Homemade Pizza

Last weekend, broke and about to spend the next few days in Austin, my husband and I decided to try and make our own homemade pizza.  We just bought these really cool small pizza stones with a metal cover from Sur La Table (my favorite store ever; it will probably be the end of me, or at least my bank account) and I found this awesome book pizza book for only $4!  It was fate and we were hungry!


This wasn't the first time we had attempted homemade pizzas.  Once last year after we implusively, and to be honest, stupidly, bought the $60 box set of all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies on BluRay (the stupid part was paying $60, the awesome part was that we now had all the TMNT movies on BluRay!) we decided we HAD to make our own pizza.  The discs were literally in a pizza box! 

picture source: http://www.retroist.com/

It didn't turn out so well.  The crust was super thick and in order for the inside to cook, the outside was hard and just not very good.


Then a few months ago, I tried again with a Chicken BBQ pizza.  It smelled and looked amazing, but the crust was doughy and gross.


So that brings us to now.  Attempt three.  Not only was it the best attempt yet, it was also pretty darn good pizza!


The first step was to make the crust. 


Flour, Water, Dry Active Yeast, Olive Oil and Salt

Mix together the Flour, Salt and Yeast and form a hole in the middle

Combine the oil and water together and pour into the bowl, into the hole in the flour mixture.

Using your fingers, start to incorporate the oil and water mixture into the flour mixture.  Turn out onto the table. It's pretty messy.

Begin to form the dough by kneaded together for about 10 minutes....

...until the dough is smooth.

Place in a warm spot like on top of the oven (it needs to be on) and cover with plastic.

Let it rise until doubled, at least 1 hour.


While the dough is proofing, I made the sauce.

Pizza Sauce Recipe (makes 2 pints of sauce)

12 oz of canned tomato paste

3 cups water

2/3 cup olive oil

4 minced garlic cloves

salt and pepper

a palm full of chopped fresh oregano, basil and rosemary

In a saucepan, I combined the tomato paste, water and oil.  Then I added everything else.  I let it simmer for about an hour, stirring it every now and then.  I used the sauce when it was still a little runny, but you can keep it on the stovetop until it thickens or make it the night before and let it thicken in the fridge.

Once the dough is ready, divide it and form the pizza.  I did this by working the dough with my fingertips.  Some of my pizzas were a little lopsided, but I think that's one of the beauty's of homemade pizzas!

Then we added the toppings!

We made a Super Supreme pizza for my parents and my grandma, with grilled veggies, giant pepperonis, ricotta cheese and mozzerella cheese.

Then we made a two cheese and pepperoni pizza for my sister and her friends.

Finally both my husband and I got our own individual pizzas; we were the chefs of the night after all!



So that was our, I think, successful attempt at homemade pizza.  We are definitely going to have to do it again, because not only was it super simple, although time consuming, it was really fun!

Yay pizza!