Joel and I ventured into making our own pizza tonight. We wanted to go and grab some pizza but we did have some yeast and flour and cheese and tomatoes so we made it ourselves. Can i say that it turned out AWESOME! The crust was perfectly golden and crispy on the bottom and just soft enough in the center, with a mound of hot melty mixture of mozzarella and parmesan on top with a sprinkle of italian seasonings.
This is the gist of what we did...
used a basic pizza crust recipe of the WWW ...flour, olive oil, yeast, sugar, and salt. We ended up needing a little more flour than our recipe called for but that can be eyeballed for consistency.
We 'cheated' with a jar of pasta sauce...Classico Roasted Garlic. I put it into a pot and pureed it and added some italian seasonings and 1 clove of fresh garlic. Let that simmer for about 45 mins.
Once the dough rises once we slapped it onto a piece of parchment paper, and once it was spread thin flipped it onto a flat platter that was coated with cornmeal. This allowed us to easily slide it onto our pre-heated pizza stone. Coat the dough with your preferred amount of sauce, then apply any toppings you'd like! We just kept it simple with mozzarella cheese and some slices of parmesan. After that we sprinkled on some italian seasoning and popped it into the oven. We cooked it on the bottom rack of the oven at 450F for 15 mins and it came out perfect. Half way through the cooking process we brushed some olive oil onto the rising crust to make it golden brown.
It took about an hour from start to finish and was fun to make. I could see it being even more fun with kids and mini pizzas with their own toppings.
