Thursday, October 30, 2008

Homemade Pizza

This isn't the prettiest pizza out there, but I am working on that...



Jeremy and I love Papa John's pizza, but we don't love the expense. A blog that I love is called Biblical Womanhood. She doesn't normally post recipes, but this pizza crust recipe was under a family night theme. Since her blog is down right now, I can't link to it, but I will post the recipe below.



I made my first homemade pizza a couple of months ago, and it was half pepperoni and half ham and pineapple. I wasn't thrilled with the result. The crust was too soft for me. I decided that I wanted to get a pizza pan to see if that made a difference, and I bought one on sale at Kohl's. Our favorite kind of pizza is a chicken barbecue pizza with pineapple on it, so that was my next attempt at pizza with my new pan. This time when the crust wasn't crispy when it was time to take it out, I decided to leave it in longer- I cooked it 18-20 minutes. That was all it took; we will use this pizza crust recipe forever because it's that good.



Don't be scared of making homemade pizza. It only takes 30-35 minutes from the time you start the crust to the time the pizza comes out of the oven (unless you have a toddler wanting your attention). Enjoy! Maybe you will start a new tradition of pizza night in your house.



Pizza Crust:

1 Tbsp. active dry yeast

1 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F.)

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

2 1/2 cups flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the rest of the ingredients in and mix.

Dump onto a floured surface .

Knead into a smooth dough (five minutes or so).

Roll out and press down onto a greased pizza pan.

Add toppings.

Bake at 450 degrees F. for around 12-15 minutes until the crust looks crispy and lightly browned.



By the way, you can make up a double or triple batch of the pizza crust dough and freeze the extras if you don't need it. This speeds up the preparation even more as all you have to do is pull out a bag of dough and a bag of chopped cooked chicken in the morning and then put the pizza together right before you're ready to eat. You can also freeze the pizzas already cooked - but I doubt it would ever stay uneaten long enough to make it to the freezer around here!



2 comments:

  1. I'm afraid of yeast!! I've never used it in anything that actually turned out, so I quit trying. Your pizza looks delicious though.

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  2. Mmmm! We love homemade pizza! I have several extra Pull Ups $1.50 coupons. Are you interested? They expire 11/30/08

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