Homemade Pizza

Pepperoni Mushroom and Margherita

Ever since I heard about stone ovens and baking stones, I’ve always wanted to try making pizza at home.  You control what goes into it and you can load as much as you want into it.  What fun is that!  So after a bout of reading the Rachel Morgan witch series by Kim Harrison (the main character makes pizza in her kichen a lot), I finally got off my butt to try and make it.

In my eagerness to give this a try, I manage to forget the baking stone and made do with a baking sheet.  Though your results will be better with a baking stone (fluffier crust), you can still do it with a baking sheet.

I followed the Crusty Pizza Dough recipe on page 145 from Donna Rathmore’s The Bread Machine Cookbook, revised edition.  I found that making 1/3 or 1/4 of your recipe with wheat bread flour and the rest with regular white bread flour makes for a smoother dough to work with and I feel less like I’m eating pizza on wheat toast.  I recommend letting the dough rise a good 1.5 to 2 hours before working with it.  I made about five 10″ pizzas with this recipe.

If you’re like me and this is your first time making pizza, I suggest you go with making personal (about 10″) size pizzas.  A 15″ pie is really really hard to toss!  I kept ripping holes in the middle and overworking the dough.  I watched this video to pick up some tips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjYqw1CLZsA&NR=1.  This guy makes it look easy.  When he’s pushing and turning out the pizza, what I do instead is to pick up the dough and use both my hands to gently stretch out the edge area without pinching the edges.

First two, baked for 10 minutes.

There’s a lot of control like this because I noticed the wheat flour does make things a little lumpier.  When he’s “hand stretching” the pizza, I do the same but with the dough draped over my knuckles and stretch it slowly by moving my hands apart or moving my fingers apart.  No tossing involved, no big motions to look impressive but I get no holes and more control.

Now comes the fun part, toppings!  Anything goes!  But I’m pretty traditional.  I like the whole fresh idea on top of a raw pie and everything getting cooked.  So I went with my favorite: pepperoni mushroom and the margherita.  The tomato sauce base I used was Prego’s Traditional and Classico regular.  Put enough on the pie so you still white dough here and there.  Put too much and the middle will get too soggy.

Fresh tomato and basil

Margherita is basically fresh basil leaves (italian), fresh tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella slices.  I went with pre-shredded bagged mozzarella and  roma tomatoes (deseeded so things don’t get soggy).  This combo is great on a thin crust.  If its not salty enough for you, sprinkle a pinch of salt.

Pepperoni mushroom is basically what it is.  The pepperoni is salty enough that you don’t need any extra flavorings.

Baked for 18 minutes

As you can see in the picture on the left, ten minutes wasn’t long enough to wilt the tomato.  I overcompensated in the next two pies, as shown on the image to the right.  The crust was really crispy though!  I think 13-15 minutes might be a good time to stick with at 500 degrees.

On a different night (when I forgot my camera), we had baby spinach leaves, minced garlic (not bottled), italian sausage, tomatoes, pepperoni, and mozzarella.  Though the spinach makes things a little soggier, lots of spinach, garlic, italian sausage, and mozzarella is a killer combo.  Make sure you cook the italian sausage first though!  That or you make sure you spread it pretty thinly on top of your pizza and not buried under other toppings.

Homemade pizza is a definite must try.  The taste is much better but the downside is that it can be quite a bit of work.  Make sure you use lots of cornmeal on the bottom of that pie so it doesn’t stick to things!

Margherita at 18 minutes at 500 degrees