Butternut Squash and Gorgonzola Pizza with Sprouted Spelt Dough

 

A wonderful and wholesome sprouted wheat pizza

Once you master the pizza dough, making pizza can be as easy as pie. I made butternut squash, gorgonzola and sage pizza from Ellie Krieger’s Weeknight Wonders. The recipe calls for four ounces of pizza dough.

This butternut pizza joins this week’s “any way you slice it” themed cooking gathering at IHCC.

I am very excited about the 100% sprouted wheat pizza dough from Bread RevoIution by Peter Reinhart. This is a straight dough that can be mixed and baked on the same day.

Reinhart’s approach in using sprouted flour is truly revolutionary and the next frontier in breadmaking. Most nonsprouted flours utilized pre-ferments and cold fermentation to release the full flavor potential from the grain. But that’s not necessary with sprouted flour which is already preconditioned, with flavor being released during the sprouting process.

This is my first attempt using sprouted flour. (I’ve sprouted whole grains before, but have not milled them into flours.) For this pizza, flour from sprouted whole spelt, an ancient grain, is used. Refined white flour is nowhere to be found on the ingredient list. This is the most healthful and wholesome pizza I’ve ever made in my test kitchen.

Five pizza toppings were lined up in a row, ready to be assembled. Cubes of butternut squash, raw red onions, fresh sage leaves, crumbled gorgonzola cheese, and walnut pieces. A few changes were made to the toppings. I roasted the butternut squash lightly and caramelized the yellow onion for some of the pies. The below 10-minutes bake time for this dough won’t be sufficient for butternut squash or yellow onions to cook through. I roasted the walnuts as well and sprinkled them on top of the pizza before serving. Opening the searing hot oven door to drop a few walnuts on top, few minutes before the pizza is done, as written in Krieger’s recipe, is more trouble than is warranted.

It’s tricky to get all the topping ingredients and the dough done simultaneously and cooked evenly. That takes experimentation. Recipes are mere guidelines.

Dough recipes are of a different breed. They tend to be more precise. No fooling around! See the cheat sheet below for the pizza dough recipe. What surprised me about this dough was how quickly it doubled in size during the bulk rise, (due to high level of enzyme activity in sprouted flour). Dough was ready to be baked in a relatively short timeframe.

The baking stone needs to be preheated in the oven for over an hour. Reinhart’s sprouted wheat dough requires the highest temperature setting. I set the temperature at 500°F, not daring enough to crank it up any higher. The pie was finally ready to be loaded in the 500°F oven. Eight minutes later (and under watchful eyes), the pizza came out of the oven — with a rich tone and taste of fall. I’d like to see more char on the rim. May be by raising the oven temperature? Next time. The saltiness of the gorgonzola cheese pairs well with the earthy sweetness of butternut squash. By and large, home-made pizzas fit the bill for weeknight wonders, especially when made with a healthful all-wheat dough.

Topped with roasted squash, gorgonzola, sage and red onion, ready to be baked

 

Ready in 8 minutes in 500°F oven

 

Sprinkled some walnut pieces on top