Saturday, November 6, 2010

Friday night Pizza and a Movie

My friend Abby asked for my pizza recipe.  She said that it would be wonderful if I put it on the blog, so that she could just print it out.  This is for Abby and anyone else who loves good pizza!

For the last 15 years or so, our family has instituted "Pizza and a Movie" night every Friday.  When we lived closer to town, we had pizza delivered, which was a wonderful break for me, but since moving to the little town we live near now, pizza delivery has not been an option.  In our quest to keep "Pizza and a Movie" night, I have learned to make my own pizza, and, to tell the truth, rather like it better than pizza joint pizza anyway!

I have learned little tricks along the way by reading many different methods of making pizza and have come up with a method that works really well for us.  It starts with "Light Pizza Dough" out of The King Arthur Flour Cookbook (one of my personal favorites).  Here is the recipe....

Light Pizza Dough

1 3/4 C warm Water
1 T Sugar
1 T Yeast
5 C All-purpose Flour
1/4 C Olive Oil
1 T Salt

"Sponging"
Combine warm water (I use tap water as warm as it comes), sugar, olive oil, salt and yeast.  Let "sponge" (allow it puffy and bubbly) for 1/2 an hour to an hour, or longer if you want.  Add flour (I start with about 3 1/2 cups and add flour until I have a nice, soft dough) and kneed for about 10 minutes (5 minutes if using a mixer or Bosch).  Turn dough into an olive oil coated bowl to rise.  At this point, you may coat plastic wrap with olive oil and wrap dough loosely in wrap and put the dough in the refrigerator.  It can slowly rise in the frigde all day and be set out to rise on the counter for about an hour before you want to make pizza. This makes the dough light and tender and really enhances the flavor.  After the dough has risen to double the size, punch down and cut in half and roll out on two pizza stones.  I love pizza stones for making pizza.  The crust is light and crispy.  Cast iron skillets work well also.
Rising Dough


After rolling dough onto the stones, brush olive oil over the surface of the dough.  This makes a huge difference in the crust.  After brushing with olive oil, we spread minced garlic over the pizza dough.  After the garlic, we spread a little pizza sauce (don't go over-board!).  Next comes the cheese.  We use Mozzarella, but you can use whatever you like.  Add toppings, such as pepperoni, Italian sausage, onions, peppers, olives, mushrooms - whatever.  Add a little more cheese, to hold all of the toppings in place.  Let your pizza dough rise for another 1/2 hour then pop into a preheated 425 degree oven.  Bake for about 20 minutes.  Enjoy!

Adding the toppings


Pizza, fresh out of the oven!

4 comments:

  1. OH YUM!!! One of my all-time favorite foods is pizza. My bathroom scale proves it. LOL Personally, I like lots of pizza sauce. (A little sugar in the sauce cuts the acidity.)

    That's another great recipe to add to the growing collection with your byline. Thank you!

    NoCal Gal

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  2. We have hm pizza every friday night as well. My husband used to love Pizza Hut Pizza but we hit a rough patch financially and when one Pizza Hut Pizza used to cost 17.99 and I can make hm for a fraction we soon did away with Pizza Hut. Now we are so used to eating hm that any other pizza is just awful tasting to us. I let our kids top their own individual pizzas, they really get a kick out of it and for dh's pizza I make it in an iron skillet with a little oil in the bottom dh says its just like pizza huts pan pizza with the crispy crust like that.

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  3. Homemade pizza is always better, and I'll bet yours is awesome coming out of the wood stove :)

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  4. We use our regular bread dough as our pizza crust. My mom has used the same dough for cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, pizza, dinner rolls and of course, bread. Her Bosch came with a wheat cookbook and as each of the 7 kids grew up and bought a Bosch, we have also found the cookbooks on ebay.
    Maybe next time I will try your recipe. It sounds good. Unfortunately we only have a woodstove for heating, not a cook stove.

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