Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Best dough for thinner crust pizzas, and for calzones!  Stores well in a tightly wrapped bag in the fridge, I do this after the first rise when I decide I’ve got enough pizzas done!!  lol

I bake my pies in a hot oven, at least 400⁰ f

2        cups warm water (110⁰ f or 43c)

2        Tbls olive oil

1        tsp sugar

4        cups whole wheat flour

2        cups all purpose flour (plus more reserved, up to about another ½ cup)

2        envelopes instant yeast (or 14g or 4 ½ tsp)

Mix water, sugar, yeast and proof in a warm spot till foamy, (approximately 15 min).

My method for the next step probably seems odd, but it works for me!  I put 6 cups of the flours into a bowl, drizzle the olive oil into flour and work it around with fingers to distribute the oil well throughout the flour.  Now I combine the dry ingredients with the wet, in whichever direction you prefer.  For me it depends on the bowls I started with. 

Knead the dough very well till elastic and smooth, adding the remaining ½ cup or so of flour as needed.  We wanted the whole wheat but that demands extra kneading to develop the gluten in it.  Shape into a ball, coat lightly with olive oil, cover and set in warm spot to rise for about an hour.  (it probably won’t quite double)

Punch down and cut in half for two medium pies.  I often cut it into quarters or even sixths and roll or pat out into small mini-pizza crusts.  Let the crusts rest about 15 minutes, then top as desired.  This is a very tough and workable dough, that turns out tender, while still crisping up nicely.  We like our pizza crust on the thin side and this is great dough for that. 

It was given to me for use as a dough well suited to rolling out thinly for making a calzone type ‘pocket’ pizza.  It does work for that but I usually make it into at least two smaller regular pizzas or several smaller ones with various toppings on each.  I usually bake the small individual pies in my cast iron frying pans and don’t worry what shape they are, round, oval, triangles, WHATEVER!  I want to try these on my grill but I planned badly when I was shoveling snow this past week, so getting to the grill would be a pain.

OK, I just made a very mediocre pizza crust tonight with this recipe, it was TOO dry and not good at all!  It was a different bag of WW flour, so I'm going to caution ya'll to cut back on the WW flour till you see how it feels in the first kneading.  I knew it felt dry but I thought "It's turned out so well so many times, surely it'll be ok!"  …well, it wasn't!

Beware of new sacks of flour and hot kitchens.