Who doesn't like pizza? We are huge National's fans - and I get very sick of all the Papa John's pizza we order during the season. You get deals from Papa John's when the National's win by more than 7 runs. So it is very nice to make my own pizza in the off season! The bonus is that the whole family likes it too. Of course I have to make different sections with different toppings for everybody - but it works out!
This whole process is very easy because I make the dough in a bread maker. Ta da! I do not spend an entire day making pizza dough. So if you don't have a bread maker, you can get already made dough at Trader Joe's and maybe Whole Foods. The sauce is simply canned crushed tomatoes with salt, pepper, sugar and olive oil. If you want, you can smash some garlic too. Then you add cheese and toppings of your choice.
Make the sauce and let it sit for about a half an hour. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Once the dough is out of the bread maker or has warmed up to room temp, you have to get it into the right shape - but slowly! It will rip if you rush it - so using your fingers slowly flatten the dough and push it out to make it larger and larger. Use lots of flour and your hands flattened.
I use a pizza stone from Pampered Chief from about 97 years ago. The stone is rectangular - that's why the pizza is that shape rather than circular. Place stone in 500 degree oven for 30 minutes before you start pizza. The stone needs to be really hot to cook pizza.
Make sauce and roll out dough while stone is heating up. Have corn flour ready to scatter on stone so that the dough won't stick. Then place dough on stone, add about 1 tbsp of olive oil and rub all over, then put on as much sauce as you like and bake at 500 for 7 minutes. Then pull out and add shredded mozzarella cheese with a little Parmesan too. Add whatever toppings you like - we have pepperoni and black olive and then bake again for 7 minutes. Pull out and let cool and few minutes then slice it up and eat!
Labels: yum
