Frozen pizza used to be a staple in our household in our college years.  Then for a couple of glorious years, delivery pizza was our weekly treat.  When our twins were first born we were ordering pizza 2-3 times a week.  Both frozen pizza and delivery pizza are rather high in fat, and frozen pizza is chock full of preservatives.  Nary a whole grain is to be found in either one.

If you have a bread machine, you can easily make your own pizza dough to whip out your own healthier pizza.  The best part is that the ingredients for pizza dough are not perishable so you can put everything in the bread machine right away in the morning and set your delay timer and the dough will be ready and waiting for a very quick meal when you get home.

This recipe is adapted from the Cuisinart recipe booklet that came with my bread machine:

Pizza Dough
1 c. warm water
3/4 tsp. honey or sugar
1 1/2 tsp. kosher or sea salt
2 T. extra virgin olive oil (a generous 2)
1 1/2 c. white bread flour
1 1/2 c. whole wheat bread flour
1 3/4 tsp. yeast
1 tsp. garlic powder (optional)
1 tsp. oregano (optional)

Put all ingredients in bread machine, set to “dough” setting, 1.5 lb loaf size.  If possible, the first time you make this watch it while it goes through the first mixing/kneading cycle to make sure it’s not too wet and not too dry.

The more whole wheat flour you use, the trickier that part is because whole grain flours absorb more liquid, and they absorb it more slowly, than white flour.  So it’s good in general to keep an eye on your dough the first couple times you make any bread machine recipe and try to adapt it to make it more whole grain.

Preheat oven to 450.  Lightly grease a med.-large size cookie sheet and spread your dough out as thin as you like.  Top with pizza sauce, or pesto, or just brush with olive oil, some toppings, and bake in a 450 degree oven for 12-20 min.  Makes a nice big pizza, 5-7 servings.

I made this pizza last Thursday.  What ends up happening around here is that pizza is the last thing I make when we have run out of EVERYTHING so my toppings are really random.  This pizza was topped with: adzuki beans, whole garlic cloves, a 1/2 can of tomatoes which were cooked with a little bit of onion and spices, a little bit of grated monterey jack cheese, and a little bit of grated parmesan rind.