Spelt Pizza

This spelt pizza base recipe is not only easy to make, but it’s also delicious to eat! Spelt flour has a lovely flavour and can go with any pizza topping you like.

Why make this recipe?

• A healthier choice for a pizza base
• Great taste

My top tips on making this recipe successfully the first time round

• Spelt flour can take longer to develop enough gluten, so you might need to knead the dough for bit longer than regular bread flour
• Spelt flour soaks up water quite a bit, so if the dough needs it, just add more water to make nice soft dough

Any specialist equipment needed?

I prefer to knead my pizza dough by hand, but you can use mixer with a dough hock or even use a bread maker to make the dough (obviously take it out before the cycle finishes and makes a bread for you).

Ingredients & Possible Substitutions

Spelt flour

Spelt flour has a lovely earthy taste and has fairly good nutritional value, especially if you go for stone milled type.

Yeast

I use quick dry yeast for this recipe, but if you happen to have fresh yeast, just double up the amount given in the recipe. The quick yeast can go directly into the flour mix and you don’t need to worry about pre-mixing it.

Water

If you want your dough to prove quicker use tepid or slightly warm water.

Oil

Oil makes the dough nice and elastic and helps to keep it moist when baking. I normally use basic olive oil (not extra virginal olive oil), but sometimes I reach out for vegetable or sunflower oil when I’m making this Spelt Pizza Base Recipe. Other types of oils, like linseed, rice or walnut oil are fine too, but they might change the flavour of your dough.

Salt

Fine cooking salt is the easiest one to use, but seasalt or flavoured salts are a great option too. If you have anything bigger than fine salt, dissolve the salt in the water first by adding it to the water jug rather than the flour mix. Sea salt (or large flakes of salt) can’t dissolve by themselves in the dough once they are mixed in.

How to make spelt pizza dough base

• Measure out the flour and place in a large mixing bowl.
• Add the dry yeast and salt and mix together.
• Add the water and olive oil and bring the dough together with a wooden mixing spoon.
• Knead the dough either by hand for about 10 minutes or place in an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment for about 4 minutes.
• Place dough in plastic mixing bowl with a little olive oil, cover it with a plastic bag or a shower cap and let the dough to rise until it doubles in size. This could take 45 min to 60 min depending on your room temperature.
• When doubled in size, take the dough out and divide into 3-4 pieces, depending on how big you want your pizza to be (or if you like a thicker or a thinner crust).
• Roll out the pizza dough and add your choice of toppings. Leave out to prove for the second time until the pizza crust (the sides) puff up a little. This could take about 15-20 min (about the time for your oven to heat up)
• Make sure that your oven is heated up to the highest temperature setting, but minimum of 220 C (430F).
• Bake in preheated oven for 7-10 minutes (depending on how thin or thick your crust is). When the crust is lightly/golden brown, your spelt pizza base is cooked.
• Enjoy whilst still hot on it’s own or with a side salad

How else you can make this recipe?

You can replace the spelt flour with other type of flour, such as 50% wholemeal and 50% white bread flour or just use 100% wholemeal bread flour or even just 100% white bread flour. Since we are using yeast to make this Spelt Pizza Base Recipe use flour with some form of gluten.

You could adapt it to gluten-free recipe by using gluten-free flour mix, yeast and xanthan gum (to replace the gluten in the gluten-free flour)

Allergies & dietary requirements

• Dairy free
• Vegan & Vegetarian suitable
• Not gluten free (Spelt has a lower amount of gluten than regular bread flours, but it still contains gluten).
• Depending on the choice of your toppings, spelt flour is fine in small amounts as Low FODMAP food.

Serving size & can I scale up or down this recipe?

This recipe will give you about 3-4 medium size pizza bases, but you can easily use just 1/2 of the ingredients and make less.

Equally, if you are cooking for a large crowd, just double up the recipe ingredients. You should be able to knead everything together even if you double up the amount (it will take the same time by hand as with the regular size).

How to serve this recipe

Best served straight from the oven, hot with side salad, garlic bread or pizza sauces.

Perfect side dishes to go with your pizza

• Vegetable Salad
• Garlic Bread
• Various dips and sauces

Can this recipe be made in advance?

There are various ways you can get ahead making this pizza base recipe

Bake & Eat

Whilst I think that pizza is best eaten straight from the oven on the day you’ve made it, it’s perfectly fine to bake the pizza and then re-heat it a day later. You should be fine to bake all the pizza in advance, but make sure you heat them back up before serving.

By the way, you can eat cold pizza, once it’s cooked, but I think most of us probably prefer the hot version.

Bake & Freeze & Eat

Another option is to bake the pizza and once cold freeze it until you need it. I would normally try to eat the pizza within 1-3 months to make sure it’s stays fresh. Reheat it in the oven to make sure the pizza crust comes back up.

Freeze the pizza base only

One pretty cool way to get ahead of pizza making (especially if you have the cravings and don’t have the time to make the whole pizza in one evening), is to freeze the pizza base only.

To do this , you make the dough as normal, leave to rise once and then roll out the pizza bases. The gluten will probably fight you at this stage, so gently stretch the pizza dough from the middle out.

Place the individual pizza bases on greaseproof paper and then place them on baking trays that fit into your freezer. Freeze for 1 hr or until the pizza base is frozen properly. Remove from the freezer and wrap the pizza base in freezer-safe plastic bag and stack them up. It’s still a good idea to keep them flat, but they will hold their shape once they are frozen.

When you want your pizza, just take a pizza base from the freezer, add your toppings and leave to defrost in the room temperature, whilst you heat your oven. This won’t take very long – about 15-20 minutes, which is considerably less than making the whole pizza in one day or evening.

A smart way of managing your pizza making is to make the whole dough and use some to make pizza on the same day and freeze some for later.

Freeze the dough

The last option you have is to freeze the dough as it is. This is particularly useful to know, if you don’t have a large freezer or don’t have enough trays to freeze individual pizza bases.

I normally make the spelt pizza dough first, leave it to prove once and then cut it to 3-4 portions and freeze them separately.

This way, any time you want a pizza, just grab one pizza dough portion from the freezer, leave it to defrost in room temperature, roll it out to a pizza base, add your toppings and bake as normally.

How to store any pizza leftovers

You can easily freeze any leftovers you have or keep the wrapped in the fridge for 1-2 days. When defrosting your pizza, just leave it defrost in room temperature and (or) place in the oven for 5 minutes on 180 C 350F to bring the crust back.

How to re-heat this recipe

Microwave

30 sec to 1 minute in the microwave should be enough to heat up your pizza.

Oven

5-8 minutes in preheated oven on 180C or 350F

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