Peter Reinhart’s 100% Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

As I am sure I established in my last post, I love pizza. So I decided to continue on that theme and try my hand at a 100% whole-wheat crust, seeing if I could find a way to a make pizza that is somewhat "healthier". Since I was so impressed with the sandwich bread from Reinhart’s book I thought his “delayed fermentation” method would be the ideal process to create a 100% whole-wheat dough with the stretch-ability necessary to pull whole-wheat dough into a pie. Once again he didn’t disappoint.

The process was basically the same as his sandwich bread, but this time the soaker used water and I didn’t include honey in the final mix. Being my second foray into this process, I was able to do it far more quickly and without the previous mistakes. This time I used only 2 tablespoons of water to hydrate the yeast in the final mix and it seemed to work out perfectly, thankfully avoiding over-saturating the dough again. This recipe created a huge amount of dough, half of which I froze after it had risen to use later (and I will update this blog with it’s performance after being frozen).

The pizza turned out perfectly, the crust puffed up much more like a traditional pizza parlor pizza than any other I have every made (be it frozen or pre made dough). Even baking it in the old oven that I was using it still performed remarkably: airy and fluffy yet still hearty. By using a middle rack space the crust turned out neither overly soft nor crisp, but I may experiment a bit with lower the rack for a more artisan style crisper crust. I did, however, feel that, in the end, the crust lacked from my exclusion of honey, and I think that next time I will add the honey and fold herbs in as well for a slightly sweeter and more flavorful crust. The one major mistake I did make was with the bakers peel. Instead of cornmeal, I dusted it with flour. As a result my pizza stuck to peel and I nearly lost it. Luckily my girlfriend was able to place cornmeal under the fully constructed pizza and our lunch was saved.

As an added note: the dough does fine after being frozen for a few weeks (you can freeze it after it has risen).

Difficulty: average.

from: Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor.

Tips:
1) If using a pizza peel to slide the pizza onto your stone (or baking surface) make sure you generously dust the peel with cornmeal.
2) Though I would start with the middle rack, feel free to experiment with oven placement to meet your taste: lower racks give crisper crusts while higher should have a softer crust. Keep in mind, though, that due to differences in pizza ovens and home ovens, you may never get that same floppy New York pizza parlor crust.
3) Make sure you plan out 2 days you can work on this, they don’t have to be consecutive, but it is a multi day process. Though this sounds daunting, it really doesn’t take more time, it just spreads out the time you work on the dough.