Home made pizza!!

For years my sister has made homemade pizza.  We used to work at a bar in our early 20’s that made the best pizza ever. The cook there, Billy, was an old man who smoked way too many cigarettes, but he showed my sister how to make pizzas so well, that my sister actually started making them for the restaurant part of the bar!  She’s always told me how easy it is to make the dough, but I never believed I could do it that well.  If I have bought dough already made, and tried to make pizza, every time I rolled the dough out, it wouldn’t stay and would come back to a small circle (the dough was too cold!).  Or, the dough didn’t cook all the way through so it was kind of doughy instead of crispy.  Here are her directions which  I followed to a T, and the result?  My kids loved the pizza!!

Here is my no rise pizza dough recipe done in the food processor.

• 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, divided
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 package active yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Put 2 cups flour and salt in food processor and pulse.  Heat water to 110 degrees.  Add yeast and let it sit for 5 minutes until its all nice and bubbly.  Add olive oil to yeast/water mixture and stir.  Start food processor and slowly pour in yeast mixture.  Now, at this point, just eye ball how much extra flour you will need so that it stops sticking to the sides.  Once I have enough extra flour added between 1/2 to 3/4 cups), I let it run for about 5 minutes.

When you are done, you have a nice warm delicious ball of dough that is enough for two thin 12 inch pizzas.

My trick for crispy cruncy crust?  I prebake my dough at 425 for 7 minutes, remove from oven, add my toppings and then slide my pizza directly on my oven racks on the lowest rack (my oven has coils on the bottom).  This creates a lovely cracker crisp crust.  Then I let it sit for 5 minutes before slicing.  So Yum!

If your kids (like mine) like Domino’s pizza (gross!) then I just put their pizza in the oven with all the toppings, leave it on the cookie sheet and cook at 400 degrees.  This results in a chewy (never crispy) crust that they seem to enjoy very much.

The dough turned out great!
   
     
 The one on the left is my other son’s pizza; pepperoni and Claire’s pizza (which she rolled out herself!) that had just cheese.
Now, I have conquered my fear and will make this again and again!  We have ordered out pizza every Friday night for the last 15 years, but maybe making homemade can be thrown in occasionally!  Thanks Biz for the recipe!  Check out www.dinneratchristinas.blogspot.com  because she made the same pizza dough too, and her pizzas looked awesome!!