No Yeast? Make Pizza Crust with Beer!

I found this recipe for pizza crust that uses beer instead of yeast and was intrigued.  I know you can make a quick beer bread this way, but figured pizza was a little different. I'm up for trying it!

Inspiration

The Healthy Everythingtarian four-ingredient pizza dough

You can make this dairy-free by skipping the cheese or using a vegan cheese.  You can make it vegetarian or vegan by your choice of toppings.

Ingredients

• 3 c. flour (I used a combo of 2c. bread flour and 1c. whole wheat because I ran out of bread flour)
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• pinch of salt
• sprinkle of herbs
• 12 fl oz. beer

Instructions

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix all of your dry ingredients and slowly add the beer.  Once you've mixed it a decent amount with a spoon, you'll want to take off any rings or your watch and get your hands in there to finish combining the ingredients.

Dry ingredients plus beer.  I used Capital Lake House, a local brew from Madison.

Add about 1/4 cup of flour on the counter and kneed the dough until it comes together smoothly. 

You can then roll out the dough or pat it into a pan.

Patted the dough into my 13x18 half-sheet pan

Bake the crust for 10 minutes without any toppings to ensure it's not soggy later.

Then remove the crust from the oven and add your sauce and toppings.  For the sauce we used part of a jar of marinara.  Husband Jeff hates when I use spaghetti sauce instead of pizza sauce on our homemade pizzas, he says there's a big difference but I disagree and also hate to waste an open jar!  For toppings we used seasoned ground beef, green olives, and black olives.

Only a little shrinkage after the par-bake. Time to add toppings!

After adding your toppings, put it back in the oven for 15-20 minutes to finish cooking. 

 This is my slice, I added mushrooms!

Verdict 

I really liked how it was quicker than a standard yeast dough.  There's no way I could have made a homemade yeast pizza crust on a weeknight without lots of complaining from the family. 

There was a subtle beer flavor but it wasn't too strong, which is good because I don't really care for beer.  It really complements the flavors on the pizza.

The only drawback was I felt the crust was way too thick, close to 1/2 inch or more.  Next time I would only make half of the recipe but make it in the same pan for a thinner crust.

This doesn't make a chewy crust, it's more like a soft bread, but that's what happens when you don't use yeast and you're skipping the rising steps, so there's no gluten developed.