Homemade Pizza Dough

I know we can get premade pizza dough at most grocery stores, but making it fresh is so easy and tastes so much better. You can experiment with whole wheat or unbleached flour. For this recipe I used Bob's Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour. I used my Cuisinart Food Processor as well, but you can make this in a Kitchen Aid, with the dough hook or with your hands. I'm going to be honest, the dough didn't turn out perfect. I don't think there was enough gluten in the pastry flour for pizza dough, so next time I will use all-purpose flour.

Ingredients:

1 packet dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)
2/3 cups warm water + 1/3 cold water
1 tsp sugar
1 2/3 all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup for flouring the counter
3/4 tsp kosher
1 tsp olive oil, plus oil for coating the dough ball

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place warm water in a bowl, then add sugar and yeast. Let sit for 3-5 minutes till the yeast is foamy.  

When its nice and foamy, like this, it'll also smell like bread :)

Place flour, salt and olive oil in mixing bowl. Make sure you use the dough blade and dough setting. Plus twice to mix and then add the cold water to the yeast mixture.

Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture.

Run the processor till a ball forms and let it run for 30 minutes, so it kneads the dough.  

Coat the dough with olive oil and cover with a clean kitchen towel. Let rise for 45-60 minutes.

It almost doubled in size!

I rolled out the dough on a floured surface. The dough was tearing when I was rolling it. I just pressed it together.

Place the dough on the tray and lightly spread some olive oil on it. Prick it the dough with a fork. Bake it for 10 minutes.

Take the pre-baked dough out of the oven and cover with desired toppings. I used some pesto I had in the fridge, mozzarella cheese, chopped garlic and sliced mushrooms. 

Bake the pizza for another 10 minutes. Let rest on cookie sheet for a few minutes and then cut. 

The dough was crisp and crunchy. It wasn't a soft crust, so I want to get a pizza stone so I can cook the dough faster.