Easy, Part Wheat, Pizza Dough

 

Since it was Valentines I thought we would be making heart shaped pizzas. Warren, however, had a different idea. He wanted to make a dinosaur. His daddy was happy to make his dreams come true. It ended up having "two heads" and when it was baked he showed his sweet spirit by wanting to give his brother the coolest part - the awesome head with grape eyes and all. I, Kim, have to say the cooked grapes actually tasted good.

“Thin & Crispy Pizza Crust

1 cup warm water

1 teaspoon sugar
2 ½ teaspoons yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 ½ cups white flour

Cornmeal for rolling out dough

Stir together above ingredients (except cornmeal) in the bowl of a mixer. With dough hook attachment, knead dough for 3 to 5 minutes at medium speed. Remove dough hook, cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise for 30 minutes (or up to 2 hours).

Place a pizza stone on bottom rack of oven and preheat to 450 degrees (remove other racks). Punch down dough and divide into fourths. Let dough rest a few minutes before rolling out. Sprinkle counter generously with cornmeal and roll out each dough quarter into a thin, 10-inch circle, dusting top of dough with flour if sticky (thin as a tortilla). Transfer rolled dough to a cornmeal-dusted cutting board. Top with desired toppings, then gently shake/slide pizza onto preheated pizza stone. Bake until crust is browned and crisp, about 8 minutes. Remove pizza to cooling rack, let rest a minute or two, then slice and serve.

This recipe makes four 10-inch pizzas. The addition of whole wheat flour isn’t just healthy- it gives great texture and flavor to the crust.” (pg 183 keeping up cookbook)

2/14/15 We used this for our valentine pizzas. Lance says the cornmeal is a MUST. He prefers the bites that have it on the bottom (more flavor that way). We didn’t follow the instructions exactly and it still worked out. TIP = use parchment paper then just sling your dough onto the stone. We did the usual family way of the jellyroll pan/cookie sheet and cooked it in the middle since that’s where our shelf already was. We did three thick and only one pizza was actually “thin and crispy” like it tells you to do. All were good. NOTE: our also took a few minutes longer to cook but perhaps that is because we didn’t have a preheated stone nor did we have our shelf close to the heat source.

Tortilla THIN Pizza

 

Xander

 

Cutting boards as our work space. Turns out the recipe says to use them. Perfect!

On the left: "backwards Sicilian" something we learned from a "long islander" the day we got home from Christmas visit 2014. Cheese first, sauce 2nd. What better time to try it than Valentines day when the read will be extra appreciated.