— Larry Shearer

I like pizza, and, uh, we eat a fair amount of it at home. So let me share with you a couple of thoughts and my experience as I approach pizza at home. And this is something that you can do too. Uh, so first of all, in terms of, of a favorite recipe, that's whole wheat. Um, you know, just offhand, no. Um, you know, I would say that if you have a favorite, uh, crust recipe that's based on, you know, the, the typical, uh, white flour, go ahead and start with that. And, um, start to swap out the, uh, the whole wheat flour, you know, in the place of the white flour. And depending on what you're after, you know, you can try a couple of different stages. Maybe you'd, you'd do a 50 50 version, uh, as you make adjustments, or maybe you wanna just jump on into a 100% whole wheat version of the pizza crust. Um, to begin with, let me also say that, uh, I'm gonna, uh, uh, at, at least in my, in my mind, I'm thinking that it's gonna be whole wheat and, uh, not some other, let's say non-gluten whole grain. Okay? Um, so your substitution should be fairly easy. The one thing that you'll need to adjust is the water. Okay? So the brand in whole grains is thirsty, and it wants to, to consume more water. So that's the adjustment that you're gonna have to make for any recipe that you convert yourself. And it, it may take, uh, you know, a couple three, uh, go rounds, right, in terms of some kitchen testing to get it to the point where you like the hydration. But that's, that's the main thing. This is true of other breads as well. Uh, if you start to add whole wheat, then you need to increase the moisture because the bran wants to drink more, okay? And, uh, you know, otherwise, whole wheat flour has plenty of gluten. It's, uh, a generally high gluten flour. Now, the other difference is that all the brand pieces, you know, in the, in the grind, they have little sharp edges and they will cut the strands of gluten. So, uh, there's a, a little bit of trade off here, or, or it's just something to keep in mind, and that is that you wanna just, uh, try to develop that gluten, um, you know, sufficiently, you know, keeping in mind that, uh, the, the degree of bubbliness, depending on the style of pizza you make, might be a little bit less possibly, you know, with a hundred percent, uh, whole wheat crust because of the way that the brand acts within that mixture of the dough.