Homemade pizza!

 

I came across this wonderful recipe once again through King Arthur's blog! You can find the link to the original recipe here. The dough makes two 12 inch absolutely delicious pizzas! Of course, we can't compare them to Sammy's pizzas but for home-made ones they're the best!

We made one pizza the same day while we refrigerated the rest of the dough for later. So that proved that we could make the dough and refrigerate it for future use. I didn't have the Italian style flour so I simply used all-purpose flour but even then we found it pretty good!

Here's the recipe:

2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon Pizza Dough Flavor (optional, but tasty)
1 tablespoon King Arthur Easy-Roll Dough Improver OR Baker's Special Dry Milk OR nonfat dry milk
3 cups (11 ounces) King Arthur Italian-Style Flour* all purpose flour
3/4 cup (6 ounces) lukewarm water
2 tablespoons (7/8 ounce) olive oil

*Substitute King Arthur 100% Organic White Whole Wheat flour for half of the Italian flour, if desired.

1. Mix all of the ingredients to make a soft, supple dough. Knead for 5 minutes. Add more water than specified if your dough is not soft.
2. Divide the dough in half, cover with lightly greased plastic wrap.
3. Let rest and relax for 15 minutes (or for up to an hour or so; work it into your schedule as you see fit). I kept one for only 30 mins or an hour but the other one was out longer. It fermented much more so I think you should give it as much time as it needs to ferment well.
4. Grease two 12" squares of parchment paper.
5. Use your greased fingers to press each piece of dough on the parchment into an 11" to 12" circle about 1/8" thick. I used a rolling pin to roll the dough into a circle.
6. Brush or spray the crusts with olive oil, and let them rest for about 30 minutes, while you preheat your oven to 450°F (with a pizza stone inside, if you have one).
7. Place the crusts with their parchment directly on the stone, or onto a baking sheet. I directly placed the parchment paper in the oven.
8. Bake till they're just starting to brown around the edges, about 4 minutes. It's for a really short time; you just want to cook the top a little bit so that after you add the toppings the top of the crust doesn't get soggy.
9. Remove from the oven, top with whatever you like. We used readymade pizza sauce, grated mozarella, chopped tomatoes, green pepper and onion!