Pizza! Pizza Crust at home!

I was craving homemade pizza. Tombstone wouldn't do. Wasting money on a delivery wasn't right, either. But (there's always a "but") - we didn't have any crust.

Homemade pizza crust is something I haven't mastered yet. I've used mixes with limited success, and I've never made my own. I took a deep breath, reached for Organizing Dinner; 70 Meals, 1 trip to the store. I tried her pizza crust recipe; lo and behold, it worked!

Pizza Crust

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 packet (1 1/2 tsp) dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup very warm water (120-130 degrees)

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

Generously grease a baking sheet, and place on middle rack of oven. In a medium bowl, stir together 1/2 cup of the flour, yeast, and salt until well blended. Add water and oil. Mix until almost smooth. Gradually stir in remaining flour to make a firm dough. Cover; let sit for 15 minutes. Generously prick dough with fork. Roll out and prebake at 400 degrees F for 10-12 minutes or just until edges of crust begin to turn a light golden brown. Remove from oven.

At this point you get to add the toppings. I use a basic marinara or spaghetti sauce, spread thin, with onions and peppers sliced thin and fresh oregano sprinkled generously on top. After that we choose a meat or other special toppings. Basil and spinach make a nice veggie pizza with a little feta cheese. One of my favorite pizzas was the one I topped with fresh pepperoni from the neighborhood meat market. Oh, that was good! The butcher sliced it thin for me, too. Lastly, of course, the cheese. I cover the entire pizza with grated mozzarella (I keep a ball of mozzarella in the freezer; it thaws quickly and grates well while partially frozen) and then supplement it with whatever cheeses we have in the refrigerator. Why, yes, we do always have cheese available. Doesn't everybody?

The Organizing Dinner blog posted the same recipe recently. I can vouch for its simplicity; try it! The fun part is choosing toppings. Yes, I live in Wisconsin; our pizzas always have plenty of locally made cheese. In my house, it also has home-grown oregano, brought in from the deck to live on a bookshelf for the winter. In the summertime - well, I think I'll wait until summer to post this again. I'll share my ideas of fun with farm market produce on a pizza crust.

No, this is not a sponsored post. Nope. Just a hungry day and a solution to my dinner dilemma. Enjoy!

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