For the Love of Pizza

I've never been much of a pizza fan. My husband will ask every once in awhile if we can order some and usually I scrunch up my nose and shake my head. It's just greasy, ass-expanding, heartburn-inducing junk. Right? Maybe not. Several weeks back I got the request for pizza and I sighed and said, "why don't try to make one?" DH was really surprised but totally on board, although we had no idea what to do. I found my bread machine recipe book and it had a basic pizza dough recipe, so we got started. 

I had some plain canned tomato sauce in the pantry and a tiny can of tomato paste and I used those to make a sauce. We just happened to have mozzarella cheese too. I was really intimidated but I can't tell you how EASY it is to make a pizza from scratch. And it's so tasty. Nothing like the delivery stuff that's dripping with oil or butter or whatever it is that they use to make us fat.

Anyway, now we make pizza once every week or two and I've come up with my own dough recipe. I'm working on a sauce recipe but for now, we're still using Hunt's Sauce and Hunt's Paste. Also hoping to work on a wheat crust.

It's easy, yummy, cheap and I love to have either a seafood or meatless dinner night at least once a week, so we just use veggies when we do pizza. I don't like thin crust pizza, so the recipe below is for a 12" regular crust. If you want a thin crust, you can divide the finished dough in two and make two 12" thin crust pizzas.

Homemade Pizza Crust Dough

Ingredients:

2/3 cup + 1 tablespoon water, 80 degrees

1 tsp active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon olive oil

2 1/4 cups bread flour

1½ tsp salt

1 tablespoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions:

• Combine yeast, warm water and sugar together in a large boil (preferably the bowl to a stand mixer). Set aside for 10 minutes for yeast to proof.
• In a separate bowl, combine and stir dry ingredients: flour, salt, basil, oregano and garlic powder.
• Once 10 minutes is up and yeast is foamy, add milk, olive oil and dry ingredients to yeast mixture. If you're using a stand mixer, install the dough hook and set the mixer to low, or the next setting up, for 15 minutes. If you're going by hand, knead the dough for at least 10 minutes, preferably 15. Once you're about 5 minutes into the kneading process, check dough - if there's still extra dry ingredients that haven't been mixed in, add a tablespoon of water.
• When you've finished kneading, cover the dough with a clean, warm, damp dish towel, and set it in a warm place. Allow dough to rise 30 minutes.
• Place dough on a lightly floured surface and press/stretch dough. It's tricky and doesn't have to be perfect. Keep turning as you stretch - you may find it easier to hold the dough on one side and allow gravity to stretch, while turning the dough. I let mine stretch just a little bigger than I need, as it tends to shrink back down when I put it in the pan.
• Press dough into 12" pizza pan (we just made it into a pizza shape in the middle of a cookie sheet the first time we made one and it turned out fine). I really like to sprinkle a tablespoon of corn meal onto the pan before laying down the dough. Now you're ready for sauce!

Bread Machine Instructions:

• To your bread pan, add in this order: water, milk, oil, salt, flour, spices, sugar and yeast. Yeast should be on top, not touching any liquids.
• Set your bread machine to pizza dough setting. If pizza dough isn't available, use the dough setting, 1 pound. Most likely the rise time on a dough setting is 1 hour. You only need about 20 minutes for this pizza dough though.
• Place dough on a lightly floured surface and press/stretch dough. It's tricky and doesn't have to be perfect. Keep turning as you stretch - you may find it easier to hold the dough on one side and allow gravity to stretch, while turning the dough. I let mine stretch just a little bigger than I need, as it tends to shrink back down when I put it in the pan.
• Press dough into 12" pizza pan (we just made it into a pizza shape in the middle of a cookie sheet the first time we made one and it turned out fine). I really like to sprinkle a tablespoon of corn meal onto the pan before laying down the dough. Now you're ready for sauce!

Sauce

Ingredients:

1 can tomato sauce, 8 oz (whatever variety you prefer)

1 can tomato paste, 6 oz

Optional: 1 teaspoon minced garlic, 1 teaspoon dried basil

Instructions:

• Combine ingredients in a small saucepan, over medium/low heat, until just heated through. 

Homemade Pizza

Ingredients:
pizza crust dough in prepared pan
sauce
8 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
toppings of your choice


Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees (do it!)

• Spread sauce over pizza. We usually use about 2/3 of the sauce on the pizza and have some leftover for dipping crust. How much sauce you use is all about preference.
• Sprinkle cheese over pizza.
• Add your toppings
• Bake in preheated over for 20 minutes

We went with onion, tomato and basil on all and red bell pepper from our basket on half. Actually, the tomato and onion were from our basket as well. It was super delish! 

I forgot to take a picture after it was done in the oven. 
Here's how it looked before going in: 

 

Serves 4-8. Weight Watchers Points = 14/ea for 4 servings, 7/ea for 8 servings.