Adapted from my regular pizza dough recipe, this whole wheat pizza dough comes together with 6 simple ingredients. It’s not as light and chewy as traditional pizza crust, but it’s wonderfully soft with a distinct wholesome hearty flavor. This recipe is perfect for yeast beginners who enjoy baking with whole wheat flour. Use your favorite toppings or try my roasted vegetable whole wheat pizza.
This recipe is brought to you in partnership with Red Star Yeast.
. I also made one small change to the recipe, so that you only need honey to flavor the dough and activate the yeast. (The previous version called for both honey and granulated sugar.)
Whole wheat pizza crust gets a bad reputation because more often than not, it’s dense, bland, and crumbly. The reality is that whole wheat yeasted dough just cannot rise to the same level as white flour dough—literally! But several years ago, I worked to develop a 100% whole wheat pizza dough that not only rises wonderfully, it’s soft with great flavor too. If you prefer the hearty goodness of whole wheat flour, you will certainly enjoy this pizza dough.
You’ll notice that many yeasted dough recipes use similar ingredients—yeast, liquid, flour, salt, and sometimes a little sugar. There can be additions such as eggs, butter, oil, and flavorings, but for whole wheat pizza dough, it’s best to keep it simple. Pizza dough is what’s known as a “lean dough” because unlike cinnamon rolls and glazed doughnuts, it’s not rich with fat. I do, however, like to add a little olive oil for flavor and softness.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the 6 ingredients you need, plus a couple extras.
Use a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment or mix the dough together by hand with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Right out of the mixing bowl, the dough is slightly sticky and tacky. Place it on a lightly floured work surface (below, left) and then knead the dough by hand* until it’s smooth, elastic, and bounces back when you poke it with a finger (below, right).
*As detailed in the recipe, you can knead the dough with your mixer on low speed instead..
Let the dough rise in a lightly greased bowl until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
After the dough rises, punch it down to release the air and cut the dough in half. Freeze the 2nd half of dough or make 2 pizzas.
Using lightly floured hands or rolling pin, gently flatten the dough into a disc. Place on a greased pizza pan sprinkled lightly with cornmeal and, using lightly floured hands, stretch and flatten the disc into a 12-inch circle and lift/pinch a lip around the edges. If you’re shopping for a pizza pan, I use and love (affiliate links) this one and this one. If you don’t have a pizza pan, use a large baking sheet.
Brush the shaped dough with olive oil and feel free to add a sprinkle of your favorite dried herbs and/or chopped garlic before adding your desired pizza toppings.
You can use any pizza toppings you desire like plain cheese pizza, pepperoni, peppers, onions, cooked sausage, etc. It’s fantastic in place of regular dough in pesto pizza and BBQ chicken pizza.. When the pizza came out of the oven, I added a handful of chopped fresh basil.
Roasted vegetable whole wheat pizza is another favorite on this whole wheat pizza crust.
This recipe yields just under 2 lbs of dough, which is enough for two 12-inch pizzas. After the pizza dough rises and you divide the dough in half (step 5), you can freeze one of the balls of dough to make pizza at a later time. Or you can simply freeze both balls of dough separately. Lightly coat all sides of the dough ball(s) with nonstick spray or olive oil. Place the dough ball(s) into individual zipped-top bag(s) and seal tightly, squeezing out all the air. Freeze for up to 3 months. To thaw, place the frozen pizza dough in the refrigerator for about 8 hours or overnight. When ready to make pizza, remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow to rest for 30 minutes on the counter. Continue with step 5 in the recipe below.
Follow these detailed instructions for making easy whole wheat pizza dough at home. The recipe yields almost 2 lbs of whole wheat pizza dough, which is enough for two 12-inch pizzas.
