June 25 (and about 10 times since then, so it's sort of current): Homemade Pizza

We love pizza. It's true. I think Paul and I could eat a different type of pizza every night of the week. We started making our own at home a while back, using pre-made pizza bread from the grocery store. After delving into our fave cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, we started making our own dough. It is SUPER easy to make, as long as you have instant yeast lying around (which we now do all the time for this purpose).

We make the dough in the food processor, but you can also make it by hand or in your stand mixer. Combine 3 cups of flour, the yeast (I use the whole package of instant yeast -- it's a little more than 2 teaspoons, but whatever) and salt (I use about a teaspoon -- half of what Bittman suggests) in the food processor.

Adding the water. Action shot!

Turn on the machine, and add in 1 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Process for about 30 more seconds, adding additional water 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough becomes a sticky ball. You'll know it's ready because it starts lurching around your food processor. 

Take the dough out of the food processor, and knead it just a few times on a floured surface. Put the dough in a bowl, adding the last tablespoon of olive oil to coat the dough. 

Resting comfortably, waiting for it's moment in the spotlight.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it rise for 1 - 2 hours. (Note: You definitely don't have to wait that long -- our hunger has gotten the best of us, and we've let it rise for only 30 minutes and it's been fine.)


After the dough has rested, separate it into two balls of dough. Sprinkle with a little flour, and cover with a towel or plastic wrap. Let those rest for about 20 minutes.


We preheated the oven at this point -- they suggest 500 degrees or higher. We found that 500 degrees was best, especially when you have sensitive smoke detectors to contend with. After frantic running around (a necessary step for solving any loud, beeping problem), this issue is solved by either opening a window when it's cool out, or turning on the overhead fan on the stove ahead of time. Fair warning, people.

While the dough was doing it's thang -- we started prepping the other ingredients. We decided to do a simple margherita pizza, with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella di bufala.

I thought about the mandoline slicer for this, but thought the tomatoes and cheese would get smushed.

We use a baking sheet to cook the pizza dough, so they suggest oiling the sheet (we used a little more olive oil) and actually spreading out the dough on the sheet rather than rolling it out on a floured surface and trying to transfer it. 

Sprinkle the dough with a little more salt and olive oil and start adding your toppings. We started with some store bought pizza sauce, but you could certainly use your own (or do our other fave - a white pizza! See the bottom of the page for that).

Paul hard at work.

Here is the pizza, topped with sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, some grated mozzarella cheese underneath and larger pieces of mozzarella di bufala on top. 
 

Slightly misshapen, but still looking good!

Into the oven she goes, cooking for about 10 minutes. I started checking it around 8 minutes just to be sure we weren't burning the crust. 

To confirm that it was done, we checked underneath to be sure it is nice and browned. Dunzo. LET'S EAT.

And for the big reveal...

Delicious!

The pizza turned out awesome. The crust is crispy, but not overdone. The dough has a unique taste to it, that reminds Paul a little of Gino's East crust with it's cornmeal-ey flavor. It's simple to make, and there are so many different toppings you can use. 

We've since made pizza several times, with a variety of toppings. Sometimes we scrap together what we have in the house and it ends up being pretty good (better than some sort of frozen meal -- that's for sure). Some ideas for your homemade pizza adventures:

• The aforementioned white pizza: thinly sliced red potatoes (using the mandoline is best, in my opinion), fresh or dried rosemary and mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. IT IS SO GOOD. Try it. Try it now. 
• Red onion, tomato and basil -- topped with Romano (we didn't have mozzarella in house). Definitely a more tangy cheese, but quite good. You don't need as much cheese because of the strong flavor, but it was tasty.
• Paul has made pepperoni, red onion and cheese pizza with this dough, and absolutely loved it. He used a pepperoni sausage (versus buying pre-sliced pepperoni or those pepperoni slices in a bag) and sliced it himself. He said it was really good -- not the greasy stuff you typically think of when you eat pepperoni pizza.

Happy pizza making!