The best home-made pizza you'll ever make!

(at least in my opinion, anyway!)

A few years ago I received The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook as a Christmas gift and that's where this recipe comes from.

After getting married and catching the "cooking" bug. I started looking for recipes to improve upon the pizza kit in a box that I knew growing up. I found it in the ATKFC, this is an awesome recipe.

 I highly recommend buying a pizza stone if you're going to make home-made pizza on a regular basis. It makes such a huge difference in the crust. If you want to try this recipe and don't have a pizza stone, you can use a cookie sheet turned upside down. You won't get the same results, but it does work pretty well in getting a crispy crust. If you want to take the plunge and buy a good quality pizza stone, then I recommend ordering this one.  This is the one I have and I love the size of it and that fact that it is not round.

Pizza Crust

*4 cups bread flour (I've been using 2c. bread four and 2c. whole wheat white flour with good results)
1 envelope rapid rise yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 T olive oil
1 3/4 c. warm water

*Bread flour is very important for this recipe. It's what give the crust it's chewy center.

Whisk 4 cups of the bread flour, yeast and salt together in large bowl. Add the oil and water and stir with spatula until the dough comes together and looks shaggy. Turn dough out onto floured board and knead by hand to form a smooth, round ball. (about 10-15 minutes). Add 1/4 cup more flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the board. Transfer to an oiled bowl and cover. let rise 1 -1.5 hours till doubled in size. 
When dough is doubled in size, turn it out onto your board (I use parchement paper) and cut into 3 equal pieces. Shape each one into a smooth round ball and cover again with plastic wrap and let rest 20 -30 minutes.

Now while the dough is resting, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. If you're using a pizza stone you want to let it sit in the oven while it's preheating and then let it continue to heat for another 20 minutes or so.

Take one ball of dough and flatten it out on parchment paper. You have to work to get it to flatten out and sometimes I will get my rolling pin and put the dough between 2 pieces of parchement and roll it out a bit.  You want to stretch it into as large of a "circle" as possible. And don't worry if you can't get it into a circle shape. Mine are usually very rustic looking pizzas. Once you have it as thin as you can get it, add the sauce (recipe to follow) and any toppings and cheese you like.  Keeping the pizza on the parchement paper, slide it onto your pizza stone and bake for about 10 minutes. Just keep a close eye on it cause it doesn't take very long. Usually while one is in the oven I'm working on getting the next pizza shaped and ready to go.

Each individual pizza is not that large and Dan, Lucy and I will usually eat one whole pizza. This last time I made pizzas I tried something new. I read on a blog somewhere about freezing your home-made pizzas to use at a later time like you would a store-bought frozen pizza. If you want to try this, use one or both of the last 2 pizza dough balls and shape them on parchment. Place the on the stone and bake each one for 3-5 minutes. Then remove and allow to cool a bit before putting on the sauce and all the toppings. Then wrap tightly in foil or plastic wrap and freeze. When you're ready to bake, heat your stone to 500 degrees and then bake normally.

This actually worked quite well! I was a little unsure when I decided to try this, but the pizza was good. The crust was a little crispier than if it had been freshly baked (cause you're baking it twice). But the flavor was good and definitely better than store bought.  I will be doing this with the extra dough from now on. (although, next time I think I'll try a lower temp. like 425 to see if that makes the crust come out a little softer)

Now, since you've gone to the trouble of making your own crust, you might as well make your own sauce as well. It's so easy you'll never buy the jarred stuff again.

Home-made pizza sauce

1 large can crushed tomatoes
1 T oliveo oil
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced

In large saucepan, heat oil and add garlic. Let cook for 30 seconds and then add crushed tomatoes. Let simmer at least 15 minutes or until it's thickened up to a good consistency. I also add just a little bit of sugar to help take out the tartness of the tomatoes. That's it! How simple is that?

Wow, I didn't intend for this to be such a long post, but I wanted to be thorough. I wish I had some pics to go with this post, but I never think to take pictures while I cooking and to be honest, they'd be bad pictures anyway. I am not a good photographer. Someday, maybe I'll have a cool blog like Pioneer Woman and take wonderful photos, but for now this is all ya get!