Gemignani's Master Dough with Starter: The Pizza Bible Recipe

Tony Gemignani’s The Pizza Bible (Ten Speed Press, 2014) has a Master Dough that serves as the base for pizzas such as his Cal-Italia. The version with a starter uses a small, slow preferment made the day before, plus high-gluten flour and diastatic malt, and the dough balls spend one to two days in the fridge. His publisher bills him as a 12-time world pizza champion.

The recipe below is the one 7x7 magazine reprinted with the publisher’s permission in 2014, alongside his Cal-Italia pizza. That excerpt makes the dough with a poolish starter, so this page does too. The baking method is our adaptation of his published methods: the two-rack bake from a different pizza recipe on Gemignani’s own website, with the excerpt’s one-hour preheat. The explanations on this page are ours.

What goes in

The excerpt gives amounts in American cups and spoons, with two exceptions: the starter is weighed (90 g), and the finished balls are weighed (13 ounces each). The quantities below are as published.

Poolish starter (makes 90 g):

• 1/3 of 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cold tap water (about 49 ml)
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of the same flour you’ll use in the dough

Master Dough (makes about 29 ounces, enough for two pizzas):

• 3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon warm water, 80 to 85°F (about 74 ml)
• 3 1/2 cups flour with 13 to 14% protein
• 1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon diastatic malt
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons ice water, plus more as needed (about 207 ml)
• 90 g poolish starter
• 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
• 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil

The milliliter figures are calculated from the US measures. This recipe is an exception to giving dough in grams: the excerpt gives the flour only in cups, and the original flour weight isn’t available, so we don’t convert it. A cup of flour weighs more or less depending on how it’s filled, so the dough’s exact hydration isn’t known. Gemignani’s step of weighing the finished dough into two 13-ounce balls, discarding any extra, fixes the size of each pizza, not the hydration; the recipe’s own check is to add water a little at a time if the dough won’t hold together. You’ll need a stand mixer with a dough hook.

Flour. Gemignani names All Trumps, Pendleton Flour Mills Power, Giusto’s High Performer, King Arthur Sir Lancelot Unbleached Hi-Gluten, and his own Tony’s California Artisan Flour. King Arthur lists Sir Lancelot at 14.0% protein. Use the same flour in the poolish as in the dough.

Make it

Makes two 13-ounce (about 370 g) dough balls, for two pizzas of 12 to 13 inches. Active time about 40 minutes over three days. Elapsed time about 45 hours at the shortest: 18 for the starter, 24 to 48 in the fridge, plus mixing, warming and the bake.

Day 1: the poolish

1. Whisk the yeast into the cold water for 30 seconds. The excerpt treats bubbling within that half minute as proof the yeast is alive, but a quick whisk in cold water isn’t a reliable test. Our practical adjustment: if you’re unsure your yeast is fresh, check it beforehand with its maker’s own activity test (Red Star’s, for example, uses warm water, sugar and 10 minutes), then make the poolish as written.
2. Stir in the flour with a rubber spatula. It should look like a thick pancake batter.
3. Scrape down the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature for 18 hours.

Gemignani refrigerates the poolish for 30 minutes before using it to cool it slightly. If you can’t use it straight away, keep it in the fridge for no more than 8 hours, then bring it back to cool room temperature.

Day 2: the dough

1. Dissolve the yeast. Whisk the 3/4 teaspoon of yeast into the warm water for 30 seconds to dissolve it. As on day 1, don’t treat this as a freshness test; use the yeast maker’s test beforehand if you’re unsure.
2. Combine. Put the flour and malt in the stand mixer bowl with the dough hook.
3. Add the water. On the lowest speed, pour in most of the ice water, keeping back about 2 tablespoons, then the yeast mixture. Swirl the reserved water in the yeast bowl to catch any yeast left behind and add it too. Mix about 15 seconds and stop.
4. Add the poolish. Add the 90 g of starter and mix on the lowest speed for about 1 minute, until most of the dough has gathered around the hook.
5. Check it. Pull the dough off the hook and scrape the bowl. Turn the dough over and press it into the bottom of the bowl to pick up loose flour. If it won’t hold together, add water about ½ teaspoon at a time until it does.
6. Salt, then oil. Add the salt and mix 1 minute on the lowest speed. Stop, add the oil, and mix 1 to 2 minutes, scraping down as you go, until the oil is absorbed. It won’t look smooth yet.
7. Knead. Turn the dough onto an unfloured counter and knead for 2 to 3 minutes, until smooth.
8. Rest. Cover with a damp towel for 20 minutes at room temperature.
9. Divide. Cut the dough in half, weigh the pieces, and form two 13-ounce balls. Discard any extra.
10. Refrigerate 24 to 48 hours. Set the balls about 3 inches apart on a half sheet pan (or one per quarter sheet pan if you’ll bake them on different days), wrap the pan airtight with a double layer of plastic, and put it somewhere level in the fridge.

