Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

This easy homemade whole wheat pizza dough is made from scratch with a mix of whole wheat flour and all purpose flour for a soft, delicious crust that's perfect for pizza night! No stand mixer required.

this recipe

Nothing beats pizza night, and this easy homemade pizza crust is the perfect blank canvas for all your favorite toppings!

This pizza dough requires no kneading, but it does need at least one hour to rise at room temperature on the counter. This rise time is important because it gives our dough more time to develop flavor and gluten - both of which are essential to getting a chewy, airy texture and balanced flavor out of whole wheat doughs. (If you're in a hurry, we recommend using our fast pizza dough recipe, which is ready in 15 minutes and only needs all purpose flour!)

This dough works in any of your favorite pizza recipes (it's also great for calzones or deep dish pizza!) We love topping it with a quick pizza sauce or homemade pesto, plus plenty of cheese and whatever veggies or protein we have on hand.

PS - This recipe is just the tip of the iceberg! To understand the why and how of great homemade pizza dough, check out our Everyday Artisan Bread course!

Jump to:

• A few notes on ingredients
• Our pizza timeline
• How to make this pizza crust
• How to bake pizza at home
• Three rules for the best pizza dough
• Riffs and Substitutions
• A few pizza dough FAQs
• More whole wheat bread recipes
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments & Reviews

A few notes on ingredients

Our whole wheat pizza dough ingredients are pretty straightforward, but we want to highlight a few things:

• Use high quality flour. The brand of flour you use has a profound effect on the feel of your dough and the final texture of your pizza. We recommend baking with King Arthur flour for best results - their flours are the most consistent from bag to bag, and they have a high protein content (which gives you a stronger, more elastic, less sticky dough!)
• All Purpose Flour helps us guard against some of the more common problems with whole wheat dough, which makes this dough more forgiving (and beginner-friendly!) Whole wheat flour can be challenging to work with, especially for new bakers. It's easy to end up with bread that tastes crumbly or earthy or just...blergh. While it's definitely possible to make a 100% whole wheat dough, it requires a few advanced baking techniques and a lot more time. Our goal is to give you a great whole wheat dough that requires minimal baking experience and is ready on the quickest possible timeline: This flour combo gives us the benefits and flavor of whole wheat without sacrificing texture, adding more rise time, or requiring additional steps. If you'd like a 100% whole wheat pizza dough recipe, you can find it in our Everyday Artisan Bread course!
• A tablespoon of honey in this recipe helps jumpstart our yeast for a quick, even rise, and it lends a bit of sweetness that really complements the earthiness of the whole wheat here. If you don't have honey (or just want to make this recipe vegan), you can use white sugar, brown sugar, or maple syrup in its place.
• Why add olive oil? Because we're working on such a quick timeline here, our dough doesn't have quite as much time as we'd like to develop a really smooth, stretchy texture. Adding a bit of olive oil to the pizza dough helps us mimic the extensibility we get from a longer-timeline dough (basically: It makes the dough a little smoother and easier to work with).

See recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

How to make this pizza crust

Proof the yeast and mix the dough

Proof a bit of active dry yeast in some warm water with a bit of honey until it's foamy. Stir in the flours (pro tip: use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients!) into the yeast mixture, along with some salt and a bit of olive oil. You can use a stand mixer here if you have one, but mixing by hand with a wooden spoon or sturdy spatula is just fine!

Don't worry if the dough feels shaggy or sticky right after mixing. It won't form a tight, elastic ball or pull away from the sides of a mixing bowl the way that some recipes do. Our primary goal is to make sure all of the flour is evenly saturated with the liquid, so be sure to mix until no dry flour remains in the bowl.

Let the dough rise for 30 minutes

Once the dough is mixed, cover it with a clean tea towel and let it sit on the counter for half an hour. The dough will puff up a bit, but it won't double in size or look too dramatic. The goal of this first rise is to let our flour soak up all the water in our recipe and start developing strong gluten networks (that gluten is the key to a chewy, airy pizza crust!)

Fold the dough

After thirty minutes, it's time to work the dough a little bit! Run your hands under some cold water (this helps prevent the dough from sticking) and gently slide your hands under the dough. The dough should feel a bit loose and sticky here - that's ok!

Gently pull the dough over on itself, folding each edge in towards the center like an envelope. You'll feel the dough start to tighten as you do this, and it will smooth out quite a bit. Repeat this process on each side of the dough (run your hands under some more cold water if it starts feeling too sticky!)

