I know quarantine has been all about growing sourdough starters and making sourdough bread, but I think if you haven't made homemade pizza dough, you're really missing out on something special! I recently made this pizza dough using just 5 ingredients: salt, dry active yeast, whole wheat flour, honey, and water. It's a minimal knead dough, the hard part is really just sitting tight and waiting while the dough rises.
I decided to make this pizza with one tiny twist - instead of using fresh basil, I decided to swap in curry leaves as the aromatic. It was really beautiful. When you bake. the curry leaves you get this pungent, citrus, summery smell that complements the creaminess of the mozzarella and burrata so well. It's amazing how one small swap can make the world of a difference in taste and smell.
And last but not least, let's not forget the homemade tomato sauce that is SO easy and simple to make and only requires one pot and not many ingredients at all. Put everything together, and you have a wholesome, beautiful dinner that can feed plenty or even just yourself a few times over!
To make the dough, you start off by taking simmering water and add the honey and the dry active yeast. Let is stand for 10 minutes and it'll turn into a foamy liquid just like you see in the mixture. From there, you gradually add the whole wheat flour, 1/2 a cup at a time, until you have enough to mix everything together and then knead the dough by hand. Since the whole wheat flour is very soft, you can slowly add more until the consistency feels just right. And that's all there is to the dough! Let it rest in a warm spot for 1.5 hours or longer and it will almost double in volume.
I firstly cut the dough into half as there's quite a lot of dough and you can make two large pieces with it. I used a rectangle baking tray instead of a round one because the dough was super soft, and having a large baking tray allowed me to spread the dough out using my fingers (after rolling it out a little bit) so that it fit the mold of the tray. Be sure to grease your tray with additional olive oil! Dust a clean countertop with more whole wheat flour and roll out as much of the dough as you can, and then finish it off by spreading it out in the tray with your fingers. It's okay if it's a little messy and doesn't look perfect - that's the beauty of cooking pizza at home.
Once the dough is rolled out, spread out the simple tomato sauce and spread the mozzarella cheese everywhere. Add the curry leaves for garnish and then bake it until the dough is crisp and the cheese is melty and creamy. Once you have removed the pizza from the oven, add the burrata on top and cut it open so that it spreads out everywhere!