Food Friday: Pizza with Homemade Pizza Crust!

THE DOUGH

Not going to lie, as fun as it all was - this was a lengthy process! It's not so much that it takes tons of time to throw a made-from-scratch crust together, it's more that creating something you have little experience with can be tricky ...especially when you insist on simultaneously taking well-lit, well-staged photos. Oh! AND when you also demand cornmeal be worked in somehow because you remember "that crust they had on your meal hall pizza and the dusting of cornmeal was just perfect!"

I'll spare you a detailed step by step, given the sheer number of photos it is somewhat self-explanatory. The full recipe for this crust can be found here.

We began by mixing the yeast which, may I say, smells abhorred - seriously awful - adding the oil once it had rested for a bit.

We then sifted our dry ingredients and added the oily-yeasty mixture to it all. I began by combining the wet with the dry using a spoon but my arm got tired [I have weak upper-body strength]. It was at this point that I neurotically re-washed my hands and chose to mix it all together finger-style. It worked MUCH better.

Rolling out the dough was HARD. Very hard. I think we may have not let it rise enough although since I don't know much about bread, yeast and what have you - I can't say for sure. In the end though, Jack and I won out and that dough sucked it up and filled out our pizza pan very nicely.

THE TOPPINGS

 You know me - I lovvvvvvvve my veggies. So, no surprises here, our pizza consisted of veggies plus a little cheese. We sauteed the mushrooms, onions and zucchinis before dressing the pizza to soften them, but the rest when on raw. The tomato sauce was just a little no name can of pizza sauce, next time I may try pesto instead. I must say though, my favourite toppings of the evening were: artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes and basil!

At this point, Jack was directed to take the photos so I could obsessively compulsively dress our pizza. I'm very particular. I like to make sure all the ingredients are distributed evenly over the circumference of the dough to ensure that each bite has as many flavours as possible. Some say OCD, I say a delicious creed for life.

Notes:

This dough was decent - definitely edible - but nothing special. Next time we do this we will definitely use another crust recipe... perhaps Brown Eye'd Baker has some tasty ones to choose from.