Pizza making at home

Lately, we are eating a lot of pizza at home. Making pizza is easy and can be a fun family activity., including small children.

I have made homemade pizza many times in the past, but have often relied on jarred pasta or pizza sauce. In the book “Homemade Pantry”, Alana Chernila, includes a super easy homemade pizza sauce that can also be stored in freezer for a weeks. I made one batch of pizza sauce which lasted us three meals (= 12 small pizzas). What I love about making pizza at home now is that you can make almost everything ahead of time on weekend or whenever you have time. All you have to do is to assemble them, and in 20-30 minutes, you have your dinner or lunch ready. As a working mother, this has been a tremendous help for the last few weeks.

There are certain things to keep in mind when it comes to making pizza at home. as conveniently as it is to order them. The key is to have all of the ingredients needed in the pantry, and doughs and pizza sauce in the freezer at all time. We are not meat eater, so here is a possible list of toppings that I would like to have in my pantry or refrigerator:

cheese (of course!)
mushrooms
olives (kalamata, black, green, jalapeno stuffed: all of them pitted)
peperonchino
pineapple (canned, fresh or frozen)
feta cheese
grilled and marinated sweet peppers
red onions
broccoli
tomatoes
basil leaves

If you are a meat eater, you can certainly add ham, pepperoni, sausages etc.

To make the dough, I use bread machine. I combined the ingredients and set it on “dough” setting. It does take 90 minutes to make the dough, which is why it is wise to make them way i advance and freeze them. I usually make 2 lbs of dough, and divide them into 4-5 balls, wrap them in plastic and freeze them right away. On the day you plan to have pizza for dinner, I take out 3 balls of dough and place them in the refrigerator in the morning. By dinner time, they will be thawed perfectly.

You can usually find how to make pizza dough in the instructional booklet that came with your bread machine or food processor. Or here is what I use:

1 ½ cups of warm water
2 tbl spoon of olive oil
2 t spoon of salt
2 ¼ cups of unbleached flour
2 cups of bread flour
2 t spoon of sugar
2 t spoon of dried yearst

combine these ingredients in the order written into the bread machine,. Set it on “dough” .


For sauce: here is what I do

Two cans of crushed/ whole tomatoes OR if it is summer, you can certainly use fresh tomatoes. I would peel the skin, though...
One tea spoon of dried oregano
One tea spoon of dried basil
Pinch of paprika or crushed red pepper if you would like the sauce to be a bit spicy
Pinch of sugar (optional)

Combine all the ingredients in a blender. Run the blender until everything is smooth, 30 seconds to one minute.

That is it!!

When assembling the pizza, I suggest making it a personal size. it is easy to handle, and when i transfer the pizza from baking sheet onto the rack, it does not collapse as it previously did when I used to make big pizzas. I like to bake my pizza for 8-10 minute on the baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and transfer it to the oven rack for the last 3-5 minutes or so to get the bottom crust crispy. If you are using a big oven, you can certainly bake 2-3 personal sized pizza all together. Or if you are using smaller oven, you can assemble the next one while the first one is baking, and put the second one in the oven while you enjoy the first one.

The homemade pizzas are so good, my husband and I are thinking about swearing off ordering pizza for the whole year...