Recipe: Pizza Dough

I could literally eat pizza everyday for every meal, for the rest of my life. But, it's certainly not the healthiest thing to eat.

But, if you make your own, you can control how many calories go into it.

Meet homemade pizza ----------->

Looks yummy, huh? Yeah, it is.

It's got fresh spinach, sauteed mushrooms and onions and tomatoes underneath that italian mix of cheese and provolone slices.

But the best part...it's got a whole wheat crust! (Well... half whole wheat). I found the recipe on Smitten Kitchen

It requires some time, but I doubled the recipe so it made two good size dough balls, so you can eat one now and then freeze the other. Next, I'm going to try my regular pizza dough recipe with using half whole wheat. I prefer the texture of my original, but this is delicious, too!

Pizza Dough: Makes enough for two large pizzas.

1 1/2 cups of All Purpose Flour
1 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat Flour
2 tsp of salt
1 1/2 tsp of active dry yeast
1 cup lukewarm water (if its a dry day you might need more water)
2 tbsp of olive oil

Stir dry ingredients, including yeast in a large bowl. Add water and olive oil, stirring mixture into as close to a ball as you can. Dump all clumps and floury bits onto a lightly floured surface and knead everything into a homogenous ball. If you find this step difficult, leave the dough in a lightly floured spot, put the empty bowl upside-down on top of it and come back in 2-5 minutes, when you will find the dough more workable.

Knead it for just a minute or two. Lightly oil the bowl (cooking spray works well), I put a sprinkle of olive oil on my hands and rolled the dough in it, till all sides are coated and then cover it in plastic wrap and leave undisturbed for an hour or two.

Here it is before rising:

2 hours later:

See, it doubled in size!

After it has doubled in size, dump it back on the same floured surface, and gently press the air out of the dough with the palm of your hands. At this point, split the dough, wrap one ball into plastic wrap and a ziploc bag and freeze. Place the other ball into the bowl again and let it sit again for 20 more minutes.

If you plan on going ahead and cooking it after that last rise, go ahead and pre-heat your oven to 500 degrees. One cookbook I have actually says to have your oven pre-heated for an hour (I think that's a little excessive, mine preheated for about 35 minutes).

After 20 minutes, roll your dough out with a rolling pin and spread a little bit of olive oil all over the dough.. top and cook for about 10 minutes!

And that's it!

Homemade pizza, that has half whole wheat flour.

Kinda healthy... and pretty easy.