Homemade Pizza

Anybody else love pizza?  For me, pizza is right up there with Mexican food.  I believe that I would have no trouble existing solely on pizza and Mexican food.  Ok, maybe I would like to have chocolate somewhere in there too...

But, back to pizza.  I have loved the stuff since I was little.  Some of my favorite early memories are of eating pizza.  Hilarious!  Seriously though, I can remember being a little girl and going to this pizza place by us that was called Grambolis.  It was kind of a darkly-lit place, with those little red glass candles on each table (which my brother once tried to use to burn down the place).  They also had cool arcade games, the coolest being a sit-down Pac-Man game that my brother and I would play.  Oh, and I almost forgot, they had really amazing pan crust pizza.  :) 

Maybe pizza doesn't just taste good...maybe it's also comforting to me.  It makes me feel happy and reminds me of those fun pizza experiences when I was a kid.  It's amazing how food can do that!

A few years ago I decided that I wanted to be AWESOME at making my own pizza.  I did some serious research and have tried many recipes and I finally have a somewhat perfected version.  The base of my recipe comes from one of my amazing culinary instructors, Chef Tom Beckman.  The man is awesome and I loved his class so much.  I adapted it a little because I wanted to incorporate a little more sweetness as well as some whole wheat flour. 

If you've never made pizza from scratch, you are really missing out.  Give this recipe a try and you won't be disappointed.  Also, the great thing about this dough is that if you aren't going to use it all, you can wrap it up and store it in your freezer.  Good luck!

Pizza Dough Recipe (base recipe from Chef Tom Beckman)
makes 2 pizzas
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cup warm water
1 envelope active dry yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cup bread flour
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp honey
1 1/2 tsp salt

Method:
Straight dough.  This basically means you can put everything together (except the salt, you add that in after you've mixed for awhile) in your stand mixer (with dough hook attachment) and blend away on low speed for about 6 minutes or until you've gotten some good gluten development.  It also helps to get the warm water and yeast started before adding the remaining ingredients.  After it's mixed, shape it into a ball, cover and let rise in a non-drafty place for about an hour.  After that first rise, punch down the dough and form into 2 separate balls.  Cover and let rise again for another hour or so.  After that, you are ready to roll it out and make your pizza.  Bake in a preheated oven set at 500'F with a pizza stone...it should only take a few minutes.  Enjoy!

Mixin' with my dough hook.

Ready for the first rise.

It grew!  My dough ball after the first rise.

Ready for the second rise.

Yum, time to eat!  Pesto, fresh spinach, grape tomato and goat cheese.