Homemade Pizza

We love pizza at my house and there are few things more fun to make at home than pizza. This is a basic and super easy way to make a customized pizza. 

I love to use these pans to bake the pizza on. The holes allows the crusts to cook evenly and you won't have a soggy crust. You can find them anywhere and I bought mine from Wal-Mart a long time ago and they couldn't have been more than $5 each. 

Ingredients for pizza dough:

1 1/2 c warm water

1 tsp. of dry yeast

4 cups of all purpose flour

1 tsp of kosher salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 c. of olive oil

Sprinkle sugar and yeast over the top of the warm water and let bloom while you get the flour ready. 

 Add the salt to the flour in the mixer and mix for just a few turns using a dough hook. Stir the yeast mixture then slowly add the olive oil and yeast mixture to flour until it begins to come together. 

Once it is all nicely mixed and forms a ball add the ball to an a bowl with a little olive oil in the bottom. Coat the ball in the oil and place a tea towel over the bowl and let rise for at least 2 hours. 

Once it has almost doubled divide it in half and gently stretch the dough with your fingers to desired thickness. 

Add your favorite pizza sauce. We like lots of sauce.

We like ground beef as one of our toppings and I always add fennel seed that I coarsely grind with my mortar and pestle with a tsp of kosher salt. I also add garlic and pepper to the beef as it browns. Then I drain the beef thoroughly so that it doesn't make the dough soggy.

I also go to the deli counter and get them to slice 8 pieces of Canadian bacon as thin as they can, yes 8 slices is the precise number of slices that you will need! Onions, mushrooms, and olives are also a must for our grown up pizza. The kids get beef and mushrooms. I am also very generous with the mozzarella. I use one large bag for each pizza. It's about 3 cups of cheese for each pizza. 

Bake these at 400* for about 7 minutes then switch them around and cook for another 5 minutes our so or until the cheese is completely melted and turning brown. Switching them around will allow both pizzas to brown evenly on the bottom.  

Voila! Cheesey goodness!

Enjoy!

Monlat