It's Pizza Night!

In a previous post, I talked about the Wheat Cleaner 1.0. A device to help clean wheat more efficiently so we can enjoy foods made from wheat kernels. Not berries. Berries are tart fruits that grow on trees and bushes. Just wanted to make that clear. I wonder if I have to consult a food anthropologist to figure out how this berry nonsense started. Hopefully it isn't the same kind of story that caused tomatoes to be classified as a vegetable instead of a fruit by the government. But I digress. So this post is on one of the main foods we make with our wheat: homemade pizza.

The dough recipe I started with was based on using all-purpose flour, water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast. While the proportions worked well for those ingredients, they did not work quite as well with the whole wheat flour. So, I've had to experiment some. The main variants were the proportion of whole wheat to all-purpose flour, and the amount of water to use in the dough. As well as the rise time.

Last week I think I finally got the balance correct. The resulting dough was stretchy and easily made into a pizza crust by hand. In the past, I would have to work the dough over pretty hard to get it to stretch out, usually resigning myself to use a rolling pin. Oh the horror! While the resulting crust always had an excellent taste, it had been hard to work with. This is no longer the case!

As you can see in the picture, my el'cheapo pizza peel is in pretty sad shape. It is cracking, peeling, and is a tad too thick in my mind. So, on my list of woodworking projects is a new pizza peel. Whenever I get around to making it, I'll be sure to post it here. Just thought I'd throw this paragraph in to tie this post to woodworking! I guess all things considered, the $15 pizza peel and pizza stone combo have served me pretty well.

So what kind of pizza do we make to feed our house full of boys? Rather than try to please them all, or rather force them to be happy with one or two types of pizza, we've gone down the personal pizza route. I end up breaking the pizza dough up into individual sized pizzas, which allows each of us create our own pizza flavor. We usually try to have two sauce choices, homemade red, and a white alfredo sauce. Then, depending on what we have around the house, we may have chicken, roasted garlic, elk/venison steak and/or burger, homemade venison sausage, mushrooms, peppers, onions (raw and caramelized), fresh basil, tomatoes, black olives, sauerkraut, pineapple, bacon, pepperoni, and my sisters suggestion, chopped pickles. Oh, and yes, also anchovies on occasion. Each pizza night there is a subset of that wide variety of toppings. I am probably forgetting a few, but you get the idea. Sky's the limit!

On to the big question at hand, at least in my mind. To share my recipe or not! Do you want to make your own whole wheat pizza? Do you want the recipe? Well, I think you'll just have to come over and join us for pizza night if you want it!