Slice of Pizza Pie

Hubby is our resident pizza maker. And he makes the best pizzas around! He has a few tricks up his sleeve that I’ll share with you here.

He uses this whole wheat pizza dough recipe with a few slight changes as noted below.

Hubby’s Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 1/2 cups warm water (slightly more than original recipe to account for larger pie pan and making 3 thin crust pies)
• 1 tsp dry yeast
• 3 1/2+ cups whole wheat flour (without bran) — Note: you will add more flour unitl dough is right consistency.  Hubby only measures the first 3 cups of four then adds as he mixes and kneads until the dough is springy and no longer sticky.
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Slight Variations from original recipe:

Allow to rise 1 hour then punch down and kneed for 10 minutes.
Allow to rise another hour. (so, 2 hours total minimum)
Punch down/kneed again and divide into 2 pieces for thick crust or 3 pieces for thin crust (these are for 13-14 inch pizza pans).
Shape each portion into a circle.  For thick crust you can do this by hand.  For the thin crust I use a rolling pin stretching out as necessary.

Pizza Dough Rising

A Thin Crust

Here it is once it has been rolled and stretched into shape. A thick crust dough will be remarkably different than the image above.  As you can see there is barely enough dough for the pie pan when doing thin.   You won’t have any trouble fitting the dough in the pan when doing a thick crust.

Next he spreads the sauce over the dough. (We use prepared Muir Glen organic pizza sauce.)

Here is the pizza all topped and ready to go in the oven. Hubby’s combination of toppings makes it oh so scrumptious!

Hubby’s Toppings:

• Fresh mushrooms, sliced
• White onions, sliced
• Tomatoes, sliced
• Black olives, sliced
• Fresh pineapple, chopped
• Artichoke hearts, one jar drained and chopped
• Mozzarella cheese, grated
• Cheddar or a firm goat cheese, grated
• Garlic cloves, crushed and minimally chopped (you can’t leave these out!)
• Italian seasonings – this gives a lot of flavor too!

Here I caught Mrs. Sayuri red-handed snatching some cheese! She likes to fill up on toppings as we make these.

The finished product! Yummy stringy, aromatic pizza!!! Most of the time I have to restrain myself from eating one too many slices of pizza because it is just so addictive and delicious.  My hubby usually over indulges :P.

As the original recipe states we cook our pizza in a 475 degree oven for 15-20 minutes on the top rack. This is very important to get a good final result… perfect crust and cheese!