The Pizza Crust In My Freezer

Lately I have been so disgusted with the price and quality of delivered pizza. It occurred to me I must be able to do this better for a fraction of the cost and so began my obsession with pizza crust! Originally I experimented with Jiffy Mix boxed pizza crust. The leavening is baking powder which makes a crust that is floppy and spongy. I wanted the real thing and broke down a couple weeks ago to buy a jar of yeast. This weekend I finally attempted real pizza crust.

The recipe was from my favorite stand-by website www.recipezaar.com. My search for “whole wheat pizza crust” turned out a couple of potential candidates. In the end I chose a recipe because I liked the ingredients list and because the procedure seemed unstuffy.

My yeast is in a jar instead of a packet. But the jar recommends an equivalency of 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast for each packet, or 4 1/2 teaspoons for this recipe. This seemed like a lot to me, and it seemed like maybe people were using two packets only because that’s how the product is packaged! So I went with three teaspoons just to see how it would go and to save a little yeast.

For the flour I used a combination cracked wheat and whole wheat flours. I avoid using all-purpose flour if I can help it. I avoided the sugar completely. I’m pretty sure the only reason to put sugar in a yeast dough is to feed the yeast.

After mixing, rising, and such the dough was cut into four pieces for four separate crusts. Instead of dressing the crust right away with sauce, cheese and toppings, I par baked the crust to freeze for future use, almost like a Boboli.

In the end this turned out more like a focaccia than a pizza crust. It was just a little denser than I like, but it should work extremely well for pizza in a hurry. Especially since I have the pizza sauce frozen in serving sizes. So long delivery. Next time I make this crust I will first try it with more yeast. If that doesn’t work, I’ll back off the yeast but add the sugar. Then if that doesn’t work, I’ll go full yeast and full sugar.

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 packets active dry yeast

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon sugar

1 1/4 cups warm water, plus

1 tablespoon warm water (105 F to 115 F)