Whole Wheat Pizza Dough Recipe

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.

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 back in 2014, 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.

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Whole Wheat Pizza Dough Details

• How it compares to regular pizza crust: Enjoy a soft, yet hearty base for your favorite pizza toppings. The crust is not nearly as chewy as pizza crust made with all white flour. However, what it lacks in chew, it makes up for in flavor.
• Flavor: When baking yeasted whole wheat dough such as whole wheat bread or these whole wheat dinner rolls, I love using honey as the sugar component. This crust has a touch of honey, enough salt, 100% whole wheat flour, plus you can add garlic and/or your favorite dried herbs such as basil, oregano, and thyme. (Or an Italian seasoning blend.)
• Ease: This recipe is for bread beginners. Making homemade pizza dough can certainly be an art—tossing the dough in the air, shaping, extended rise times, etc—and it’s always worth the effort! But for the everyday, I love turning to simplified recipes like today’s or my regular pizza crust. There’s just 1 rise, a little bit of kneading and shaping, and then you’re ready to gather your toppings and bake.
• Time: Set aside just under 3 hours for this homemade dough and keep in mind that most of the time is hands off as the dough rises.

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.

Main Ingredients for Your Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Here’s a quick breakdown of the 6 ingredients you need, plus a couple extras. The full printable recipe is below and a new video tutorial is coming soon!

1. Water: Whole wheat flour contains unrefined grains like germ and bran—and both absorb a lot of liquid. (And this is why many whole wheat breads can taste dry.) To avoid a crumbly dry crust, make sure you use enough water. I tested this pizza dough recipe with varying amounts of water and 1 and 1/2 cups (360ml) is perfect to hydrate the whole wheat flour. Use warm water to cut down on rise time, about 100-110°F (38-43°C).
2. Yeast: You can use either instant (quick rise) or active dry yeast in this dough. I usually use Platinum Yeast from Red Star, which is an instant yeast. Because yeast has to work harder to make whole wheat flour rise, we’ll use slightly more yeast in this dough compared to my regular pizza dough recipe. You need 1 Tablespoon (8.5g).
3. Honey: Yeast feeds on sugar so in order for this dough to rise properly, you need a little sugar in the dough. 1 Tablespoon of honey also adds flavor and tenderizes the dough. If needed, you can use regular white granulated sugar instead.
4. Whole Wheat Flour: For 100% whole wheat pizza crust, use all whole wheat flour as instructed in the recipe below. For lighter whole grain flavor, feel free to replace some of the whole wheat flour with an equal amount of bread flour or all-purpose flour.
5. Oil: Extra virgin olive oil adds wonderful flavor to the dough. Don’t forget to brush the dough with olive oil before adding the toppings, which prevents the crust from tasting soggy.
6. Salt: Salt adds necessary flavor.
7. Extras: Cornmeal isn’t in the dough, but it’s used to dust the pizza pan. Cornmeal gives the pizza crust a little extra flavor and crisp. Most delivery pizzas you enjoy have cornmeal on the bottom crust! And feel free to add some dried herbs to the dough itself or sprinkle on the dough before adding the toppings. You could also add garlic or garlic powder in or on top of the dough. See recipe notes below for details.

Step-by-Step Photos: How to Make Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Here are photos showing some of the process so you can feel confident when it’s your turn to try the recipe.

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. If you prefer to knead by hand, my How to Knead Dough video tutorial will be helpful resource.

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.

Toppings & Other Uses for this Dough

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. For the pictured pizza above, I used 1 clove chopped garlic, 1/3 cup (about 80g) of pizza sauce (homemade or store-bought), 6-8 ounces shredded and/or thinly sliced fresh mozzarella cheese (I used a combination totaling 7 ounces), 1 sliced plum tomato, and a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper and Italian seasoning blend. When the pizza came out of the oven, I added a handful of chopped fresh basil.

• Other Uses: You could also use this dough for stuffed crust pizza, stromboli, and cheesy breadsticks instead of regular pizza dough.

Roasted vegetable whole wheat pizza is another favorite on this whole wheat pizza crust.

Freezing Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

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.

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