Favorite bread machine pizza dough – Pizza Clack

You can’t make pizza without dough — that’s a given. And the kind of dough you want to use is probably based somewhat on your tastes but mostly on your availability — do you have time to make the pizza crust of your dreams every time you want to make homemade pizza?

It would be great if we could all make bread dough from scratch like Jen does, and someday I plan on trying that. Since I can’t stand the taste of most pre-made pizza dough shells, I’ve found the next best thing to from-scratch dough — my bread machine.

One could even argue that it is from scratch, although I do feel as though I’m cheating just a bit. It only takes me two minutes to toss the ingredients in the bread machine, and in two hours, I’ve got dough. It works for me, because I don’t have to plan ahead too far in advance, but I get the fresh dough I crave.

My recipe is based on one from Great bread machine baking: Over 250 recipes for breads from A to Z by Marlene Brown. This recipe makes enough for two thin-crust pizzas on 12-inch round pans, a slightly thicker crust on a 13×9 pan, or two free-form pizzas you can grill.

Put ingredients into your bread machine in this order:

• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1.5 teaspoons sea salt
• 3 cups sprouted spelt flour (or your favorite whole-grain flour, or bread flour)
• 2.5 teaspoons active dry yeast

Set your machine for dough cycle (mine takes one hour and 50 minutes) and be sure to check about five minutes into kneading to make sure your dough is a smooth ball. You may need to add a little more water or a smidge more flour, depending.

After adding my desired toppings, I pop these pizzas in the oven at 450 degrees for about 14-16 minutes.

The sky is the limit for the amazing pizzas you can create using this easy pizza dough. Check back often for our ideas in the Pizza Clack column, and please share your favorites in the comments.

Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Feb 02, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT