Typically, Sundays are for homework and recovering from Saturday night.  This Sunday, however, Lisa and I decided to try a new twist on an old favorite - Pizza!

We both read the Calgary Herald online, and found an article talking about using beans to boost the nutritional value of classic foods.  We both love pizza, so thought it would be fun to try the white bean pizza dough recipe.

However, I tend to modify recipes that I read online.  If you want the original recipe, please check the above link.  My modifications are below and built into the original text.

Pizza Dough

Pizza dough with pureed white beans contains about four times the fibre of the regular pizza dough (2 g of fibre vs. 0.5 g), says Julie Van Rosendaal (from the article).

1 can of rinsed and drained canned white beans (540-mL can)

1 tsp of Chipotle pepper flakes

2 cups (500 mL) water, divided

4 tsp (20 mL) active dry yeast (2 packages)

2 tsp (10 mL) sugar

4 cups flour, all-purpose

2 tsp (10 mL) salt

3 tsp Ms. Dash (or other all purpose spice mix)

4 tbsp (50 mL) olive or canola oil

Cornmeal

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Directions:

Puree the beans with about 100 mL of the water and the Chipotle pepper flakes until completely smooth.

In a large bowl, stir together the remaining warm water, yeast and sugar. The mixture should get foamy after a few minutes (if it doesn’t it means the water was too hot and killed the yeast, or you need fresh yeast. Try again, or buy fresh yeast).

Add the pureed beans to the yeast mixture, along with 2 cups (250 mL) of flour. Mix thoroughly, then add another cup of flour, the salt and the oil. Again, mix thoroughly. Continue to add four by half-cups, and as soon as the batter is thick enough to make a kneadable dough, turn it out onto a floured counter. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding spoonsful of flour if needed, until the dough has lost most of its stickiness.  When the dough has lost most of its stickiness, fold in the Ms. Dash (or other all purpose spice mix) until the distribution of flakes is closer to normal than random (hehe, stats joke).

Wash out the bowl, dry it and add a small splash of oil. Return the dough to the bowl, turning it to coat with oil; cover with plastic wrap or a clean, damp tea towel.

Let the dough rise in a warm spot (the oven, turned off but with the light on is ideal), until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Or, make the dough in the morning and let it rise, covered, in the refrigerator during the day.

When you’re ready to proceed, divide the dough into 2 to 3 sections. Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).

Roll the dough out into a rough circle, oval or rectangle as this as you like (it will rise again in the oven). Transfer to a baking sheet or pizza pan sprinkled with flour or cornmeal. Top with your favourite toppings and bake about 20 minutes, until golden.

You'll be able to get 3-4 large pizzas out of the above.

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The result?

We ended up topping our pizza with fresh tomatos, sauteed artichoke hearts, chili peppers, sauteed button mushrooms, and a skim milk mozzarella cheese.  Lisa made a mostly fresh pizza sauce.

Would we make this again?

Yes.  Definitely.

What would you do differently next time?

I thought it would be easier to use the hand blender, instead of the countertop mixer.  The dough ended up creeping up the hand blender paddles and got into the paddle slots.  That took a long time to clean up.  Also, with the dough creeping up the hand blender paddles, some dough escaped the mixing bowl.

I would also add the flour in half cups, rather than full cups, to reduce the stickiness of the dough during the main mixing.