For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to perfect my home made pizza dough. So this week you get a pizza pie instead of a standard pie, but it is still a pie. I did do this the “right way,” not ordering takeout. THAT would be a cop-out.
For pizza dough, I’m using this recipe from Formerchef.com.
Cooking your own fast food: pizza
Since the link is handy, I’m not going to reproduce the recipe, which is the bottom half of that post. But I do have pictures for you…
Adding yeast to water, along with some sugar, salt, and oil, as in the recipe. I’m using “fast-rising” yeast. As you might predict, it makes the pizza dough ready in half the time: about thirty minutes! That’s not bad.
Add flour…
Then add elbow grease.
Dough before rise…
Cover it up…
… and Magic!
It may seem silly, considering all the baking I do, but before this I was kind of nervous to work with “yeast” and “rising.” But 30 minutes doesn’t seem like much of a commitment and the results are pretty neat.
While the dough is rising, work on the toppings. I’m not much for olives and didn’t have any sausage handy. Here’s some sautéed mushrooms, along with 3 cloves of garlic and half a large onion.
To the left is my very battered pizza stone, ready to receive.
When the dough is risen, flatten it out on to a disk and make a circular shape by stretching it. I’m not quite brave enough to toss it in to the air.
Now start layering toppings. Here I start with tomato sauce.
Then the veggies.
In to this, I also added a little pre-mixed “pizza seasoning” (it came with my spice rack), and some crushed red pepper flakes. Then, a layer of pepperonis.
And about 2 cups of mozzarella cheese to finish it off.
Now bake:
Then eat!
The last lonely slice.
Sorry for some of the crummy color in this photo session. Baking pizza is more of a night time activity.
