Homemade Pizza, Handmade Crust!

So before I knew it tonight, it was dinner time and we had no concrete plans and no particular set of ingredients for anything special. After ruling out quesadillas or tacos (a favorite standby) and shoving the leftover lasagna to the side of the fridge to look behind it, I decided on a whim to try making pizza dough from scratch. Even though our kitchen is about 65% packed (both in terms of tools and pantry ingredients), I found a packet of active yeast-- possibly leftover from Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner-- and after looking through a couple recipes online, realized we had just enough of everything else for this to go down. Now I'm admittedly a haphazard and impatient baker. Despite my impatience, this turned out nicely, and much tastier than any prepackaged pizza dough we've ever popped out of a biscuit package.

Zipper's Easy Pizza Dough:

1pk active dry yeast

1 c. warm (not hot) water

let the yeast proof in the water for 10-15 min. (If you're impatient and paranoid like me, you can sprinkle just a little sugar into the water/yeast to make sure those little puppies are alive and, well, active.)

Meanwhile, combine 3c. all purpose flour (one recipe I found called for bread flour, which I didn't have. This worked just fine. Maybe I'll have to get some bread flour for future pizzas, though. Also, recipes asked for anywhere between 2 to 3 1/2 c. flour. I started with 2c. which gave me a gummy, gluey dough, and sprinkled in more flour until I got to a nice sticky dough at 3 c.)

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. sugar

yeast/water mixture

2 Tb. olive oil

Mix these together until you have a stiff dough. Now recipes I found used conflicting terminology and actions at this point. One recipe describes what you may have as a "stiff dough," another asks for a "smooth elastic ball." What I had at this point was a sticky ball and no flour left. (Also, I mixed the dough with a fork then a whisk then my hands. I don't have a KitchenAid mixer or a dough hook. Yet.) So I winged it, kneaded it carefully to preserve as much as possible (about 3 min.) and left it in an oiled bowl with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel over the top for about 40 min. Meanwhile I made PESTO (with sweet basil from our garden)!!!!

The dough rose and I pressed it down and let it rise more about 10 min. Then I cut of about 1/3 of it to make my own mini pizza with just pesto, mozzarella and slices of our roma grape tomatoes (from our garden). The dough was pretty easy to work into a flat, thin pie crust (and no, I don't know how to toss it. Yet.)

For the rest of the fam, I used the other 2/3 of the dough for a larger pie. This time it was harder to work. Some areas were too threadbare, so I balled it up and actually rolled it out with some effort, a sprinkle of corn meal, and the *very* last of the flour. The rolling-out actually produced a very nice, soft, smooth pie crust. So I topped it with tomato sauce, garlic, onion, tomato, fennel, basil, and some leftover veggie italian sausage (the best is Trader Joe's!)

Here's my finished pesto pizza! I baked them for 20 min. at 350. They were a huge hit!

In the future, I'll work on making the crust a little more exciting. They turned out a little blonde. Perhaps if I brush them with some olive oil? We're all in pizza comas now. nom nom nom nom.