Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Thin crust delight.

Tonight was a big a deal.  I used yeast for the first time.  Mark another thing off the “before I’m 40 list”.  I don’t know why but using yeast has always scared/confused me.  I guess it is too much like science for me.

I decided to start with something easy, pizza dough.  I chose one that used whole wheat flour only, not whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour (I don’t buy all-purpose flour any more).  This was the recipe I followed:

http://www.howsweeteats.com/2010/07/easy-homemade-white-pizza-with-whole-wheat-crust/.  It took no more than 5 minutes to do.  I let it rise for about 2.5 hours but was a little nervous because it didn’t look like it had risen much.  I’m not sure if it was suppose to double or not.  I went ahead and punched it down and rolled it out.  I really liked how easy and quick it was to roll out.  No more than 90 seconds per crust (one batch made 2 crusts) and it wasn’t sticky at all.  I rolled it very thin since that is what we like.  I pre-baked each crust for about 5 minutes at 400°. 

While the dough was rising, I made some pizza sauce and sautéed mushrooms.  For my pizza sauce I used an inexpensive spaghetti sauce and added sautéed shallots and garlic to it.  I also added about a tablespoon of chopped basil, about a 1/3 coup of sun dried tomatoes and some dry parsley.  I let that all simmer and blend together and then adjusted the seasoning with a little bit of sea salt, black pepper and 1 teaspoon of sugar.  For some reason it seemed a little sour to me so adding the sugar helped mellow it out.  To sauté the mushrooms I sliced them and then added them to a hot skillet that had a little oil in it.  Just let the mushrooms cook down until the liquid all comes out.  Once the liquid evaporates they will start to brown.  You don’t want to add any seasoning to them until they start to brown.

I loaded the first pizza with sauce, chopped spinach, bacon pieces and shredded mozzarella cheese.  For the second pizza I also added a bit of crumbled feta and diced jalapenos.  I cooked them for another 5 minutes at 375°.

Verdict:

This was super easy and really good if you like cracker thin crust.  Next time I will add flax seed, a bit more honey and probably some dried herbs to the crust.  The kids really, really liked it.