Homemade Pizza

Homemade pizza is one of life's great things, you control the quality of ingredients, the thickness of the crust, the amount of cheese. A good homemade pizza is one of my all time favorite meals. On a normal basis, I use frozen bread dough to make homemade pizza because I've never really done much with yeast and it sort of intimidated me. However, I decided I would try to make a whole wheat crust to make my pizza a little healthier so I figured it was time to experiment. I had saved a recipe earlier but in the end just went with the recipe on the back of the flour bag.



Whole wheat pizza crust
(Makes 1 large pizza or 2 medium pizzas)


1 cup water, heated to 110 degrees
1 pkg rapid-rise yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tbs olive oil

Mix together the yeast and water and let it dissolve for about 5 minutes. Put the wheat flour, sugar, oil and 1 cup of the AP flour in a mixing bowl. Add the yeast water mixture and begin to mix. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of flour slowly as needed until the dough comes together. Knead for about 5 minutes until smooth and elastic. Put a little oil in a deep bowl, put in the dough and turn once to cover the top with oil. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise. (The recipe says 15 minutes but I left it for about an hour). I then wrapped it in plastic wrap and refrigerated overnight although it could be used right away.

The next night I rolled the dough out onto a floured surface to make 1 large pizza. Next time I think I will add a little garlic powder and herbs to the dough just to give it a little more flavor. I brushed the top with a little olive oil, added some garlic powder, dried oregano, and paprika and baked it at 450 degrees for a few minutes until it started to crisp up.

Toppings:

Zesty Pizza Sauce (I used Ragu but added oregano and crushed red pepper flakes)
Spicy Italian Sausage
Green Peppers
Onion
Mozzerella


Put on all the toppings as desired and put the pizza back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes until the cheese begins to brown.