Yes, I made a pizza dough using Coke instead of water. Yes, it was delicious. I love experimenting with pizza dough! There are INFINITE possibilities even with so few ingredients. Flour, water (or any liquid) amount, fermentation time and temperature… it all changes the final pie! Lately I’ve been intrigued by the idea of using alternative liquids in my dough. Water’s really all you need, but why stop there? I recently made a dough using beer instead of water and that came out fantastic! I used a cheap lager to cheat fermentation flavors in a reletively short fermentation time. This week, I used cola (1 cold can of regular Coke) to sneak sugar and caramel color into the mix. Here’s how I did it.
The Ingredients
1 can of Coke
550g Bread Flour (I used King Arthur)
11g fine salt
2g Instant Dry Yeast
Some notes about the soda. First of all, the entirety of the liquid for this dough comes via a standard American 12 oz can of regular Coke. Will Diet Coke work? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it. Will another cola work? Probably. Let me know if you test it out!
The can says it’s 355 mL, which means it should be 355g. I weigh all my ingredients, so of course I weighed the Coke, so I was surprised when the cola came out to ~365g. As it turns out, the conversion from mL to grams is 1:1 for water, but not for liquids of different densities. So there ya go! That means this dough clocks in around 66.4% hydration. Don’t sweat it if you have no idea what that all means.
This is slightly less salt than I would use in my standard dough. I made that adjustment because the cola has salt, so I didn’t want to overdo it. There’s no oil in this recipe because there’s so much stuff in the cola I just figured I’d get what I need from that. And it worked!
The Procedure
I approached this the way I approach my standard pizza dough process. No big differences, but I did use a spatula instead of my hand just to incorporate the liquid into the flour. Sticking my hand into a bowl of cola just didn’t appeal to me. Here’s the step-by-step process assuming you’re mixing by hand. I don’t own a mixer so I’m always mixing by hand. It’s not any more complicated than using a mixer, maybe even simpler.
- Pour cola into bowl
- Add salt to cola and stir to dissolve
- Mix in about half the flour, then add yeast and the rest of the flour
- Mix until no dry flour remains
- Cover and rest 20 minutes to allow the flour to hydrate
- After 20 minutes, pour dough onto a clean surface and knead until the dough becomes cohesive and mostly smooth. Should take about 5-10 minues
- Rest covered for another 10-20 minutes to allow the dough to relax
- Split up the dough into equal portions and ball. I made three 300g dough balls from one batch.
- Store in lightly oiled containers in the refrigerator over night
When Can You Use It?
I made this Coke pizza dough the night before and used it the next day, about 18 hours later. It was in the refrigerator all night and I pulled it out about 2 hours before I needed to bake it. I bet it would work just fine if you left it out at room temp for a few hours. Just don’t use it until it’s soft enough that when you press it with a finger it doesn’t bounce back.
