Pizza dough 101

My husband and I are on a tight budget these days as is probably most of the country. So, I thought I would share my pizza dough recipe with you. It's really inexpensive to make pizza dough and it keeps for about 3 months in the freezer after you make it. The dough can be used from everything to breadsticks to calzones. It's super easy and here is the recipe.


Ingredients:
3 cups of warm water
1 tbsp. active dry yeast
1 tsp. honey
4 cups unbleached flour (all purpose)
1/2 tsp. salt


Instructions:
In a stand mixer combine the water, yeast, honey and 4 teaspoons of the flour. Stir it gently to combine. Cover with a damp towel and let stand for 30 minutes in a warm place until foamy.-- this is also testing the yeast if it does not foam your yeast may not be fresh or good anymore.


Add the remaining flour and salt then with the dough hook knead for about 10 minutes until dough is well combined and smooth. You may need to add small amounts of flour if the dough is sticky. Transfer  dough to a large bowl and cover with a damp towel and let rise (45 minutes) dough should double in volume. Punch dough down and cut into 2 or 4 sections depending on how big you'd like your pizzas. I usually cut my dough into 4 sections because we make smaller pizzas with very thin crusts. At this time you can proceed to making pizzas or whatever you'd like or put the dough in air tight baggies and freeze them until you need to use. I usually freeze a good bit of them and if I need to make pizza I pull out the dough and defrost on the counter. Dough should be room temperature when you use it.

You can buy yeast in bulk at the grocery store. It comes in freeze dried packs -- they look like a small brick. Once you've opened the yeast it will keep in the freezer for quite a long long time. 


If you'd like to make whole wheat dough simply change the flour measurement to 2 cups white flour and 1 & 1/2 cups wheat flour.