Tip: You're not so much kneading the dough here as you are folding it: Our goal is to gently shape it into a tighter, more uniform dough ball.

Add olive oil and let rise again

Once the dough is shaped into a smooth-ish ball, drizzle it with a little bit of olive oil and turn to coat the entire surface. Tuck the sides of the dough in so you have a relatively smooth, even dough ball.

Cover the dough with a clean kitchen towel and let it rise another 30 minutes (this is the point where we usually turn on the oven and start prepping our toppings!)

How to bake pizza at home

This homemade pizza dough works well with just about any baking method! When baking pizza at home, our favorite method is to use a baking steel or pizza stone.

Preheat the baking steel

Place a baking stone or steel (we love our Baking Steel!) on your lowest oven rack and preheat the oven to 450-500° Fahrenheit. (We like to bake pizza at 500°F, but not everyone is comfortable cranking their oven up that high - you can use a lower temp if you prefer!) Give your baking steel as much preheating time as you can - an hour is best, but at the very least leave it in the oven the entire time it's heating up.

Use a cutting board and parchment to slide pizza into the oven

Put a piece of parchment paper on a large cutting board, then press your pizza dough into shape on top of the parchment. (You don't need to add flour to the parchment paper first unless you want to - that light coating of olive oil makes the dough pretty easy to stretch out!)

Add your toppings, then pick up the cutting board and use it like a pizza peel to slide the pizza and the parchment paper onto your baking steel. Check out this video for a visual: How to Use a Pizza Stone.

When the pizza is cooked, use tongs to pull the pizza off the stone and back onto your cutting board. Let it cool for a few minutes, then slice and serve!

Three rules for the best pizza dough

1. Use a kitchen scale if you have one! Measuring by weight (with a scale) is much more accurate than measuring by volume (with a measuring cup). Because each person measures a cup of flour a little bit differently, it's easy to end up using way too much flour in a recipe - which results in dry, dense crust. But when you measure your flour in grams with a kitchen scale, you can measure flour perfectly every time - so if you have a kitchen scale, please use it! (No kitchen scale? Measure your flour with the scoop and level method for best results!)
2. For a crispy crust, bake your pizza on a baking steel or pizza stone (and give the baking steel plenty of time to preheat!)
3. Great pizza dough takes patience and persistence. When you're first learning how to make pizza crust at home, it might not look exactly like these pictures. THAT'S OKAY! The more you practice, the better you'll get. Stick with it!

Riffs and Substitutions

This pizza dough is fairly forgiving. Some of our favorite adjustments:

• Add mix-ins to your dough. Fold in some chopped roasted garlic (or garlic powder), fresh herbs, Italian seasonings (basil, oregano, and rosemary are great here), or shredded cheese when you mix the dough for an extra pop of flavor.
• Use any baking method you like! We love a baking steel or pizza stone, but you can also press this dough onto a pizza pan or baking sheet for an easy pan pizza, roll it out with a rolling pin for calzones, use it for grilled pizza, or press it into a cast iron skillet for deep dish pizza.
• Swap the all purpose flour in this recipe for bread flour if you have it! Bread flour has a higher protein content, which gives you better gluten development for a smooth dough and a chewy crust.
• Swap the honey for white sugar, brown sugar, or maple syrup (you can leave the sweetener out entirely if you want, but your yeast may not activate as quickly, so plan to give your dough a bit of extra time to rise).
• Add your favorite toppings! This pizza holds up well with just about any toppings (we love a summery corn & cilantro pizza or a quick prosciutto arugula pizza!)

How to make this dough the day before

Mix dough as directed the night before you want to make pizza, then cover with an airtight lid (you can use plastic wrap if you need to) and let it rise overnight in the refrigerator. An hour before you want to eat, transfer the dough to the counter, knead it a few times, then coat it with a bit of olive oil and let it come back to room temperature for at least half an hour before shaping and baking normally.

How to freeze pizza dough

To freeze dough, mix dough as directed and let it do its first 30 minute rise. Fold dough as directed, then transfer to a plate or baking sheet lined with parchment paper and place dough in the freezer (uncovered) for 2-3 hours. When dough is set and frozen, transfer it to an airtight container and store for up to 3 months. Thaw dough overnight in the fridge, then move it to the counter when you're ready to use it.

A few pizza dough FAQs

Print

📖 Recipe