Homemade Pizza

I know, it's convenient to just order a pizza and call it good.  But once you try homemade pizza - you'll at least think twice about ordering take-out.  I will admit, on lazy days - we still have our favorite pizza we order.  Even those who love to cook .... just don't want to cook sometimes.

This is the absolute FIRST thing we made with Thing#1 through Thing #5 when we were first blending our (not so) little family.  They've always had fun rolling the dough and sprinkling cheese ... they've even made their own sauce before!  It's a family affair!

BEFORE BAKING

And it isn't that difficult!!!!! We haven't explored pizza dough recipes, though it's on our list of to-dos for sure. Our local Co-op carries a fantastic brand of dough made locally that we usually buy, but this time I was on the other end of town and picked up 4 balls of dough from Market of Choice that we had never tried.  We had to make FOUR PIZZAS!!!! Convenience-wise - it was perfect.  But the flavor wasn't quite as good as our normal dough.  Did we care feeding 9 people?  No. But lesson learned:  ready-made single-pizza servings of dough are SO convenient!!!

In the whir and blur of cooking and baking and birthday festivities, we didn't document every step with a photo for you, but I'm sure our readers have watched a pizza being put together before, so we have faith you'll fill in the blanks!  The recipe below is for 1 pizza, probably the equivalent of a medium in a pizza parlor. Yes, that is a link to our own Pizza Sauce recipe in the list below.  Try it, you won't regret it!

You'll Need:

• 1 ball of pizza dough
• Flour
• Rolling Pin
• Pizza Pan or stone
• Grated/shredded low-moisture mozzarella cheese
• Pizza Sauce
• Toppings

Sounds easy so far, right!?

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to the temperature required to bake your dough
• Sprinkle some flour out and roll/toss your dough until it's the size and thickness you prefer
• Put dough on pan and spread flat
• Brush dough lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with a little garlic salt 
• (Optional) Bake in the oven for 4-5 minutes to crisp up the dough
• Spread your pizza sauce on your dough, however thick and plentiful as you like
• Sprinkle some cheese, lay down your toppings, finish sprinkling with cheese
• Bake until the crust on the bottom/center is cooked through
• Let pizza rest for 5 minutes out of the oven before slicing

Tips:  If you're going to use fresh basil as a topping, as we did with our margherita pizza, do NOT bake it, sprinkle it on when the pizza comes out of the oven.

Those are Green Zebra and Polish Linguisa tomatoes from our garden - aren't they pretty!?  They were just as delicious as they look, I'm not gonna lie!

Get baking!!!!!