Pizza!

(this is not the prettiest pizza I've ever made)

We looove homemade pizza.  Seriously, we eat it at least once a week.  If I don't make pizza for a while, Tom starts to go into withdrawal.  A lot of times it's an uncreative pizza like pepperoni or something, but it's almost always with homemade pizza dough.

I've tried a few different pizza dough recipes and this one from the Pioneer Woman's cookbook is my favorite thus far.  What I like about it is that it's very stretchy.  It's easy to stretch the dough out to a 12-16" circle without ripping holes in it like some other dough recipes I've tried.  This is probably because of the good amount of olive oil in the recipe.

I've tried this recipe with white flour, wheat flour, half white half wheat, and with white whole wheat flour (King Arthur Flour makes this, it's not as heavy and grainy as regular wheat flour but still has some of the whole grain value).  I've found that to keep it pliable and stretchy, it's best to use all white flour, or half white and half whole wheat white flour.

I also like using King Arthur Flour's pizza seasoning.  It's a blend of spices that adds a lot of flavor either to the dough or sauce you're using.  I always add about a teaspoon of this to dough when I make it.

Now...toppings.  Again, a lot of times we end up doing pretty normal toppings on our pizzas.  But here's some pizzas we've made in the past or ones that are on my list to try:

• Chicken sausage and ricotta: Precooked chicken sausages are great on pizza.  That with dollops of ricotta is one of our favorite pizzas.
• BBQ chicken pizza: spread BBQ sauce instead of pizza sauce, add some caramelized onions, pieces of cooked chicken or chicken sausage, and mix cheddar and mozzarella cheese to top it.  
• Buffalo chicken pizza (what's pictured here): mix buffalo sauce with blue cheese dressing (I used ranch because we were out of blue cheese), top with chicken and a mix of cheddar and mozzarella cheese.  You could also add some crumbles of blue cheese and some scallions.  
• Or you could go sauceless and try a baked potato pizza.  Cook some potatoes, chop into small pieces, scatter on pizza dough with bacon bits, scallions, cheddar cheese and whatever else you like on baked potatoes.

Ok, enough blabber, you probably just want the dough recipe.

Pizza Dough

From The Pioneer Woman

Makes 2 crusts (wrap the extra in saran wrap then in a plastic bag and freeze it for later)

1 tsp yeast (active dry or instant...either is fine)

1 1/4 cups warm water 

4 cups all purpose flour (or half white/half wheat)

1 tsp Kosher salt

1/3 cup olive oil

1. Sprinkle yeast over warm water and let sit for a minute.  Attach dough hook to your mixer.  You can also mix this by hand with a wood spoon, it'll just take a little more manpower.

2. Mix flour and salt in bowl of mixer.  Slowly drizzle in the olive oil until combined.  Then stir the bowl/cup with the water and yeast and slowly add to the flour with the mixer on low.  Mix until combined and the dough forms a ball.  If the dough looks very sticky, add a bit more flour.

3. Coat a bowl with a thin layer of oil, add the dough back in, and cover lightly either with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel.  Put in a warm spot in your kitchen and let the dough rise for about an hour.  

4. Once the dough has risen, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Split the ball in half and wrap up half to save for later or to make a second pizza.  Stretch the dough out to a 12-16" circle (or rectangle or whatever shape floats your boat).  We have a pizza pan that's metal with lots of small holes in the bottom.  It's worked pretty well for us, but you can also use a regular sheet pan, or a pizza stone.

5.  Add your toppings and put in the hot oven.  Baking time depends on how you like your pizza.  If you like it doughy, you'll cook it for 10-12 minutes.  If you like it crisper, you'll go for about 15.  Once the pizza's done, let it cool for a few minutes before cutting it.