Plant Pride Pizza

 Good pizza is all about the ingredients, including and most importantly the dough.  As we take our pizza very seriously, we had to develop a good dough recipe.  We prefer to use an old style recipe, with whole wheat flour.  The only significant deviation we make from traditional Italian dough is we do not use salt, and as little olive oil as possible.  If you prefer the taste of white flour over wheat, this recipe will work as well.  Although we encourage you to try eating whole grains as opposed to refined (white) grains as much as possible.   

Dough:

Prep time: 30 minutes

Rise time: 5-12 hours

Makes: 8 servings (four medium sized pizzas)

Pizza:

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 10-15 minutes 

Serves: 2 per medium sized pizzas 

Dough Ingredients:

4.5 Cups Whole wheat flour (all-purpose, bread, or pastry flour is fine)

1.75 Teaspoons Instant Yeast

2 Cups cold water

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil (for coating finished dough)

Directions:

Making the Dough

1)      Get together your dough making tools.  Large bowl, mixing spoon, powered hand mixer or stand mixer (if you are lucky enough to have one!) large clean surface and measuring spoons.  We normally just use a handheld mixer, although we’ve done just fine literally mixing by hand and a large mixing spoon.  Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have all the fancy bread making equipment, we don’t either!   

2)      Dump the 2 cups water and 1.75 Teaspoons of Instant Yeast into the bowl and stir vigorously.  Allow the yeast to begin to froth up a bit and absorb some of the water.  A few minutes should be fine.

3)      Add in the flour one cup at a time, vigorously mixing at each interval.  Try to get a consistent mixture each time before adding the next cup.  Watch out for little “clots” of dry flour forming.  Break up those clots so the dough is consistent.

4)      The dough should become slightly sticky.  Feel free to add more water or flour to adjust.  At this point you should be able to mix the dough into one giant glob.  I like to sprinkle a little more yeast on at this point to ensure a good rise.

5)      Sprinkle some flour on that large surface and toss the glob onto it.  Kneed it by hand until it’s a smooth continuous piece.  You should not be able to easily tear it apart and it should start to look like a solid mound of dough, as opposed to many striations as if it were a croissant.  No need to overdo it though, trust your instincts. 

6)      Cut the dough into pieces based on how many pies you want to make.  I usually prefer to cut it in four pieces, which each make a medium sized pizza.  If you wanted to go crazy and make one table sized pizza, or go halves and make two XL pizzas, go for it!  4^th (medium size) and 6^th (small size / kid’s pizza) are the most common though.  Once you’ve cut the pieces up, roll them into their own balls trying to get a nice and even consistency.

7)      Coat a baking dish or baking pan with olive oil (approximately 1 tablespoon should be enough for the whole dish).  Roll the balls in the oil to get a nice, consistent coating.  Don’t get carried away.  These should not be swimming in oil, just a light coat.  Place the balls evenly within the baking dish.  These babies are going to grow! 

8)      Place some plastic wrap, or a damp towel on top of the dish and set aside.  If you leave the dish out at room temperature, it will probably rise within 5 hours.  However, this time greatly depends on the temperature, humidity, and even pressure!  Remember the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT)?  There’s lot of other interesting Chemistry going on, but basically the environment which you’re making dough has a large impact on the rise.  Play around with your timing and temperature.  If you prefer to leave it in the fridge, that is fine but it will take longer to rise, potentially double or triple the room temperature time. 

9)      Once the dough has risen to the optimal level (about twice the original size and generally softer and fluffier), take it and wrap it up in individual bags or plastic wrap if you’re not immediately using it.  The dough can be stored in the fridge for a few days or several months in the freezer.

Making a Pizza:   

1)      When you’re ready to bake a pie, place the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it out using a wooden roller or anything else round and smooth (metal water bottles or wine bottles work well too).  Feel free to toss out the pizza too.  It’s actually not as hard as it looks.  YouTube is your friend.  You’re basically playing around with the elasticity of the dough and breaking those little bonds so the dough expands, while keeping the larger bonds intact.

2)      Preheat your oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit or 245 degrees Celsius.

3)      Place your pizza dough on either a pizza stone or a lightly oiled upside down cooking sheet.  Yes, I said that right, upside down!  It actually works surprisingly well.

4)      At this point you have a few options.  If you like a crispier, more classical Italian crust, curl up the edges of the crust how you want them and pre-bake the crust for 4 minutes.  If you don’t want the crispier old style crust, simply add your sauce and toppings now and curl the crust when you’re done. 

5)      With sauces, you can go a few different directions.  Most of the time we prefer to use a rich marinara, tomato and basil style sauce, although any red sauce would likely work.  Another option is to use hummus, or even just a light mixture of garlic and white wine. 

6)      One thing to keep in mind with toppings, you want them as dry as possible.  If you’re using mushrooms, peppers, carrots, olives especially, make sure to press them out to squeeze out as much moisture as possible.  Preferably, most of the moisture should come from only your sauce and not the veggie toppings “sweating” onto the crust.  This could mess up the baking of the crust, although pre-baking helps alleviate this problem as well.
7)      If you want to use vegan cheese, stick to the least processed ones as possible, or make your own.  If you like that Parmesan taste on top of a finished pizza, we imitate that by using nutritional yeast or ground cashews post-baking.
8)      You really can’t go wrong with any vegan toppings, just keep in mind the sweating and shrinking. A few of our favorite topping combinations are listed below:

a.       The Garden Classic:  Tomato and basil sauce, spinach, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, Kalamata Olives, Basil

b.      The Garlic Lovers: Garlic and wine sauce, spinach, kale, garlic, garlic and more garlic

c.       Pizza Margarita: Tomato and basil sauce, vegan mozzarella style cheese, basil

d.      Big Green – Spicy Arrabbiata sauce, spinach, broccoli, basil, and sun dried tomatoes

     9)      Place your pizza in the oven and cook for 10 minutes.  Every oven is different, so you may need to play around with the times and temperatures to reach your ideal crust texture. 

     10)      Have fun and Enjoy!