My awesome pizza with a twist

One of the recipes I've blogged about was this awesome home made pizza crust. After reading some tips on how to improve on homemade pizza crusts I tweaked it some and I believe I blogged about that too and how that came out (even better!) I've been trying to get my family on a healthier eating habits, so the pizza hasn't been one I've been as willing to make. Last week my husband requested that I make the pizza again, so I did that over the weekend. I wanted to try and make it a tad healthier for us so I made some more adjustments.

For the dough I made a couple of adjustments. I think I will try getting rid of the brown sugar all together in my next attempt.

• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water, and let sit for 10 minutes.
2. Stir the salt and oil into the yeast solution. Mix in 2 1/2 cups of the flour.
3. Turn dough out onto a clean, well floured surface, and knead in more flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Place the dough into a well oiled bowl, and cover with a cloth. Let the dough rise until double; this should take about 1 hour. Punch down the dough, and form a tight ball. Allow the dough to relax for a minute before rolling out. Use for your favorite pizza recipe.
4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). If you are baking the dough on a pizza stone, you may place your toppings on the dough, and bake immediately. If you are baking your pizza in a pan, lightly oil the pan, and let the dough rise for 15 or 20 minutes before topping and baking it.
5. Bake pizza in preheated oven, until the cheese and crust are golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.
   
   
   Here's what I did, I added about 1/2 teaspoon of honey, I was going for the honey wheat taste however the honey flavor was very slight so I think I'll try completely replacing the brown sugar with honey. I have been told I should do more honey then the amount of sugar called for so next time I'll try that for sure
   
   Also since I wanted to make it more healthy I got rid of most of the white flour, not all but most. The recipe calls for 3 1/3cups flour so I did roughly 2 1/3rd cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup white flour. That seemed to be a pretty good balance. It depends on the weather on how much extra flour you have to add to the dough to get it not so sticky and I found that it was right around a cup that I added.
   
   I don't have a pizza stone, which I've heard makes the pizza that much more fantastic. I did read on another blog though about how if you don't have a pizza stone you can turn a cookie sheet upside down and bake the dough on the bottom of the pan. I have a round pizza pan so I turn that upside down and place the dough on it for baking. It seems to work really well and it helps to bake the pizza evenly. If you don't have a pizza stone bake the dough before adding the toppings for a short time to make sure its well done.
   
   This recipe makes a large amount of dough, easily enough for 2 smaller pizza's. In the past I've cut just under 1/2 the dough off and use that to make bread sticks. This week I was lazy so I just rolled out the dough. However it greatly overlapped the pan so I decided to roll the edges up. Since I was going to roll the edges up I thought it would be good to put some string cheese in the crust. Sadly I only had 1 stick left, so I tore it into little strips but I didn't really have enough to really notice it was there. I have before used the string cheese and rolled the bread sticks around the cheese and had cheese stuffed bread sticks were were awesome. So I think next time I'll make sure I have plenty of string cheese on hand. We're not much on toppings in our house, so for us it was just plenty of cheese on the pizza.
   
   The result was pretty awesome, I over baked the pizza a tad... Oops but only the cheese was burnt on top, however that left the crust slightly tough and not as crispy as I would have liked. But my husband really loved the pizza and can't wait for me to make it again. 
   
   

   

   Wheat super thick crust! You should have seen it before it baked! Yumm

   
   

   

   I burnt the top... I really need to remember NOT to bake it on the top self as it burns the cheese to quickly!