Making My First Pizza With Yeast

Making my "real" first pizza last night was a lot of fun! For the most part it came out pretty good. I do have some changes, will talk about that later.

For the crust, I just took the #1 recipe when you Google pizza dough recipe, you can view it here. Found it odd that it had honey in it, but it's not #1 for nothing, so I went with it.

Pizza Dough Recipe w/ Yeast

• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1 cup warm water (between 95° and 115° F.)
• 2 T yeast (2 tablespoons, I like my dough a little yeasty. You can use less)
• 2 T honey
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp. salt

By hand instructions: Pour warm water into a bowl. The water should be about 85 to 115° F. Test it with your hand. It should feel very warm, but comfortable. Add the honey and salt. Mix on low until well blended. Add the yeast and mix. Let this mixture sit for about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of flour and the olive oil and mix until well blended. Add the rest of the flour (and any other additions) and mix well. The dough should turn into a ball. If the dough does not ball up because it's too dry, add water one tablespoon at a time until it does. If your mixture is more like a batter, add flour one tablespoon at a time. Adding water or flour as needed to get the right consistency will assure you always get a perfect dough. Just remember to do it in small amounts. Once the dough is balled up, place the ball on a floured board and knead for about a minute. This builds the gluten which helps the dough to rise and become fluffy when cooked. Place the dough in a plastic grocery bag or a covered bowl and store in a warm, dry area to rise. Pictured below before the rise:

After about 45 minutes the dough should have about doubled in size. Show it who's boss and punch it down. That's right, give it a good smack so it deflates. Let it rise for another hour to an hour and a half. The dough is now ready to be rolled out. You can punch the dough down one more time if you want and wait another hour or two before rolling out. I let mine sit for an hour, punched it down, then sat for another 30 minutes, then I cooked. Pictured below after the rise:

I didn't get all crazy with a sauce recipe. I just took a can of tomato sauce and put it on, then sprinkled italian seasoning all over it. My Mom gave me a good tip, "Another way to do a quick no cook sauce just open a can of tomatoes dump them in your blender, add a couple of cloves of garlic, dash of olive oil, S&P, whatever spices you might like and use it raw like that. It cooks while on the pizza". An alternative way to do this entire recipe is to prep your sauce and dough 24 hours beforehand, then all you have to do is compile it on eating day.

Some things I would have changed: Doing the sauce from scratch. Using less flour, the pizza was very thick. My husband said it was the best pizza he has had in a long time. Wait til I try again!