My mom gave me this pizza recipe when I was home for Christmas. She also told me how exactly to use that pizza stone we got for a wedding gift, thank goodness.
Homemade pizza can be just as good as delivery - better, in some cases! (I'm looking at you, Dominos.)
Ingredients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tbsp. instant yeast
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 3/4 cup lukewarm water
- 1 tbsp. oil, plus some for the pizza stone
- corn meal
- 3/4 cup tomato sauce
- 1/2 tsp. sweet basil
- 2 cups grated mozzarella
- toppings!
Put 1 cup of flour, the yeast, salt, sugar and water in a large bowl. Beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add the last cup of flour and work in with your hands until it forms a ball. Let rest for 15 minutes.
Oil the pizza stone, and sprinkle some corn meal on it (this helps keep it from sticking).
Form dough into a pizza with your hands (though I also use a rolling pin the second time I tried this, and was much more successful that way). If the dough is too thick, your pizza will taste really flour-y, so try to spread it out as much as possible. I roll the edges to make a crust, and it's pretty helpful at keeping everything on the pizza, especially if you've got a lot of toppings.
Spread the oil over the dough (this keeps it from getting soggy from the toppings, and makes the crust a bit firmer and easier to hold). You might not need a full tablespoon, so try only half at first and see how far it goes. Cover with tomato sauce and sprinkle on the basil (alternatively, just buy pizza sauce in a can - we still add a bit of basil even with pizza sauce). We found that 3/4 cup is too much for us, so just add it slowly till the amount is to your liking.
Sprinkle a little bit of cheese on the tomato sauce; this will help anchor the toppings. (I learned this when I worked as a delivery girl. Thank you, Granny's Pizza!) Put the toppings on and cover with the rest of the cheese!
Cook at 475oF for 12 minutes (our oven runs hot, so we cook about 25o lower. It also cooks unevenly so we rotate the pizza stone after 9 minutes. It takes some experimenting to find the right method for your oven!).
Toppings: it's really up to you - everyone has their favorites! We really like pepperoni, ham, green pepper and pineapple ("Spicy Hawaiian"). We found that about 75-100g of each type meat is about right for one pizza, though we'd probably use more if it was only one type. We also had a ridiculously tasty venison pepperoni pizza at my parents' house when we were home for Christmas.
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Last modified: Fri Jul 1 15:29:11 PDT 2005