Pizza is a favourite amongst most of us. The cheesey, yummy goodness with your choice of toppings sets even the grumpiest of days right! Don't you agree? :)
Making pizza at home is easy. You can customise your toppings to your liking and make as many as you like! How fun is that?! And if you make your pizzas at home, with your own pizza base, the health quotient goes up a few notches.
I make my own pizza bases at home and I add in good proportion of wholewheat flour to it, instead of making it entirely with all purpose flour. Left to myself, I could do away with the wholewheat flour all together, but then the softness is mildly compromised and so is the elasticity of the dough. So to get softer bases, it is suggested that you add in a small portion of all purpose flour, when you make your pizza base with wholewheat flour.
So here goes my recipe to make pizza bases using wholewheat flour and a hint of all purpose flour. Enjoy the fun process and the yummilicious pizza that you are going to be baking soon after :) Happy Baking!
Ingredients:
Wheat flour - 2 cups
All Purpose Flour - 1/2 cup
Instant Yeast - 2.5 tsp
Sugar - 1/2 tbsp
Salt - a pinch
Water - as needed
Olive Oil - as needed
- In a large mixing bowl, add the wheat flour, all purpose flour and salt. Sieve together the flours and salt while you wait for the yeast to proof.
- Add the proofed yeast mixture into the flour mixture, add the olive oil and combine together into a dough. Add extra water (or milk) or flour to make a firm yet sticky dough. You can do this using your hands or a hand blender using the bread hooks.
- Knead for a good 5 minutes and make a firm dough.
- Grease the bowl with olive oil and sit the dough in a warm place where it can rise. Keep the bowl covered with a kitchen towel or a cling wrap. I keep the dough inside the microwave oven, with the power switched off. It makes for a perfect warm place to let the yeast do its work.
- After an hour, remove the bowl from the oven and behold in delight as the dough would have doubled in size :)
- Punch down the dough and knead for a minute more to remove any air bubbles.
- Dust the work floor with a bit of flour.
- Toss the dough ball on it.
- Knead for a minute and then roll it out into a flat round with about 3/4 inch thickness.
- Fold in the ends a bit to form a mini wall of sorts.
- Using a fork poke holes in it randomly, to ensure that the dough does not rise out of shape while baking.
- Smear pizza sauce or tomato ketchup evenly. That is it! You have your pizza base ready for baking your pizza with topping of your choice! Enjoy :)
nice useful post. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing dear........ Homemade is always better!
ReplyDeleteHi Nandita, I am so surprised by this post that came at the right time. Can you believe that we decided to make pizza tonight and I was planning to go through some sites for making pizza base. It is terribly hot here and a regular stuff for dinner does not appeal at all. We generally make pasta, bread with tofu scramble for something different. Your post has left me astound....there is some connect. You have saved me from browsing.....i can go ahead with your recipe now. Thanks a ton Nandita!
ReplyDeleteOh wow, am delighted! Did you make the pizzas for dinner yesterday? I am sure it would have turned out great! Would love to know...
DeleteI tried making base but didn't put all-pupose flour, just whole wheat aata. But it didn't rise much and pizza base didn't taste that good. My son is fond of pizza and was very hopeful to get market- like pizza tatste wise but he was very disappointed after eating that as just before to that I had give him pizza made with market brought pizza base. Any suggestion ?
ReplyDeleteHello Upma, Thanks for writing in. Wholewheat bakes will be slightly denser than all-purpose flour based dough. That is why we add in a small portion of all-purpose flour to the larger portion of wholewheat flour while making wholewheat pizza-base. Since you have completely skipped the maida, the texture will be denser and so will the taste differ. I would suggest you try making your pizza base again with the proportions mentioned in this recipe as this is a tried and tested recipe that has worked well for me and quite a few others. The taste will be slightly different from he shop bought ones since those are completely made of maida. But these turn out good too. Do let me know how it works out and please send in a picture too if you can. Happy baking! :) You can write in to me at nansyumyums@gmail.com for more help if needed.
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