We had just finished setting up the Christmas Tree, the kids were off to bed, and it was time for dinner. Neither Wen or myself were feeling like cooking something elaborate so we decided pizza was the simplest thing to do for dinner. One problem – no dough!
Two minutes of Googling and we had a basic pizza dough recipe. I had to make a few tweaks like the sugar & herb mixture.
The Ingredients:
1 teaspoon bread machine yeast
1-3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Italian Herb mixture
1/4 cup vegetable oil
4-1/2 cups flour
1-3/4 cup ice-cold water (leave ice out of dough)
The Process:
Make a dough in your mixer. I prefer using half the flour to start mix all of the other ingredients until well blended and then slowly add the rest of the flour until I get the dough to the correct consistency. For pizza dough, you want it to stick to the bottom of the mixing bowl put pull off the sides. When ready I turned the dough out onto my lightly floured countertop. I divided the dough into 4 equal portions. Each portion will make a 9-12” pizza. I coated the other three dough balls with a little oil and put them into freezer bags for future enjoyment.
Form the dough into a rustic pizza, lay it on top of cornmeal, apply your favorite toppings, bake at 400F, remove from oven when it reaches your desired doneness.
Voila – the finished pie! I think we went overboard on the toppings which prevented the dough from cooking how I wanted. I have read that less is more when it comes to toppings, so I will try that approach on the next pie in addition to letting the dough rest a bit and maybe getting a mini-rise out of it before placing it in a hot oven.
