Guess I’ll just post this under “Breads” because I don’t have a junk food category. There are quite a few ways to make pizza, all of them with good results. I’ll start with my dough recipe which is:
2/3 cup water (about 105 degrees)
1.5 tsp sugar
2 tsp yeast
3/4 tsp salt
2 c flour (bread flour if I have it)
1.5 Tbsp olive oil
Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water and let it about 10 minutes while you get the rest ready. You can mix it by hand, but I get out my food processor and put in the flour. Then I stir the salt into the yeast water, turn on the food processor, and pour the liquid in, followed by the olive oil. Let it run for a minute until a ball forms.
Remove the dough, place in a bowl coated with cooking spray or olive oil, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for two hours. OR, you could put the dough in a zip lock bag coated with cooking spray, and place it in the fridge for a day, or two, or three…until you’re ready to make pizza. It’s a good thing to prep on the weekend when you have time, for an easy weeknight dinner.
I usually start my dough around 2:00 to have it ready for dinner. After a couple of hours rising, I turn the dough out onto a plastic sheet I have for rolling out dough, and roll it out. It doesn’t stick to the sheet or my silicone rolling pin, but you may have to use a floured board.
Then I coat my pizza pan with cooking spray (or olive oil) and dust it with corn meal. Give the top of your dough a good coating of olive oil, and you can fold it over a few times (roll it up) so you can transfer it to your baking pan. Unroll your dough, then sort of pat and stretch it out a little to the desired thickness as it shrinks up a little when you transfer it.
This dough recipe will make one fairly large pizza, which with serve two porkers or three people with average appetites.
So that’s the dough recipe. Now, how to cook it. I have a big aluminum pizza pan with tiny holes in the bottom. I like to transfer my crust to the pan, poke some holes in it to keep it from puffing up, then bake at 450 degrees for 8 minutes. Then I pull it out, put on my toppings, then back in the oven for 15-18 minutes. I usually find 17 minutes is the sweet spot.
Or, you can put your dough on an inverted cookie sheet coated with olive oil. Take it outside to the grill and quickly flip it over onto the hot grill. Grill on medium low 5 minutes or until done on the bottom, then brush the top with olive oil and flip it over to finish cooking. If your grill is pretty low, you might be able to flip the dough over, put on your toppings, cover and let it finish cooling. I find it’s best to cook the dough, put on the toppings, then finish in the oven on the top rack.
Or, our kids like to cook on a pizza stone. They turn the oven on as high as it will go, put in their pizza stone on a rack set at the top of the oven, and let the stone get hot. Then they pull out the hot stone and put on the dough. The bottom starts cooking on the hot stone while they put on their toppings. Then they put it back in the oven to cook the top.
So there are three ways to cook; pick your poison. Choose your toppings. If you want to know my favorite toppings…
1/2 of a 16 oz jar of pizza sauce ( I use half of the jar, freeze the rest for the next pizza night)
1/2 lb sweet Italian sausage (I cook one pound, use half and freeze the rest for the next pizza night)
3.5 oz sliced salami (half of a 7 oz pack, using half and freezing the rest)
1/2 can large can olives, sliced (again, freeze the rest of the can)
8 oz Mozzarella cheese (I buy a 16 oz ball, use half and freeze the rest)
(OK, that’s a lot of sausage and the dog is hanging around in the kitchen, so a little goes on top of his food. I get extra snuggles for that.)
That’s it. That’s all I got. Good luck.