Honey Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

The other week Dana asked if I could make the food a tad bit healthier.  Hard to make healthy things when your go to ingredient is Bacon, but I said I would try.  Our favorite food is pizza, so I figured I would take that for a healthy little spin. The first thing is to convert the dough to a whole wheat dough. What is whole wheat flour?  Whole wheat flour contains the wheat germ and thus contains more fiber and nutrients.  The germ is what gives wheat flour the brown color and denser texture.  White flour is stripped of the germ so it inherently has less nutrients but is lighter in texture. Therefore, white flour gives you that light and crunchy crust that we all love in pizza.  The trick with whole wheat flour is to determine the ratio of white to whole wheat flour so that you get nutrients while also having a nice texture.  The basic ratio is to substitute 1 cup of whole wheat flour for every 2 cups of white flour in the recipe.  I mixed around with the ratio and determined that the best ratio was slightly more than 50%.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 1/3 cup warm water (105-115 degrees) – body temp is 98 degrees, so place your finger under the tap and when it starts to feel warm you are at the right temperature.
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tbs honey

Making the Dough

Place the yeast, water and honey in the bowl of your mixer and let it sit for 5 minutes or until it is nice and bubbly.

Add the salt and olive oil, then slowly add the 2 cups of wheat flour.  Then slowly add the bread flour to the mixture 1/2 cup at a time. Mix by hand or on low speed in your mixer for a minute or until the flour is incorporated. The amount of bread flour required to make a dough ball that is not too sticky will vary with temperature and humidity.  Mine took a little more than 1.5 cups of bread flour.   Once you have a good dough ball, place it on a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.  If you have a mixer with a dough hook place it on medium speed for 10 minutes.

Next I place the dough on a floured surface and leave it covered with a cotton towel or a tea towel for an hour or so.  Basically until the dough doubled in size.  Then divide the dough into two separate dough balls.  If you only wish to make one pizza place the extra dough ball in the refrigerator.

Forming the Pizza

To form the pizzas, place the dough on a well floured surface and slowly work the dough into a flat disk.  If you use a rolling pin you will end up with a flat pizza.  If you like big crusts then work the edges out by hand.  You can even through the dough up and spin it in the air to get a nice round shape.  The dough will make two 14 inch pizzas.

Remember the key to a great pizza is to not overload it with toppings.  The number one error in making a pizza at home is to add too much cheese.  This will make you end up with a soggy/greasy pizza.

To cook the pizza preheat the oven to 475 and place the pizza on a pizza pan or on a preheated pizza stone for 10-16 minutes.

When fully cooked, the crust should be slightly golden the the cheese should be melted.

The honey whole wheat crust was awesome!!  I am totally going to make this again.