William Howard

Our Mamma Nonna has been making bread and pizza dough since she was a young woman.  This was in the mid part of the twentieth century, in a small town in the mountains of Italy.  Bread making was done by hand and even the convenience of buying flour was not common.  Your first step to making bread was to take grain to the miller to have it ground into flour, and there was only one type of flour. It was whole wheat.

Today, at the start of the twenty-first century, well into her eighties, Mamma Nonna is still making bread, almost daily, as she did when she was a young woman.  Her homemade bread or pizza dough is still made by hand.  Except now, there are no millers to grind the grain.  Even though she can buy whole wheat flour she prefers enriched white flour.  She scoffs at whole wheat flour because that was the flour that poor people ate.  Despite her disdain for whole wheat flour, she is generous enough to make us whole wheat pizza dough on a regular basis because we prefer whole wheat.

Our Whole Wheat Pizza Crust recipe is based on her traditional methods.  The photograph shown at the side is the raw dough.  We forced olive slices into it and added oregano and basil flakes to the dough and let it rise in preparation for our toppings.  Once you have mastered the basic pizza crust, you can make your own delicious and creative pizzas.