We have had a Friday night tradition for the past twelve years. We have "Friday Night, Pizza Night, Movie Night, Treat Night." We used to live walking distance from Papa Murphy's and would walk over with the double stroller pick up a few pizzas and head on home.
When we moved to Alamosa there were three pizza choices in town: Domino's-Cheap but not that tasty, Pizza Hut-Decent but expensive, and Pizza Den-Also Decent but extra expensive. This is when I really fine-tuned my homemade pizza recipe.
The ingredients are simple:
1 1/2 c. hot water (not boiling, but hot enough to activate the yeast)1 T. yeast (I buy it in bulk)
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
4 c. flour
(oil to coat dough while it rises)
Start with the water, yeast, sugar and salt. It pour the sugar over the yeast to help activate it faster:
This is how the yeast should look once it is fully activated:
Then, pour in the flour and knead it at a medium speed for 5-10 minutes. The longer you knead it, the better the crust will taste. If you have the time, feel free to do this by hand, but I am a big fan of time-saving appliances!
This is what it will look like at first:
You can tell it's done when you have a nice stiff dough:
Coat it lightly with oil and let it rise in a nice warm place. I always turn my oven on warm while the dough is kneading, and then turn it off before I put the dough in the oven. I have had too many bad experiences ruining pizza dough by putting it in without turning it off. If the oven is too hot, it will kill the yeast.Let it rise till it's double the size:
Little children LOVE to help with the next step. You can choose if you want to make a thick crust or thin. I usually make 3 pizzas from this recipe, but today I doubled it and made 4 thick crust pizzas.
The trick to rolling out the pizza dough and keeping it round is to roll once, turn the rolling pin 60 degrees, roll again and keep doing that all the way around.Lightly flour the counter, so it doesn't stick, but this is a stiff dough and doesn't need much extra flour. I also have a pastry cloth on my rolling pin, that makes it much easier to roll out.Lay it across the pan (I prefer to use pizza stones) and it looks really pretty and tastes better if you roll up the edges.
Once you have the dough ready, you can start putting on the toppings:
The sauce is pretty easy to make.
1 small can of tomato sauce
seasoning salt
garlic powder
oregano
basil
Microwave for 1 minute:
You can make more if you like thick sauce. We like it thin, so one can is enough for us. (Don't you like the smiley face spoon?)
Now comes the cheese. Parmigiana comes first:
Then Mozzerella:
Now you can put on whatever toppings you want. My new favorite combo is pepperoni, and chilis. Sprinkle some Cheddar over the top and pop it into a 450 degree pre-heated oven.
Bake it for 12 minutes. You may have to adjust the length of time depending on your oven.
Now it's time to cut:
And devour!
