Homemade Whole Wheat Pizza

If you have an extra 90 minutes to spare before dinner time, then it's totally worth your while to make your own pizza dough for many reasons. One, it's cheaper than store-bought crust. Two, it's tastier than store-bought crust. Three, it's not full of any preservatives or weird ingredients. And four, it's cheaper. I know I mentioned that already, but I thought I'd reiterate.

I find the best way to make pizza dough is in the bread maker. It kneads it for you so there's no floury, sticky mess for you to clean up later when it's all crusted over (I'm pretty lazy).

I found a delicious recipe for whole wheat dough at food.com. I don't think I need to tell you how to make toppings for pizza, but I used my simple marinara sauce recipe and ended up buying a bag of pre-shredded italian blend cheese. I think it has mozzerella, asiago and a couple of other yummy cheeses in it.

The dough is enough for a pizza the size of a large baking sheet. Lunch for two days, hurray!

Dough Ingredients:
1 cup plus 2 Tbs. lukewarm water
2 Tbs. olive oil
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2.5 tsp. yeast

Directions:
Put ingredients, in order, into your bread machine and press the "dough" button. Let the machine run its cycle, about 90 minutes on my bread machine. During this time you could prepare your marinara sauce and toppings. When the dough is ready, roll it out on a floured table until its the size of a large baking sheet.

Flour a baking sheet and stretch the dough to fit it, trimming any excess. Brush the top side of the dough with olive oil. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes (I don't know if refrigeration is necessary. I was waiting for a friend to come over before making the pizza. You're probably fine not refrigerating). Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Start prepping your pizza!

Coat pizza in sauce. Top lightly with cheese. Add toppings of your choice. Top with a little more cheese. Cheese goes a long way so you don't really need to overdo it. Plus, it's healthier if you go lighter on cheese anyway.

Bake pizza for about 20 minutes or until crust is golden. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes before slicing.