Pizza Night

We were feeling a little cash poor this last weekend (saving up for an upcoming family vacation) and I hadn't been to the grocery store in a while. We love to have pizza as a family, especially on the weekends...so we made pizza! We had enough resources in our pantry and growing in our garden to have quite a feast! We had local grown red onion that we got from the farm we visited this week, we had basil growing in our garden, and plenty of tomatoes to make 100 pizzas.

I've slowly been sneaking more and more wheat flour into my home baked goods and this night was no exception. I made the usual pizza dough, but with half wheat flour. My kids didn't even skip a beat when they were chowing it down.

Pizza Dough

In a bread mixer combine 1 1/4c. water, 3T oil, and 1t. salt.

Add 3 1/2 cups flour. Make a well in the mountain of flour.

Pour 1 T. Instant Yeast into the well and cover with flour. Mix all the ingredients together. It will knead into a ball, let knead for a few minutes. Oil the ball, place in a bowl, and cover it (towel or plastic wrap) letting it rise for at least 1 hour. Pre-heat the oven to 450 (pizza stone should pre-heat inside the oven as well).

This is my pizza making station. I have all my toppings already chopped on the pan in the upper right to make preparation much easier. I also have my pizza sauce from our garden tomatoes, grilled chicken breast, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (why make your own when there's is truly divine?), my dough mat and rolling pin, and my zero edge pan covered in corn meal.

You can put just about anything you want on a pizza (I've even had pasta and broccoli pizza- yum), but tonight we had garlic tomato, chicken, and cheese pizza, pizza margarita (tomato slices, mozzarella, basil), and BBQ chicken pizza (BBQ sauce, chicken, red onion, cilantro, cheese). Another favorite is BLT pizza- mayo, bacon, cheese, fresh lettuce and tomato (not the healthiest of pizzas, I admit, but very tasty)

After you roll out your dough, transfer it to the corn meal covered pan. Shake the pan to make sure the dough is not sticking. Add your ingredients, shaking the pan after each ingredient is added. As long as your ingredients aren't too heavy or too watery, your pizza should slip nice and easy onto your pizza stone in the oven.

This should make 3 10 inch crusts. So while one is in the oven you can start preparing the next one. After 10 minutes or so, your crust should be crispy and your cheese should have a little brown color on the top. Pizza anyone?