Finally, Awesome Pizza Dough!

Pizza has always been one of my favorite foods. Once I began to cook in a style more conducive to a low-fat, low-salt diet for my family’s health, pizza took a back seat and I missed it. Not just missed it.  I craved it, thought about it, drooled over pizza memories, and yes, even had pizza-envy several times. So I began to work on a dough that would work in my kitchen. I tried using fat-free tortillas and imagined it almost seemed like ‘real’ pizza. It didn’t. I tried a fat-free french bread dough that puffed up so much my finished pizza looked like a giant mushroom made out of bread with a hint of pizza toppings sticking out the top. I tried many recipes and variations and was just never happy. My hens though did seem to gain a bit of weight for a time as they loved my experiments, or more truthfully, my failures. So the point is I finally have a dough that works perfectly. Best of all my recipe makes enough for 6, 10 to 12-inch pizzas or 4 larger crusts. Better yet, I make one or two and the rest is frozen for future use and it truly does taste just as good as the fresh dough. If you think you will have pizza in a week to 10 days you can bake the crusts 8 minutes at 400 and freeze the crusts once cooled. If you choose this route be sure and generously poke the crust with a fork to keep dough flat while baking, and adjust your completed pizza’s baking time. The drawback is the only way I can get the dough to behave as pizza dough should is to refrigerate it overnight, or at least 8 hours before baking. So good-bye spontaneous pizza supper, unless of course I have dough in the freezer. Once my crust is made my fat-free pizza still maintains its integrity as I use fat-free cottage cheese as it actually melts, unlike many other fat-free cheeses. Fat-free feta works well too, or a combination of the two is even better!  Toppings can vary to match personal choices. Anyway you do it, it is good. Good-bye pizza envy!

Ingredient List

6-7 cups flour

2 packages dry, active yeast

2 cups very warm water

2 teaspoons salt

olive oil or cooking spray for dough bowl

In a large bowl, add 2 cups very warm water.  Add 2 packets of dry, powder, yeast. Stir very gently.
Stir in 3 cups of white flour.
Add 2 tablespoons salt.  Mix gently.
Add about 3 more cups of flour.  At this point you could use half white flour, half whole wheat.
Mix as much of the three cups into the bowl as you can.  Depending on humidity, temperature, you may not be able to work all of this into your bowl.
Turn out on floured parchment paper and knead 5 minutes.
Shape into 6 even-sized balls of dough.  A kitchen scale will be handy here!
Place on oiled parchment paper on baking sheet.  Cover with oiled or sprayed plastic wrap and allow to double in size.  Be sure to keep your dough in a warm, draft-free environment while rising. Once doubled, refrigerate over night.

Shape your dough, and bake with desired topping at 400 degrees about 12 minutes, or until toppings are melted or browned. If your toppings are really moist, such as fresh tomatoes, poke holes in your dough and bake 6 -8 minutes before you add your toppings.

Any dough you are not using immediately, wrap in oiled or sprayed plastic wrap.  Place all balls of dough in a large zip-lock bag or covered plastic container and freeze for future use.  Thaw in refrigerator over-night for next day use.