WWWonderful Pizza Dough with video

Why three Ws in WWWondeful? This homemade pizza dough uses my favorite flour, white whole wheat flour from King Arthur Flour. This easy recipe wwwonderful because:

1. This flour gives you whole-grain nutrition without the bitterness or toughness that marks most whole wheat pizza crusts
2. It's cheaper, healthier, and even about a minute faster to make than my other pizza-dough  recipes because it does not use oil or all-purpose flour.
3. It uses only 1 teaspoon salt instead of 2 1/2 teaspoons, so you can use half the batch for pizza and the other half for Resolution Revelation Apple-Raisin Roll.

This recipe is just for the dough to make homemade pizza crust. Use it for any pizza, including the ones in Wildly Affordable Organic and the Dairy-Free Pizza with Hummus and Butternut Squash on this site. It's also good for Garlic Flat Bread and shaped into bread sticks or rolls. Next week, I'll post the recipe for my new Luck and Money Pizza shown below, made with black-eyed peas and greens.

WWWonderful Pizza Dough

Active time: 10 minutes. Total time: 40 minutes. Yield: crusts for 2 12-inch pizzas or 2 fruit rolls.

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast (one packet)
• 3 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour (390 grams)
• 1 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water (325 grams)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Put all ingredients in a bread machine and process on the dough cycle according to the manufacturer's directions. If you prefer, mix using a stand mixer and a dough hook for eight minutes or kneed by hand until silky on a clean floured surface, about ten minutes.
2. Cover with a clean cloth and let rest for about 20 minutes. (At this point, dough may be refrigerated in a sealed container for up to two weeks. Let come to room temperature before proceeding with the recipe.)
3. Put a bread stone or heavy cookie sheet, flat side up, on the bottom oven rack. Heat oven to 450°F for at least 30 minutes. If you want to see how to get the pizza dough in and out of the oven, check out my video on making the classic WAO pizza. Yes, it includes cheese and oil, but the in-and-out stays the same!
   
   
   
   
4. Divide dough in half, then roll out between two pieces of floured parchment paper. Peel off top piece of parchment paper and spread dough with pizza toppings. Use a rimless cookie sheet or an upside-down rimmed cookie sheet to slide pizza and the parchment paper it is on into the oven. Bake until sauce bubbles and crust turns pale brown, twelve to fifteen minutes.  Again using the cookie sheet, remove pizza from oven. (In the picture below, the sauce was a little too juicy, so some blackened on the parchment. But the pizza was sure delicious!)
5. Let hot pizza cool about five minutes so the dough structure and toppings can firm up a bit, then slice and serve. Refrigerate extra for up to four days or freeze for up to a year.

Notes

You can see why I love my kitchen scale with measurements like 1 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water. It's faster to do the math once and then weight it for evermore. One milliliter of water weighs one gram at sea level. One cup of water weights 236.59 grams and one tablespoon weights 14.79 grams.

Comments

[dragonfly3]

Hi Linda. Can you freeze the raw pizza dough for any period of time?

[Linda Watson]

What a terrific cook-ahead thought, Dragonfly3! I haven't tried it, but the good folks over at Chowhound seem to freeze pizza dough with great success.

[dragonfly3]

Thanks! And one more question - Can I successfully replace the instant yeast packets with bulk yeast I find at my local co-op (Weaver Street)? I find it more affordable and it works well for breads. I'm excited to try out your recipe with what I have on hand!

[Linda Watson]

Dragonfly3, the yeast will work as described if you regularly just mix it in dry with the flour (instant yeast).

If you have to mix the yeast up in warm water first to "proof" it before baking the bread, then you have active dry yeast. Just do the proofing step as you usually do, using a half cup of the water in the recipe and, optionally, a teaspoon of sugar or mashed banana.

Good luck! I had the last of this roll for breakfast and will make it again soon. Yum!

[wearyma]

This pizza crust recipe is the best one and now one of my staples. Tonight it gets sauteed mushrooms, peppers and onions on red sauce. What do you think of grapes on a 2nd pizza? What would go good with that? A local restaurant does it with proscuitto and smoked gouda which was great before we switched to vegan diet. Thanks for making this transition enjoyable.

[tink0233]

Hi Linda -- this looks like a great crust for making lentil pockets from too! I will have to try this. (More info on lentil pockets here: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-spiced-lentil-sweet-potato-and-kale-whole-wheat-pockets-181100 )

Thanks for your work!

[Linda Watson]

Yum, Tink0233! Those spiced lentil pockets look fabulous! You're right, the dough would work great for those. Thanks for the inspiration.

I used to make pasties, I used to make pasties, a savory pocket which usually has potatoes, onions, carrots, and meat which Cornish and evidently Michigan miners used to take down into the mines. I used Cheddar in my version and was pleased to see how many hip variations you can now get in the Upper Peninsula of my home state. These are not to be confused with the pasties that the exotic dancers wear to entertain the miners after work!