Itsa Pizza Pie!

Yesterday, in an effort to get in touch with my Italian roots and take advantage of the lovely Stand Mixer in our kitchen, I decided to make pizza dough from scratch. Seems, easy enough, but in our family, pizza dough has always been elusive. Even though my mom is 1/2 Italian, she was never given a family pizza dough recipe and had to find one on her own - talking to Italian restaurant owners, cooks and scouring magazines for a recipe that was tasty and healthy. She'd find one, make the dough, and much to her disappointment, it would either be too salty, too bland, etc, etc. So eventually she gave up and resorted to buying Boboli pre-cooked pizza crust.

However, when I got married I made a point to learn a dough recipe that was easy, healthy and very tasty! My parents gave us a cookbook for the wedding that has a number of a basic recipes for the newlywed home:

(image courtesy of Crate & Barrel)

Yeah, so it's a cookbook with a cheesy name, but it really is chalk-ful of great recipes. And yes, it has a recipe for basic pizza dough. I picked up what I needed and off I went making my dough:

Here's my dough being kneaded by the dough hook. I was a 1/4 cup short of whole wheat flour, so I had to substitute the rest with pancake mix flour. Turned out to make no difference.

still a little sticky, but coming along!

Once I got the dough to a point where it wasn't sticky anymore, I put the dough in a oiled bowl, covered it with a kitchen towel and left it on the counter to rise while I went out for a few hours to look at apartments.

My dough before it rose.

When i got back, my dough was ready to be kneaded and formed. I wanted to make 2 personal pies, so I cut the dough in half (I had made enough for 4 8-inch pies), wrapped it in plastic wrap and put in the freezer for another time. The other half I divided again and then rolled and stretched out into two 9-inch pies. I then sprinkled a baking sheet with cornmeal and put the dough out on the sheet. NOTE: If you follow the book's recipe, DO NOT use as much cornmeal as I used in this picture. I learned in the recipe that cornmeal burns easily. 15 hours later, our apartment still smells like burnt cornmeal.

Then I was off to making the pizza. I'm a big fan of the simple, classic and fresh taste of a Margarita pizza, so I started chopping and slicing away. My family's Margarita pizza ingredients:

• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 or 2 medium sized tomatoes on the vine, sliced (I used the Creole Tomatoes that i bought that morning)
• 2 balls of fresh "Ovaline" sized mozzarella, sliced
• 1/4 cup fresh fresh basil, sliced.
• Italian or Pizza seasoning with no salt
• garlic salt

1. preheat the oven to 500 degrees
2. drizzle the olive oil over the top of the crust.
3. slice the tomatoes and arrange in a single layer on the dough.
4. slice the mozzarella and arrange on top of the tomatoes in a single layer
5. sprinkle the basil on top of the mozzarella.
6. dust the top of the pizza with the seasoning and the salt.
7. drizzle some more olive oil around the crust edges.
8. pop in the oven and bake for 12-15 mins.

take out and let cool. Then serve & enjoy!

My final product:

So did my first stab at made-from-scratch pizza dough work? A loud resounding YES! The crust was REALLY good and was a very nice & light, but still filling. My next goal? Figuring out a way to lower the amount of sugar and salt in the recipe and still keep it yummy. Any ideas?

Also, if you'd like the recipe for the dough, email me or pick up the cookbook The Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook . La buona fortuna e gode di!