Whole grain goodness: Pizza dough

I’m going to tempt you with a photo.

Pizza dough - and pizza - that you can feel good about. And even better than that, it’s really, really tasty.

Simple ingredients. Straightforward. Rustic. Fairly easy. Incredibly healthy. What’s not to love here?

Regular readers will know that I love all things whole grain, and I’m on a mission of sorts to perfect the foods we know and love in the whole grain mode. To this end, I’ve begun a project to try and create a really tasty, good textured pizza dough that highlights the rich nuances of a variety of whole and heritage grains - something that can be stored in the refrigerator, and frozen. It irks me that I can’t go to the grocery store and buy a frozen or fresh container with multi whole grain pizza dough. That just seems so obvious to me.

Out came the many cannisters of whole grain flours, yeast, olive oil and the big, BIG Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

First I had to devise the recipe, then I decided to make three batches. Measure, measure, measure, and then make notes. I figured I’d drop some over at the neighbor’s house and ask them to give it a try. That’s called product testing. I mean, what are neighbors for?

Above in the photo, I’ve got three larger pans with the bulk of my flour mixture, then in the three glass bowls, I’ve got my percolating yeast ‘sponge’. The yeast - combined with water, olive oil and a half cup of the flour mixture - went into the kitchen aid mixer to be thoroughly combined. Then it sits for about 30 minutes to go poof. Bubble. Get happy.

This gives me a chance to put flours away and regroup.

When you look at the recipe, below, you’ll probably nag me about putting in the ultra fine, highly milled  ‘00’ Italian bread flour. “Whoa! That’s not whole grain!” Yup. I’m after the best balance of flavor, texture and healthy whole grain goodness. The whole grains comprise about 75% of the flours in this dough. I thinks that’s pretty damn good. I added vital wheat gluten, too. That’s to improve the elasticity and compensate for the lack of gluten in the whole grains.

When they’re ready, one at a time, each sponge will go into the mixer, with it’s accompanying flour added incrementally with the dough hook on the 2 setting. Stop and scrape occasionally. I found that - Nevada being dry - I had to add about two tablespoons of water, here and there, to get the dough to have that nice elastic shiny quality. You know the dough is ready when it pulls away from the sides of the mixing bowl and starts to wrap tighter around the dough hook. The sides of the bowl should be quite clean looking.

As I finished each dough batch, it would go into another glass bowl that had been oiled. Cover each with a tea towel and set in a draft free place for about an hour.

Now, it’s time to gather, mince, slice and otherwise prepare the toppings. I wanted to keep it simple so that we could better evaluate the finished crust. So I opted for sliced grape tomatoes, halved balls of fresh mozzarella, sliced garlic and a melange of minced fresh basil, sage, thyme, oregano and rosemary. I had some sliced pancetta, so decided to use that for the meat.

Oh, time to preheat the oven - with a pizza stone if you have one. My oven will go 500 degrees. Just use the highest heat you have, which with many ovens is 450 or 475.

 

The first one cooked for about 12 minutes, and was perfectly great. The second cooked for about 14 minutes, since I was after a crisper crust. Yes. It worked very well indeed.

Well, here are the ingredients as I see them:

4 cups of flour, total. My combo came out like this - 1-1/2 cups of ‘OO’ Italian bread flour. 1 cup whole wheat bread flour. 1/2 cup each whole spelt and kamut flour. 1/4 cup each whole millet and barley flour.

2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1 (.25 ounce) packet of dry active yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

1/2 cup lukewarm water (about 105 to 115 degrees)

1/4 cup olive oil, plus a couple tablespoons more to grease the bowls for rising, and a similar amount to oil the rolled out pizzas prior to topping them.

3/4 cold water

Technique

In a large bowl, mix together your flours and  the salt, so they add up to 4 cups total.

In the big bowl of your stand mixer, whisk together 1/2 cup of the flour(s), the 1/2 cup lukewarm water, and the packet of yeast. Let it set for about 30 minutes, til it’s all bubbly and poofy.

When the yeast mixture is ready, add the rest of the water and olive oil. Turn your mixer on, using the dough hook, to the 2 setting. Start adding the rest of the flour(s) in quarter cup increments.

Mix/knead the dough for about 5 minutes or until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl, leaving ‘clean’ sides, and start to ball up around the dough hook. Remove the dough from the bowl, and set it in the greased bowl, and cover with a kitchen towel. Set it in a draft free place until it doubles in size - about 1-1/2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees or as close as you can get to that.

When the dough is doubled, punch it down. Give it a couple kneads and divide it into four disks … or two … or don’t. Make one big huge pizza pie if you want.

Working on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough with a rolling pin and your hands. Stretch it out till it’s about 1/4 inch thick. It doesn’t have to be perfectly round or perfectly anything. I call this rustic. Rustic makes up for any number of sins of omission or lack of technique.

Repeat with remaining dough discs.

Wipe each rolled out dough disc with some good olive oil, put some tomato paste or pesto on - or don’t, hell it’s your pizza. Don’t look at me to hold your hand.

Here are some other things you can put on it, put please do it in the true Italian style - Less is More. Keep it to about 3 or 4 ingredients max. Use really good quality stuff.

Slices of fresh mozzarella, anchovies, kalamata olives, pine nuts, slices of artichoke hearts, minced herbs, julienned basil, dried tomatoes, thin slices of fresh tomato, goat cheese, pesto Genovese, simple goddamn tomato paste, parmesan cheese, salmon lox, tomato pesto, chunks of roasted chicken or turkey, spinach (blanched, drained and chopped), crumbled Italian sausage, fresh sage leaves, pancetta, paper thin slices of salami or prosciutto, caper berries, very thin slices of duck confit or smoked duck breast,  thin ribbons of zucchini … sliced apples, blue cheese, smoky bacon.

Knock yourself out.

I think this dough will freeze just fine. And it will keep fresh in the fridge, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, for a few days, too. In other words, there’s no reason not to have a bit of this dough around when you get the urge for a little slice of pizza pie.

Hey, if you try this, let me know how it works out for you. I’m really interested.

-maven

P.S. - A reader and neighbor keeps telling me that I should offer informal classes in some of this stuff … like the pizza making. What do you think? Would you be interested in spending a few hours on a Saturday, so that you have the confidence to do this on your own?