it before filling it. good to know the time and heat for baking after filling. thanks again.
my new, big question, can you freeze this dough before cooking it, and if so, should it be before or after it rises, so that I can make it ahead to have on hand for a stromboli night?
today I’ve got a batch of chocolate bread baking, and tons of starter (first round with commercial yeast; very productive), and I plan to make a couple batches of pizza crusts with some of the rest. 🙂 If I can freeze pre-risen dough, that would really help. meanwhile, I think I will have to freeze or refrigerate some starter…I’m out of sugar! 🙂
Hey Robin!
For Stromboli, you just roll out the dough into your pan, fill with your ingredients and bake for 30 min at 350 depending on your ingredients. No need to prebake the crust. I make the kind with hamburger, pepperoni, turkey, ham, and mozzarella. As Darien said, you just have to watch your dough thickness to make sure it gets baked thoroughly. =)
I will add that these directions are for making pizza, but you can use the raw dough to make just about anything else that would require pizza dough.
I’m not sure how you would use it to make stromboli if you have to bake it before adding ingredients. Can you advise me?
I look forward to trying this version of pizza dough, and being able to have some on hand should we need more than what my bread machine can make for an evening. 🙂
Also, is it possible to freeze the dough prior to baking?
This pizza crust is wonderful!!
My crust does not stretch. It tears or bounces back. Can you help. Obviously you had more luck than me
Hi Sherry! We found this post that has some tips on stretching pizza dough: https://www.thekitchn.com/the-5-key-steps-to-stretching-pizza-dough-255465#:~:text=Bring%20your%20dough%20to%20room,just%20like%20a%20rubber%20band.
It’s not specifically for Amish Friendship Bread pizza dough, but these basic rules should still apply. Let us know if this helps at all!