Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

For our second recipe of the Home Made/ Deprocessed Reader's Choice Challenge, we made a couple of vegan pizzas. Unfortunately, my cooking partner was unable to post this entry on time, so this actually wasn't submitted for our group cooking blog. I'll make my report about here, nonetheless!

We made three pizzas, using a whole wheat pizza crust recipe we got from the Chopping Block as a starting point. It's a pretty simple and versatile recipe, and I can see myself using it on a regular basis to make my own, healthy home made pizza! My favorite part about it is that it's really easy to roll very thin, and I LOVE thin crust pizza (a blasphemy among Chicagoans!!)

Whole Wheat Pizza

For the pizza dough:
1 1/4 teaspoon dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey
1 1/4 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 3/4 to 2 cups whole wheat flour
Pinch sea salt

In a medium sized bowl, combine water, yeast, and honey. Allow to sit for about five minutes or until yeast becomes foamy.

Add olive oil, flour, and salt. Work with your hands until the dough forms a ball that comes away from the sides of the bowl. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until double in bulk.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Punch down the dough and knead it on a lightly floured surface for one minute.

Roll the dough very thin into a circle or rectangle. Place rolled dough on a pizza peel coated lightly with cornmeal.

Prick a fork to prevent bubbles, and brush lightly with olive oil. Slide the dough onto a pizza stone in the oven and bake for 3-5 minutes or until very lightly browned. Remove from oven, build with pizza toppings, and then return to oven for 5-8 more minutes or until toppings are hot and bubbly.
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We ended up making 3 pizzas, which were all pretty good, but completely different. I'll blog about each separately since they each had their own intricacies when we made them. Stay tuned!!