Enjoy!
(Yeah the formatting is all jacked up on this post, but for some reason Word was not being friendly and I had to copy and paste and this is how it came out. Whatever.)
Pizza Dough
This makes the dough for one pizza, but I usually double it and make 2 because the sauce recipe makes enough sauce for 2 pizzas, plus, it’s awesome and leftovers are awesome.
Ingredients
- · 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
- · 1 teaspoon white sugar
- · 1 cup warm water from the tap
- · 2 1/2 cups bread flour (regular flour works, but bread flour tastes mucho better)
- · 2 tablespoons olive oil
- · 1 teaspoon salt
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water. Let stand until creamy, (about 10 minutes).
3. Stir in flour, salt and oil. Mix until smooth. (I usually start with a wooden spoon and then use my hands when it gets tough to do)
4. Let rest for 5 minutes.
5. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes on a lightly floured surface
6. Pat or roll into a round. (Basically a ball) cover with a clean hand towel
7. Let it sit for about a half hour, the yeast will make it grow to about double the size.
8. Make the sauce while you wait.
SAUCE
Ingredients
· 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce (regular can size)
· 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste (tiny can size)
· 1 tablespoon ground oregano
· 1 1/2 teaspoons dried minced garlic
· 1 teaspoon ground paprika
Directions
1. In a medium bowl, Mix together tomato sauce and tomato paste until smooth. Stir in oregano, garlic and paprika.
2. Stick this in the fridge and let it sit until the dough is ready. It really tastes better if you make it and then store it in a jar in the fridge over night, but is fine right away.
Put it all together!
Ok, you should really go get a pizza stone. They are like $10 at Walmart and will make it so that your crust is not soggy in the middle. If you do not have one, you can use a cookie sheet, but you will want to use a fork to poke a bunch of holes in the crust before you put the sauce on. I have not done this though since I have a pizza stone. :/
Ok, so, now you should have a smooth ball of dough that is kind of soft, a hot oven and some sauce. Hopefully you had the foresight to get some pizza cheese and some toppings or you are going to have breadsticks and not pizza!
So, what you want to do is get the dough flat and the size of your pizza stone. I have tried many ways to do this, but this is the one that works best for me. First, you will want to smash the dough flat with your hands to “pop” it. Try to keep it in a circle though.
After that I usually use my fingers to go all the way around the ring of the flat dough, a little in from the edge and kind of push it down to make a dimpled ring, and then I toss it like you see on tv to spin it to size. Be careful because if you tear it, the dough will not be smooth and it is a pain in the butt to get back into one piece.
One you get it close to the size you want, you can kind of pull it to stretch it the last couple of inches or to make it straighter.
Ok, now you should have the dough on your stone all spread out and ready to go! Put half of the sauce you made on the dough then top as you see fit. I usually top mine like this: First, put the sauce, then a layer of pepperoni, then most of the cheese, then another layer of pepperoni, jalapenos, onions and bell peppers, then finally a little more cheese to make it all stick together.
Now stick the pizza in the oven for about 20 minutes. Make sure your oven is on bake and not preheat!) Keep an eye on it, since all ovens are different.
Boom-shacka-lacka! There you go. Awesome pizza.
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