Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

posted by elisha.bahr, 8 years ago

Let me just start off my saying, I love a good pizza but what makes a really good pizza is the crust. Over the years of trying many pizza dough recipes, I have found that if you don’t have a good dough, you aren’t going to have a good pizza. Even if you splurge and put all the best ingredients on top, it’s the crust that really makes the pizza great.

For a long time all the pizza we ate as a family was either take-out or frozen. Here and there I would try and make different homemade dough but I could never really find one that my kids would eat. When we switched to eating mainly whole wheat, it was even harder to find a pizza dough recipe that my kids would eat! Luckily, I didn’t give up because with some trial and error, we seemed to have found one that’s a big hit in our house!
This isn’t a quick recipe and I suggest making this dough a day in advance or the morning of. I would also recommend using a baking stone to bake your pizza and a pizza peel or something similar to that if you can. You can also make this dough ahead of time and freeze it for more convenience.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough
Makes 4 small pizzas

5 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons vital wheat gluten (You may omit this if you do not have it but, it will help your crust puff up better.)
1 teaspoons instant yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water
2 Tablespoons honey
1 Tablespoons olive oil
2 ¼ cups lukewarm water

Directions for Mixing the Dough

1) Mix flour, salt and wheat gluten in a large mixing bowl.
2) Add remaining ingredients and slowly mix for 1-2 minutes with a dough hook on low. The dough should look slightly wet and sticky when fully mixed. (You can add more flour or water if you feel you need to at this point but start in small Tbsp. increments.)
3) Oil your hands and a work surface so the dough doesn’t stick to you or your surface.
4) Remove the dough from your bowl and fold dough in half two times. Tuck the edges of the dough under forming a “ball” and set on the counter. Cover the dough lightly with plastic wrap or tinfoil and let sit for 5 minutes. Repeat this process 3 more times. (Your dough will become smoother each time you perform this process so the end result is a smooth ball of dough.)
5) Place dough in a bowl and let it rest in the fridge until your dough has doubled.

Directions for Making your Pizza

1) Preheat your oven to the highest setting. If you have a convection oven, use that at its highest setting. (My convection oven goes up to 550F.)
2) Once your dough has doubled you can take it out of the fridge and separate the dough into four sections.
3) Liberally flour a work surface and your hands to prevent the dough from sticking. Grab one section of dough and fold it into a ball. At this point, I like to flatten the ball out a little on my work surface before I start stretching the dough.
4) Pick up your flattened dough and start stretching it into a larger circle. I like to do this by working my way along the circle and letting gravity gently pull the dough down and stretch it for me. Be careful not to overstretch your pizza dough. There will be a point where your dough feels like it cannot stretch any further without breaking. At this point I will set my dough down, let it rest a minute and then start stretching the dough again. I usually have to do this 2-3 times before my pizza dough is ready.
5) Once your pizza is about 9-12 inches place the stretched dough on the floured pizza peel.
6) Add a thin layer of pizza sauce and your choice of cheese.
7) Gently “shake” your pizza off of the pizza peel and into your oven.
8) Bake for about 5 minutes. Once the pizza is bubbly and golden brown on top, it is done.
9) Repeat with the other three sections you have to make four pizzas and enjoy!

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