Let Them Eat Healthy: Homemade Pizza Dough

There is nothing more satisfying than pizza, and homemade pizza is, in my opinion, the bees knees! You can control the ingredients, its a million times cheaper and the sky is the limit where toppings are concerned. My favorite thing to do on a cold or rainy day is make a big huge batch of dough and then "clean out the fridge." This means that I go through and take out all leftovers, produce that looks suspicious and anything else I can find and devise ways to make these into delicious pizza toppings. You can of course also plan your toppings and make some really unique and gourmet pizzas right at home. The other thing that is great about making pizza at home is that children love helping and eating pizza! My two year old drags her helping chair over, climbs up and starts piling things on (she also eats whatever is out which means she ends up eating lots of veggies and other things she would never just sit at the table and eat).

My daughter helping make pizza.

I always make more dough than I need and after the kneading I separate the dough into balls and freeze them in their own bags that I can take out and thaw conveniently on nights when I don't want to make dough. I also use this extra dough for a bunch of other things like cinnamon rolls, flatbreads and calzones (recipes to come). I encourage all of you to please feel free to invent creative non-pizza ways to use this dough and come back and let me know what you come up with!
I always add things to my dough recipe that are healthier than just using plain white flour. I also like to use locally grown wheat that is stone ground by a local mill in my area. If you don't have access to this kind of flour there are two socially responsible companies I like to recommend: Hodgson Mill and King Arthur Flour. My recipe calls for 4 cups of flour so I usually make it with 2 1/2 cups of unbleached organic white flour, 1 cup of organic stone ground whole wheat flour and then 1/2 cup of my add in. Here are some add in ideas:

Flax meal (this requires you to add a little extra liquid I usually add a 2 Tablespoons of extra water if I use this)
Wheat Germ
Barley flour
Chia seeds

I only use one add in at a time but please feel free to experiment with these! You can also use more than 1/2 a cup if you want but I find that adding these things excessively makes a very tough dough that rips easily but if you are careful you can most certainly bump up the nutrition by adding a whole cup of the add in.

This recipe makes three medium size pizzas, or two large.

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Ingredients

2 1/2 Cups unbleached, organic, all purpose flour

1 Cup organic, stone ground, whole wheat flour

1/2 Cup wheat germ

1 tsp sea salt

3 Tbsp good quality olive oil , I use California Olive Ranch.

2 1/2 tsp organic active dry yeast

3 tsp organic, fair trade, raw cane sugar

1 1/4 Cups water, slightly warm (you will need 1 1/2 cups of water if your add in is flax meal, it requires more liquid)

Directions

If you have a bread maker place first five ingredients in the bread maker.

In a small bowl bloom the yeast by putting it in the warm water and adding the sugar to it, stir slightly and let it sit for 5 minutes. It will bubble and grow. Add to the dry ingredients in the bread maker.

Choose the setting for dough on your maker and you are done. Mine takes an hour and half to make and rise.

If you have a stand mixer then, in the bowl of the mixer add water, yeast, sugar, olive oil and salt. Wait five minutes for the yeast to bloom. While you wait in a large bowl mix together all flours and add ins. When the yeast has bloomed add in half the flour mixture and mix for one minute. With the mixer on continue adding in flour 1/2 cup at a time till the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and clings to the hook, mix for another 2 1/2 minutes.

Turn out dough onto a floured surface knead for a few minutes till the dough is shiny. Form into a ball and place in a bowl greased with olive oil.

Dough after kneading, ready for its warm nap.

Pour a little olive oil over the top and cover with a clean cloth and set somewhere warm for an hour.

After an hour punch down the dough and turn onto a floured surface and cut into sections, I make about 6 small pizzas with this amount of dough. I like to make small ones so that I can have a variety of toppings but feel free to make 2 large 14 inch pizzas or 4 medium ones.

I make 6 pizzas this size with this recipe.

Roll out your dough and place on a hot pizza stone and top to your heart's desire! (I don't use anything else but a cast iron stone to bake my pizza I have experimented with many vessels for cooking and nothing beats a cast iron or ceramic stone).