Day 3 or 4: bake

1. Warm the dough. Leave a ball wrapped at room temperature until it reaches 60 to 65°F, the temperature the excerpt’s Cal-Italia recipe gives; check it with an instant-read thermometer. Gemignani’s fifth commandment is never to put cold dough in a hot oven.
2. Preheat. Put one stone or steel on the oven’s lowest rack and the other on the second rack from the top, and heat the oven to 500°F (260°C). In the excerpt, Gemignani preheats his two stones for an hour.
3. Shape and top. Stretch the dough to a 12- to 13-inch round on a peel dusted with flour; Gemignani’s dusting mix in the excerpt is 3 parts flour to 1 part semolina.
4. Bake on top. Slide the pizza onto the upper stone and bake for about 5 minutes.
5. Finish below. Turn the pizza 180 degrees and move it to the lower stone for about 5 minutes more, until golden brown.
6. Slice, then finish. Gemignani cuts the pizza before adding finishing ingredients such as grated cheese or herbs; he says it looks better and is less messy.

Times vary by pizza. The Cal-Italia in the same excerpt, rolled thin and topped with cheeses, bakes 7 minutes on top and 3 to 4 below, so go by the color of the base and top.

Why two stones

Using two stones or steels is the third of Gemignani’s ten commandments. He told Arthur Bovino that a single stone often leaves home cooks with an undercooked, soft bottom, and that a pizza should cook mostly in one spot and then move to a hot spot to finish. Brush both stones clean after each pizza, his tenth commandment, within your stone or steel maker’s cleaning instructions. These are his methods, not rules every oven must follow.

Before you try it, check what your oven racks can carry and what your oven’s manual allows; two steels are heavy. Move the pizza between racks, never the hot stones. See how to bake pizza in a home oven for rack positions and preheating.

The malt and the flour

The recipe adds 1 tablespoon plus ¼ teaspoon of diastatic malt, malt with active enzymes that turn starch into sugar for the yeast and for browning. That’s a lot by some makers’ standards. King Arthur’s label suggests ½ to 1 teaspoon of its malt powder per 3 cups of flour, or about 0.17 to 0.33 teaspoon per cup. Gemignani’s 3¼ teaspoons over 3½ cups is about 0.93 teaspoon per cup, so by our calculation he uses about 2.8 to 5.6 times King Arthur’s rate by volume. That compares spoonfuls, not enzyme strength or baker’s percentages: the excerpt doesn’t name a malt brand, and malt products differ in strength, so follow your own product’s directions.

At least one of the flours Gemignani names is already malted: King Arthur lists Sir Lancelot as malted. If you use his flour and a malt you know, follow the recipe. If you substitute a different malt or flour and the crust comes out too dark or the crumb gummy, the malt is the first thing to reduce; the diastatic malt guide covers how to start from a product’s label.

How it compares with the Pizza Planner

The Pizza Planner’s New York-style dough sizes a 14-inch pizza at 370 g, the same weight as Gemignani’s 13-ounce ball, though he stretches his a little smaller and thicker. The Planner’s formula is its own: 64% water, 2.8% salt and instant yeast, with no oil, malt or starter unless you add a poolish in its fine-tuning. Its long-cold schedule refrigerates the balls for about 48 hours, the long end of Gemignani’s 24 to 48. For a home oven with a steel, it bakes at a 500 to 550°F setting for 8 to 12 minutes after a 45 to 60 minute preheat; Gemignani’s 10 minutes at 500°F after an hour fall inside that.

Sources

• Tony Gemignani, The Pizza Bible (Ten Speed Press, 2014): Master Dough with Starter, Poolish Starter and Cal-Italia, reprinted with the publisher’s permission in Schuyler Bailey, “Secret Recipe: Tony Gemignani’s Cal-Italia Pizza,” 7x7 (September 29, 2014). Checked October 14, 2026.
• Tony Gemignani: “Pear & Prosciutto di Parma Pizza”, in “On the Sixth Day of Christmas, a Yuletide Recipe,” tonygemignani.com (undated post by Joe Bonadio): rack positions, 500°F, about 5 minutes on each surface and the half turn. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Arthur Bovino, “The 10 Commandments of Pizza,” The Pizza Cowboy: the commandments from The Pizza Bible and Gemignani’s explanations of two stones and slicing before finishing. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Penguin Random House: The Pizza Bible book page (publication details and author description). Checked October 14, 2026.
• King Arthur Baking: Sir Lancelot professional product page (14.0% protein, malted) and the Diastatic Malt Powder package directions. Checked October 14, 2026.
• Red Star Yeast: Active Dry Yeast product page (its yeast activity check). Checked October 14, 2026.
• Ken Forkish, The Elements of Pizza (2016), chapter 3 (detail 2: temperature and fermentation speed).
• Pizza Planner (jayarr.pizza): the New York-style formula, schedule and bake window. The milliliter conversions and the malt comparison are calculated.