Thursday, August 19, 2010

Pizza Crust (made with zucchini of course)

I pack a lunch for my husband every day. He has a nifty little red cooler (I think it was meant for sodas, but a traditional lunch box is just too small for my 6'3" guy) that I fill to the brim with sandwiches and goodies every day. The only problem with our system is that we only have one ice pack and sometimes we forget to put it back in the freezer when he comes home from work. Then I get to rummage through our freezer the next day looking for something that will keep his lunch cold. Yesterday I chose a bag of frozen, shredded zucchini thinking I'd make zucchini bread with it that night. Meh, long story short my waist-line couldn't handle another treat so I added the zucchini into my pizza dough instead. Keep in mind, whenever I cook I always make a lot of food so I can have an easy day later on so this recipe makes a lot of dough. It was easily enough for me to make 5 large pizza crusts.

Green flecked Pizza Crust

3 tbsp Saf-instant yeast
1 Tbsp salt
6 cups whole wheat flour
6 cups Bread flour
2 cup hot water
1/2 cup honey
2 cups shredded zucchini (warm it up don't add it cold)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup olive oil

Combine whole wheat flour, yeast, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add water, honey, zucchini, yogurt and olive oil. Mix thoroughly and allow to rest about 5 minutes. Stir in 4 cups of the remaining flour and mix until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. It will still be sticky. Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead in remaining 2 cups flour until dough is smooth and elastic. Be sure to knead about 8 minutes. Divide dough into 5 sections. Spray 5 pizza pans with oil and dust each with about 1/4 cup coarse corn meal. Roll each dough section a little larger than each pizza pan. Place dough onto pan and roll edges up slightly to form edge of crust. Cover and let rise 25 minutes. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400 F for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

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