Pizza!

How it is possible, that with all the cooking and baking I've done, I've never, ever made a pizza from scratch? I love pizza. I order it regularly. It's not that it never occurred to me to make my own, but for some reason I just never did. That's all about to change.

I think I must've thought it would take a long time. It doesn't. Once I finally got all of the ingredients and toppings I wanted together it was really very little time at all. I used Bobby Flay's pizza dough recipe from the Food Network, but halved it for just me and added some garlic powder and italian herbs. Mixing the dough took maybe 5 minutes, plus 10 more to knead it.

I had the air conditioning on in my living room so I covered it and put it in my non-airconditioned bedroom to rise for an hour, which it did quite happily!

I don't have a pizza stone, or even a proper pizza pan, so the biggest question was what to bake it on. Despite only making half the recipe, I still had a lot of dough, so I finally settled on the mostly flat oven tray that came with my oven, because it was the biggest thing I had. It made for a rectangular pizza, but who cares what shape it is?

I topped it with a basic sauce I'd made of tomato sauce and italian herbs, then fresh basil, onions, a thin layer of cheese, green peppers, salami, and mushrooms, and another layer of cheese.

It came out pretty good, for a first attempt! The crust was pretty thick, so I think next time I'd make even less dough, or split it up and roll it thinner. For the same reason, the edges were huge, and not very crispy, but the bottom was a bit crunchy and not at all soggy from all my toppings. Still, I might have to see if I can get a pizza stone somewhere. 

I think the leftovers were better the next day, because when I warmed it up in the oven the crust got crispier, and I got smart and warmed up the extra sauce to dip the excess crust in. Yum!

I may never order pizza again!

 

*I'm updating this before I even post it to say that I made it again, but only made half as much dough and rolled it out much thinner. It was significantly better and crispier, and not so overwhelmingly doughy. Perfect!