Homemade Pizza Dough

Do you want to make homemade pizza dough from scratch with your favorite toppings? What about some garlic butter or butter parmesan crust just like at the pizza parlor? Worried that you won't be able to make your own crust and have it taste as good as the restaurant? You can - and it won't even take that long. This picture is the pizza we had for dinner tonight!

Making good food is trial and error, especially when you're going to make something from scratch. I've made homemade pizza hundreds of times. I've made it using frozen pizza crust, boboli (pre-made and baked) pizza crust, and (dry mix) pizza crust in the box. I've even made homemade pizza crust with wheat, semolina, and white flour. This recipe is a combination of all I've learned over the last 25+ years of making pizza at home. This recipe makes 2 large pizzas.

Breakfast Pizza

What you'll need:

* 4 packets/boxes of (dry) pizza crust mix (and brand)
* 2 cups warm water (about 115 degrees)
* 1 Jar pizza Sauce
* 3 packets Sargento's Sun-dried tomato and basil mozzerella shredded cheese
* garlic powder
* Italian seasonings
* minced garlic
* Pizza toppings (pepperoni, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, onion, green pepper, whatever you like!)
* 2 large pizza pans - preferably with small holes throughout for aeration.
* 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

When you buy store bought pizza crust what usually happens is you mix each dry mix crust with some hot water into a ball, and then let that stick mess rise, then you smash it onto a cookie sheet and bake it with sauce, toppings, and cheese for about 15 minutes. What you get is a more like a "bread pizza" because it's so darn doughy. I've also made pizza crust from absolute scratch too - but that can take time. I've developed a hybrid of these two things that is still pretty quick, but yields a pizza crust that is just about as close as you can get to the pizza parlor as possible.

Get a large mixing bowl and put the 4 packets or boxes of dry mix pizza crust in. You can use any kind you like, Robin Hood or Jiffy are both great. Next add about 2 tbsp of garlic powder to the bowl (if you like garlic - we do!), and then add 2 tbsp of Italian seasonings. Mix up these dry ingredients, and then begin to add the 2 cups of water. The water can't be more than 120 degrees or you'll kill the yeast, but it shouldn't be so lukewarm that it doesn't grow fast enough. A good indicator is the water should be hot enough to be able to stick your finger in it - but just barely. Add the water bit by bit until it's all added and the mix in the bowl is in a ball. Spill a cup of flour out onto the counter. Place the doughy mixture on top of that on the counter, and then spill the remaining cup of flour on top.

You're going to knead the dough with the balls of your hands, push, flip, push, flip, working in the loose flour until it's all gone. It usually takes about 5 minutes to knead the flour in, and then continute to knead an additional 3-5 minutes and the dough with be a bit elastic like play-doh. Sprinkle extra virgin olive oil around the large mixing bowl, place the dough in the bowl and roll over and over until coated. Wrap the bowl in saran wrap and then place a kitchen towel over the top. I usually pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees and place the bowl on top for 30 minutes, rotate 180 degrees, and then leave another 30 minutes. In that 60 minutes the dough will double in size.

When it's ready, remove the towel and saran wrap - and punch down the dough one time in the middle of the towel. Cut the dough in half with a sharp knife. Take one half of the dough and begin to stretch it in your hands from the middle out to the edges as you slowly rotate it bit by bit 360 degrees over and over. Be careful to do it evenly and not stretch any way to thin as to make holes. Once you have it stretched to about 3/4 the size of the pizza pan, place it on the pan. Then, lifting up the edge, pull outward and stretch it towards the edge of the pan while rotating the pan around until the crust covers the entire pizza pan. Make sure that it's even all throughout the pan, and then empty 1/2 of the pizza sauce jar onto the crust, and thin it out covering the pizza with the back of a tablespoon. Use the other half of the dough and do the same with the other pizza crust and the remaining sauce.

Pre-heat your oven to 500 degrees. Prepare your pizza toppings (cut your onion and green pepper if necessary, Canadian bacon, etc). Use 1 and 1/2 of the packets of cheese on both of the pizzas. I like the Sargento cheese that's already seasoned with basil and sun-dried tomatoes - it gives the pizza a great flavor! Add your toppings, and then the remaining cheese on top.

Cook in the oven 10 minutes, then check. If the cheese is not all the way melted it may need an additional 2-3 minutes. Be careful - 500 degrees is very hot and required to get a crust like the restaurant, but just a minute or two too long and you can burn it!

Once the pizzas come out of the oven - we melt 3 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp minced garlic in the microwave for 45 seconds, and drizzle over the crust. You can do grated parmesan instead of the garlic if you like!

Homemade Pizza Dough

John Pratt writes on his blog JTPratt's Blogging Mistakes, but his love of cooking keeps him writing for Free Online Recipes by Kieli! Pictures for Homemade Pizza Dough are here!

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