Homemade Pizza(ish)

I don't remember exactly when Darrell and I started favoring homemade pizza to frozen pizza, but it started sometime after we discovered a recipe for Barbeque Chicken Pizza and pre-made pizza crusts. And we've been sold on them ever since. However, we've never quite been brave enough to attempt making a crust from scratch, so instead we continued to shell out nearly $2.50 for a pre-made crust. 


Well, those days are over! I (all by myself!) tackled a pizza crust from scratch last night, and it was no where near as difficult as I thought it would be! As you'll see at the end there are still a few kinks to work out, but I'm definitely excited to do it again. We didn't top the crust with our go-to barbeque chicken, but rather just mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil since this was our meatless entree for the week. There wasn't anything too thought-provoking that went into the topping, so I'll focus on the crust. I don't have a good picture of just the crust, so I'll jump right to the recipe and throw in some pictures at the end.


Whole Wheat Pizza Dough
(found here)


1 pkg active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey


In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about ten minutes. In a large bowl, combine flour, wheat germ, and salt. Make a well in the middle and add honey and yeast mixture. Stir until well-mixed. Cover and set in a warm place to rise for a few minutes (I let mine rise for about ten minutes). Roll dough on a floured pizza pan, poke a few holes in it with a fork, and top with your favorite ingredients. Bake in a 350* preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.


For fun, I took a few pictures along the way to show the process--which, in retrospect, I'm really glad I did instead of just relying on a picture of the final product!

Getting ready to roll out the dough. As you can see, I wrapped the dough in some plastic wrap (sprayed with oil) during its rising stage. I stole this trick from a friend (who also helped me realize that homemade crust isn't so frightening!)--just don't wrap the dough so tightly that it doesn't have any room to rise!


Doesn't it look so pretty all ready for the oven?

This is about where things started to go downhill. As you can see, the pizza is currently rolled out on a pizza pan--an upside down one at that. You see, Darrell and I love baking pizzas on a pizza stone, which we pre-heat so that the crust gets a nice crisp to it. Well, I was really uncertain about rolling out the pizza crust on a hot pizza stone, so Darrell had the not so brilliant idea to build the pizza on a separate pan and then just slide it onto the pre-heated pizza stone. So here I am, happily putting my toppings on my pizza, while, unbeknownst to me, my crust is adhering itself to the pan. After momentarily basking in the glory of my creation, I began the process of moving it onto the stone. Foolishly optimistic, I slid a pancake turner under one side of it to help coax it off.... But nothing budged. Thinking that I could just loosen the whole thing before moving it, I began sliding the turner all the way around the crust. Things were going fine until "riiiip!" a huge chunk of the crust stuck to my pancake turner and ripped a gaping whole in the bottom of my beautiful crust as I tried to pull the turner away. Devastated, I tried to fix the hole as best I could, but soon realized that my mission was futile--the other areas that I had "loosened" were already starting to stick again, and the toppings kept getting in the way of sealing the hole. So finally, I mashed it together, scooped it up to move it to the pizza stone, and did my best unfold it into something closely marginally resembling a pizza. Are you ready for this? It's pretty bad. Don't judge this whole experience based on this final picture.

Don't say I didn't warn you. That's about as far from a pizza as you can get. The bright side? It still tasted fantastic. Sure, some parts were significantly doughier than others because of the unevenness of the crust, but we Darrell didn't seem to mind at all. The crust definitely has a little bit of sweetness to it, but I thoroughly enjoyed the uniqueness of it. I'm anxious to try it again with some different toppings--and hopefully a more pizza-like end product.