Homemade Pizza Crust Recipe

Ingredient amounts are not an exact science. I don’t really measure anything too closely any more. I just sort of throw it all together, sometimes using a little more of this, sometimes using a little more of that, and it always seems to work out. Experimentation is good. Figure out what works for you.

Here’s the process:

Find yourself a good large pizza crust making bowl. Add 1 ½ cups hot water. Add in the sugar and yeast. Stir. Wait 5 minutes. Now would be a good time to pick up your 3 year old son and fly him around the kitchen superman style buzzing the tower (pizza bowl) several times ala Goose and Maverick. “Tower, this is Ghost Rider requesting a flyby.” Ding, 5 minutes are up. Or ten, or however long you joyfully played with your kids. Now add in the salt, vegetable oil, and flour. The amount of whole wheat flour you use is a matter of taste. I think at first we used a 3 to 1 ratio of regular flour to wheat flour, but now I try to go closer to 50-50. The wheat flour is a healthier option and we like it, but you are making pizza here so no need to get carried away. We keep telling ourselves those 2 cups of whole wheat flour make our pizza healthy. Right? If you go beyond the 50-50 ratio I feel as though the dough becomes a little too grainy and tough to work with. Finally, knead the dough for about 10 minutes, adding more flour as needed. This is usually when Sam likes to join in an make a smiley face in the dough. Okay, kneading done, you’re good to go!

Now, let the dough rise for about 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, punch it down and wait 5 minutes. Divide into thirds and you have 3 pizza crusts ready to go! At our house one usually gets rolled out immediately and goes into the oven with our toppings of choice. The other two go into zip lock bags, sprayed with a little PAM to prevent sticking, and into the refrigerator for future pizza nights that will involve minimal prep! They usually will keep about a week or so. Umm, yeah, we usually don’t have a problem using them all before they go bad. I believe you may even be able to freeze them, but I can’t remember trying that recently. More on that in a later post.