Wine Pizza Dough Recipe

It’s no secret that I love pizza. When visiting Italy I literally put on about 10kgs as I just couldn’t resist. You can find out where those 10kgs found me in my post The Epic Italian Pizza Adventure through Rome & Napoli.

I also love to cook my own pizza, as after my trip to Italy my pizza expectations have sky-rocketed to perfectionist levels. I’m no pizza pro but I have to admit my home-made pizza is not too shabby!

So I thought why not take my pizza making to the next level and instead of just drinking wine with it, why not put wine IN the pizza!

I came across this fab recipe by one of New York’s top Chefs Mario Batali for pizza dough with wine in. I played around with the recipe a bit but I found good old Mario’s to be the tastiest.

My other attempts included:
1. Replacing the water with wine, even though I heated it up the dough didn’t rise. As I found out the water component in Pizza is very important and the quality of the water added can make a huge difference! The dough was a gorgeous colour as I used red wine but it was a bit of a fail

2. I used red wine in the dough instead of white and also basted the base with the red wine prior to putting the tomato paste on. This one was pretty good and you could actually taste it was a winey recipe. I would make this again for wine lovers for sure.

But the ultimate pizza dough with wine recipe had to be Mario’s below. Although in a blind tasting I doubt you’d pick that there was wine in the dough. It was still delicious though! Ingredients:
Makes 2 standard size pizzas (or a handful of mini pizzas!)
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar or honey
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup dry white wine, at room temperature (find out what’s the best dry white wines for cooking here)
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil Method:
1. Combine the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Mix well.
2. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the warm water, wine, and olive oil.
3. Using a wooden spoon, mix the ingredients until it comes together to form a dough.
4. Lightly dust the bench with flour and turn the dough out.
5. Knead gently, dusting with more flour as necessary, for 5 minutes until the dough is smooth, elastic, and only slightly sticky.
6. Oil a large clean bowl, add the dough, and turn to coat. Cover the bowl with glad-wrap or a tea-towel and set in a warm part of the house free from draught. Let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
7. Punch down the dough, and it is ready to roll out and add your favourite toppings!
8. Bake at about 200 degrees Celsius for 10-12 minutes. Ovens can differ greatly so just kept an eye on it during cooking.
9. Serve with a bottle of wine and enjoy!
Buon appetito!