Friday, January 21, 2022

Pizza-making tutorial

I was making pizza for dinner the other night, and it occurred to me I should photograph the steps for anyone interested in a pizza-making tutorial. 

Pizza delivery is absolutely unheard of out here, and we seldom go out for it either, because it's SO much cheaper to make it at home. There are zillions of ways to make pizza; this is how I do it.

I start with my much-faded recipe for the crust:

It says:

• 1 1/2 cups flour

• 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

• Garlic/salt/basil (to taste)

• 1 1/4 cups warm water

• 2 tablespoons oil

Mix until blended. Add 2 to 4 cups additional flour to make a stuff dough.

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Mixing pizza dough takes just a few minutes.

Adding all the ingredients to the bowl:

Adding enough additional flour to make a stiff dough:

Getting ready to knead.

Kneading before:

Kneading after. I don't knead for very long, just a couple minutes:

I drizzle a bit of oil into the mixing bowl...

...then plop the dough back into the bowl, flipping it once to make sure it's coated with oil.

Then I cover the bowl with a damp towel and let it rise in the oven (where it's warm) for, I dunno, about an hour or so.

Meanwhile the mozzarella cheese and pepperoni has been defrosting. I buy both in bulk at Chef's Store (a restaurant supply store), though I look forward to the day when I can make my own mozzarella cheese again.

When it's time to make the pizzas, I drizzle a little olive oil on the pizza pans...

...and spread it out. Then I sprinkle some cornmeal on the pan, which helps prevent the crust from sticking (and gives the crust kind of a nice crunch too).

Here's the risen dough.

I cut it in half unevenly. That's because I like a thinner pizza crust, and Don likes it a bit thicker.

Spreading the dough takes mere seconds per pizza. It's at this point I have to keep track of which pizza is which.

To Don's pizza, I add standard pizza sauce.

To my pizza, I add pesto sauce. This stuff makes Don gag, but I love it.

Ready for cheese.

Cheese:

For homemade pizzas, we tend to be lazy and just use pepperoni, but of course they can be dolled up in an infinite number of ways.

Into the oven, about 425F for 25 minutes (at which point we start monitoring). I like my pizza a bit darker, so I always put mine on the bottom rack and keep it baking longer.

Don's pizza, finished.

In my opinion, homemade pizza is every bit as good (if not better) than restaurant pizza, and hand's down better than frozen pizza. And it literally costs pennies on the dollar, especially if the ingredients are purchased in bulk.

This is a long post with lots of photos for a process that actually takes very little time. So there you go, a modest pizza-making tutorial.

6 comments:

  1. Homemade pizza is absolutely positively better than ordering in, eating out or store bought. And it costs so much less, can be made to each person's liking and you can be sure of the ingredients. After teaching my sons to make pancakes, their favorite breakfast, I then taught them to make from scratch pizza, their favorite anytime meal - 30+ years later they're still at it.

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  2. We love our homemade pizza, too! Just have never found one that tastes as good as ours. We are still on our Florida vacation, and went out for pizza with my nephew, and his wife. Our simple tasteless pizza was 35 dollars…crust, sauce, pepperoni, yellow peppers and cheese… holy moly! What a shock! Great post!

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  3. I am going to try that crust. I can’t seem to conquer the crust and so my husband doesn’t like my homemade pizza. Thanks for the post and pictures.

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  4. I made pizza often when my kids were learning fractions.

    I haven't made any since my bread machine died.

    I suddenly want pizza.

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  5. Well, I got the dough done, and my pizza looks like amorphous. I imagine it'll tasted better than it looks.... Fingers crossed.

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  6. I made pizza tonight using your recipe for the crust. It was amazing and so easy. I baked it too long. I should have checked it before twenty-five minutes. However, we ate it without complaints. We liked it so much that I think I’m making it again tomorrow. I may even let the grandkids make it when they come over. Thank you for the recipe. It’s a keeper.

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