Food Matters Project #11: Apple & Smoked Cheese Whole Wheat Pizza

This is a Food Matters Project week that we’ve both been waiting for!  Niki, from Salt & Pepper, chose a pizza recipe!  We love pizza, especially when we make our own- a perfect way to pile on what we’re craving!  Niki chose Mark Bittman’s No-Work Mostly Whole Wheat Pizza Dough.  The best part about this challenge is the variety of pizza toppings from everyone.  The Food Matters Cookbook does provide some suggestions- but I think many of us tried to take an original spin on it, check them out here.

Sam and I have made this pizza in the past, and wanted to share it with everyone.  We did make a small change, the type of cheese.  While browsing through the cheese section, I spotted Salemville’s Smokehaus Blue– an applewood smoked blue cheese.  Although we never tried it before, I figured it’d be great on this pizza.

If you’d like other pizza toppings, check out our mushroom and broccoli pizza!

Apple & Smoked Cheese Whole Wheat Pizza
The pizza dough was adapted from: The Food Matters Cookbook (page 533)
Toppings: A Fifth Floor Kitchen original

If you cannot find the smoked blue cheese, a great substitute would be a mild blue- such as gorgonzola.  Don’t hesitate to add more mozzarella, garlic or green apple to this pizza!  The pizza dough was delicious, crispy and chewy!

1 cup white flour
2 cups wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 packet of dry, activated yeast
1 1/2 cups water
2 tbsp olive oil
7 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large ball of fresh mozzarella, cut into thin slices and patted dry
4 ounces smoked blue cheese, crumbled
1 green apple, thinly sliced

Combine the flour, salt, yeast, and water in a large mixing bowel.  Stir well, the dough should be sticky and wet.  Cover the bowl with a dishtowel and let stand at room temp for at least 6 hours.

When the dough is done rising, preheat your oven to 500ºF.  Grease a large cookie sheet with about 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Using oily hands, transfer the dough to the cookie sheet and smush out into a roughly rectangular shape.

Coat the top of the dough with 1 tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkle evenly with garlic.  Bake it in the oven for 7-8 minutes, being careful not to let the garlic burn.

Remove the dough from the oven and add the mozzarella and apple slices.  Finally, sprinkle blue cheese on top.  Return to the oven for another 10-15 minutes, remove when the apple slices have wilted a bit and the cheese has melted.