49 CommentsShare: |
Subscribe
I love pizza! But first of all, there is no pizza delivery in the country. There’s takeout pizza at the little store in town, but with three hungry children (two of them being teenage boys), that can get pretty expensive. And seeing as how it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the little store in town, and another 20 minutes to get back, I might as well make it at home.
Homemade pizza is actually a great busy-day dinner. You can shortcut the sauce, either with some Basic Italian-Style Tomato Sauce you might have onhand, or with a jar of storebought sauce. Shortcut the cheese by keeping some pre-shredded mozzarella onhand, too. All it takes after that is slicing up your toppings. The pizza bread itself? That’s the last place you should cut corners because it’s the very foundation of your pizza. Great pizza bread makes great pizza. And you can make great pizza bread in one hour, from starting the dough to sliding the prepared pizza into the oven with this easy pizza dough based on the one-loaf recipe for my 
Printer-Friendly
How to Make Pizza Dough:
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
3 1/2 to 4 cups flour
In a large bowl, combine water with yeast, salt, sugar and olive oil. Let sit for five minutes before beginning to add the flour.
Stir in flour until the dough is stiff enough to knead. Add flour a little at a time. The amount of flour is approximate; exact amount may vary slightly. Knead dough until smooth and elastic–-just a few minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl; cover. Let rise until doubled. (Using rapid-rise yeast, unless your house is very cold, the rise time should be approximately 30 minutes.)
After dough has risen, roll out directly onto a greased pizza pan, sprinkling flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking.
I like to use a small plastic cup to roll out pizza dough instead of a rolling pin because the smaller size is easier to manage with the raised edges of a pizza pan.
Before adding any sauce and toppings, bake pizza bread at 400-degrees for about 8 minutes. Take out pizza bread. Add sauce and toppings as desired. Put completed pizza back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. If I’m baking two at a time, halfway into the baking time I switch the pizzas on the oven racks.
For dessert pizza, use melted butter and a mix of sugar and cinnamon, or add fruit!
Another of my favorite ways to fix pizza is to skip the sauce entirely. I sprinkle olive oil on top of the prepared, pre-baked pizza bread (in place of sauce) then add my toppings. I like to use Swiss cheese, crumbled bacon, and onions and/or peppers. Yum! How about you? What’s your favorite pizza?
See this recipe at Farm Bell Recipes and save it to your recipe box.
See All My Recipes
Printer-Friendly
