There are a few things that I always keep in the pantry/cupboards for homemade baking: flour, sugar, yeast and salt. You can literally make hundreds of recipes with these 4 basic ingredients. I have an easy and delicious pizza dough recipe that I always use when making homemade pizza. Its also a great recipe for breadsticks, calzones, stombolis, and probably pizza pockets.
Here's the recipe I use & its good for 2 round 14" pizzas so I usually double or triple it to make enough for my family of 6 and have some leftovers for lunch the next day.
RECIPE:
http://www.food.com/recipe/pizza-dough-for-thin-crust-pizza-70165
I like to add a teaspoon of GARLIC SALT to the mix for a little extra flavor to the crust and I always add the OLIVE OIL last after the other ingredients have formed a ball cause it seems to work into the dough better that way and keeps it from being too sticky when you're ready to knead. I throw everything in the kitchenaid and it cuts out a load of time and muscle power.
One thing that can be done is to pre-bake the pizza crust and add the sauce, cheese and toppings at a later time--which is what I'll do tonight. I want to have the crust already pre-baked so that when I'm ready to use it around dinner time it doesn't take quite as long to get it into the oven, clean-up is faster and it saves counter space too. You could probably even do this ahead of time and freeze the pre-baked crust for a quick and easy meal at a later date if you want. The pre-made crusts at the store are almost as expensive as ordering a fully made pizza for delivery and probably not quite as good as a homemade one anyway! I like to brush the crust with either OLIVE OIL or MARGARINE and sprinkle garlic powder or garlic salt on top w/ a little grated parmesan if I have it. That's also a great thing to do if you decide to make breadsticks with this recipe.
Usually I'll break the kids off a fist-sized piece of dough and have them make their own pizza which is always fun for them. I call the cornmeal "MAGIC PIZZA DUST" and the kids get a kick out of that. They still wonder what that magic dust really is. Magic pizza dust really IS MAGIC...it gives pizza that finishing touch to make it taste like a restaurant pizza--AND it allows more air to circulate under the crust so it cooks more evenly on the bottom while keep it from sticking to the pan for easy removal once you're ready to lift it from pan to plate.
For the sake of keeping everyone else in the house f/ getting sick, I'll be making the pizza myself today. I've made homemade pizza enough times that I've actually got the "toss and spin in the air" thing down with the dough (I score BIG POINTS with the kids when I do that)! This recipe has seriously saved our lives at times. Its so cheap to make and the ingredients are so few (especially if your kids just like CHEESE pizza like mine do).
I love pineapple and ham pizza but I've already got plenty of toppings in the fridge to work with: shredded mozzarella, onions, roma tomatoes, turkey pepperoni, real bacon pieces, sliced salami and 2 sausage links from dinner last night. My favorite pizza sauce to use is RAGU. It comes in lots of different varieties and each one has always had just the right consistency for pizza sauce, not too thick or too thin--plus its reasonably priced. So I'll be picking up a jar from the store along w/ a bell pepper and maybe some fresh mushrooms (I like them way better on pizza than the canned mushrooms).
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| I doubled the recipe to make 4 pizzas. After letting the dough rise a bit, I cut it into 4 equal sized pieces. |
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| Next I begin rolling it out with a rolling pin. I try to keep it as round as possible. |
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| After rolling it out a bit, I push around the edges with my fingers to form the outer crust which would be thicker. |
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| Then I stretch it out a bit more with my knuckles. This is about the time I toss it up in the air and make it spin. The spinning motion helps it stretch out even more while keeping a round shape. |
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| Finally, you should have a nice, big round circle. |
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| Make sure it will fit the size pan you're using. |
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| An easy way to get it onto the pan w/o tearing the dough is to fold it in fourths. |
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| Then unfold it one section at a time. |
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| Make sure its centered on your pan. I had to use foil cause I found I was out of "Magic Pizza Dust" |
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| If you're pre-baking the crust, you'll want to poke holes in it to keep the crust from bubbling as it bakes. I just use a fork and poke randomly but evenly. If you don't pre-bake and you do it all at once w/ the rest of your toppings you won't need to worry about this step. |
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| Here's our turkey pepperoni. |
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| The kids' favorite: CHEESE! I used both mozzarella and colby jack. |
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| This was a meat lovers w/ salami, turkey pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms & onions. I think it actually would've been better in the form of a STROMBOLI since there were so many toppings. |
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| This is hubby & my favorite: I used alfredo sauce instead of spaghetti sauce. It has Roma tomatoes, mushrooms, bell peppers, onions and bacon bits. I think it would've been PERFECT if there were either MORE bacon bits or slicesof Canadian bacon to give it that extra saltiness it needed. Nevertheless, it was SUBLIME! |
Breakdown of my savings tonight:
NIGHT IN:
Ragu Sauce (one tomato and one alfredo) 2 @ $1.80-$3.60
Mushrooms-$2.07
Bell Pepper-$0.78
Redbox DVD-$2.15
Microwave popcorn (3 bags from a 24 ct box)-$0.63
1 Large 64 oz bottle of Gatorade-$2.69
TOTAL: $11.92
VERSUS
NIGHT OUT:
4 Pizzas from Domino's @ 5.99 each-approx $28 after tax & delivery charges
Movie tickets for 6 ppl @ the Dollar theater-$12.00
Popcorn at concession stand-$6.00
2 Lrg Drinks to share among 6 of us (if we were all healthy) @ 3.25 each -$6.50
TOTAL: $52.50
TOTAL SAVINGS=$40.58
NOT BAD!!! And don't forget we saved on gas by not going anywhere except the grocery store down the street but that was on the way back from hubby's work so it wasn't really a separate cost.
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