You all remember, we had so much fun swapping cookies during the food blogger cookie swap last year(that was last year??! Humpph..). So, this new year my dear friend Roshni from The Vanilla Bean and I wanted to start something new on our blogs.

After exchanging multiple e-mails, Cook-Along sessions sounded like a brilliant idea to both of us! Yes, we stay in different cities so how exactly do we plan on doing this? Lemme explain. Every month we’ll select a theme and plan a lunch/dinner-dessert menu based on it. After selecting who cooks what cooking will happen in our respective kitchens and on 15th of every month we both will post the recipes and link them. This way you get to enjoy 2 recipes! Total win-win 🙂

Going with the season of new-year resolutions, this month’s theme was a no-brainer. ‘Light & Healthy’ it is! I chose to make lunch/dinner so Roshni chose to prepare a dessert. So get ready as it’s show-time! 🙂

I have a pizza dough recipe for you today. And trust me when I say this, you NEED this recipe in your life. I conquered my fear of working with yeast last year and made these amazing Strawberry Sweet Rolls. The next thing I on my list was making pizza dough using whole wheat flour. It had to be a thin-crust pizza as I love my pizza that way. I started looking for the recipes which did not use sugar and hit jackpot with this fool-proof recipe! I doubled the recipe and did little adjustments. The results were stellar!

You must be thinking why am I putting the pizza in a healthy and light category? When topped with fresh vegetables and minimal quantity of cheese or the toppings coated with low-fat cream cheese can definitely turn it into a more well-rounded and nutritious meal. This version is anytime lighter than the ordered stuff!

So wait no more and make the pizza your way at home! 🙂

Whole Wheat Thin Crust Pizza Dough

Makes: 2 12-inches or 4 6-inches crusts | Prep time: 15 minutes | Resting: 1-2 hours

Recipe adapted from sugarfreemom.com

Ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat flour, plus more for dusting
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tsp instant dry yeast (I’ve used Gloripan)
• 4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup warm water (around 55ºC/110ºF)
• 2 Tbsp honey

Directions:

1. Fit the dough hook attachment to your stand mixer. In the stand mixer bowl, combine flour and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.
2. In a separate small bowl mix oil, honey, warm water. Add yeast and stir gently with a spoon, tillyeast dissolves. Let it sit for about 7-8 minutes until you see some foam form from the yeast.
3. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until well combined at setting 2 for about 2-3 minutes.
4. Once combined change to your dough hook and keep setting at 2 and let the machine go for about 8 minutes or knead by hand for 10 minutes.
5. Remove your dough and place into a bowl greased with oil. Cover with a towel and let rise for at least one hour.
6. Once risen, knead by hand for a minute or so and spread dough by hand onto a baking sheet sprayed with oil and dusted with flour or use a rolling pin.
7. Add your choice of toppings and bake in a 400ºF/200ºC preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until crust is golden brown.