Make Ahead Pizza Dough and Pizza Pockets

Even though I had a decent pizza dough recipe, I still wanted one that I could make ahead and freeze to have available for crazy nights. The following recipe is based on this one from Once a Month Mom. This is a great blog with the mindset of spending a day or two baking and freezing and then eating those meals the rest of the month. I apologize for not having any pictures of pizza, but I did make the dough into pizza pockets and have a few pics (Thanks, Rachel, for the idea!). I have also made into breadsticks and just brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with garlic powder and salt before baking, and they turned out well! We also joke about making Bosco sticks, breadsticks with mozzarella cheese in them, but haven't tried it yet. This is really a VERY easy yeast dough recipe that anyone can do! Each batch will make 2 cookie sheet sized pizzas, and the recipe can easily be doubled so you have more to freeze! Just make sure you have a large enough bowl as the dough rises a lot. I have a very large metal bowl that is so big I don't use frequently but it works great for this recipe.

Ingredients:

2.75 cups water (I use my hottest tap water)

1 pack active yeast

1 Tablespoons salt

1 Tablespoon sucanat

¼ cup olive oil

6.5 cups unbleached organic all purpose flour, bread flour, or sprouted flour  

Directions:

1) Mix the yeast, salt, sugar and olive oil with the water in a large bowl and let sit for about 5 minutes until foamy. Preheat oven to 200 degrees and then turn off.

2) Mix in the flour without kneading, using a wooden spoon.

3) Cover with damp towel and place in (warmed but turned off) oven for at least 2 hours.

4) Use for a pizza immediately. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray pizza pan or foil and spread dough to desired shape. There is no need to knead this dough :) Bake the crust along for 5-10 minutes, this is a good time to prep your toppings (I usually go w/ sauce, onion/garlic powder, mozzarella/parmesan cheeses, green pepper, purple onion, mushroom, parsley and oregano.). Add topping and bake another 10-20 minutes until golden brown crust and bubbly cheese (the baking time will vary depending on the thickness of crust and toppings).

OR

Place in refrigerator and let sit for at least four hours before storing. (I actually had mine sit in the fridge for a few days before freezing or baking, and it was still great!) Divide each batch in half, wrap in plastic wrap and then place in ziploc in freezer. To defrost, place in fridge for 24 hours before making (although if you forget, it can sit out for a few hours without any ramifications).

Here's the pizza pockets (as you can see they oozed a little, but tasted great!):