We started by googling "High Altitude Homemade Pizza Dough" and stumbled upon a few great recipes. We went with the following combination of several:
Pizza Dough:
4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil
2 packets of active dry yeast
1 1/3 cup warm water (**MUST be 108-115 degrees!)
1 tbsp honey
Some extra warm water
1) Add the 1 1/3 cup warm water, honey, and yeast packets in a small bowl and stir gently until mixed. Set aside for 5-10 minutes. If all is working well, this mixture should bubble and rise almost double in size. We stuck with 5 because we are impatient!
2) In a large mixing bowl (we used out KitchenAid), add the flour, salt, and olive oil.
3) Once the yeast mixture is done, add to the large mixing bowl and beat with the bread hook for 2 minutes.
4) If there is any flour on the bottom, add more warm water ONE TBSP at a time. The dough will be ready when it is kind of sticky to the touch but is not sticking to the bowl or the hook. Ours was definitely a little sticky, but not too terribly so. If it sticks to your hands a little, no worries.
5) On a large, flat surface, sprinkle some flour. Knead the dough until it is silky and smooth.
6) Coat the bottom of a large bowl with olive oil. Place the dough in the bowl. Place plastic wrap closely hugging the dough so no air can get in.
7) Place this bowl in an unheated oven for 30 minutes.
8) Take out of the oven, punch the dough down, recover, and put back in the unheated oven for 10 minutes.
9) On a lightly floured surface and with a floured rolling pin, roll out the pizza dough until it is flat. **Note, we had a lot of dough. You can probably cut the dough in half and save some for later.
10) Throw on whatever toppings you desire (though we would recommend parmesan and olive oil for the crust...yum). Bake at 500 for 10-15 minutes, but keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn!
Again, this makes a lot of dough. Enough for two 14" pizzas at least. We ended up making a mega crusted pizza because we didn't know how much it made at the time, but we cut some off of the dough and made breadsticks!
On our delicious pizza, we put olive oil, spinach, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and tomato. We made the parmesan cheese crust as well!
Like I said, this was our first attempt at making homemade bread. We had just a tad bit of trouble with this bread..
Our first attempt: we did not put the honey in with the yeast mixture so it did not rise. For an English major, I'm not a great reader of recipes.
Our second attempt: we used whole wheat flour which (we found out later) messes with the consistency. So our dough was super dry and not at all sticky. We could not knead it into a ball at all. What a shame. So we tossed this.
Third time's a charm, I guess!
This pizza was a lot of work and some stress mainly because we did not know what to expect or what we were doing in the least. But now that we made it once, we are really excited to do it again and experiment with toppings. Homemade pesto and sundered tomatoes with feta is on my list!
