Recipe: Homemade Pizza

Friday night is usually pizza night in our house.  For several years, we used to order out every week.  Since my daughters each enjoy different types of pizza, eventually it got to the point where we couldn’t agree where we would order from.  For the past year or so, we have been making our own and that seems to have solved the problem.

Everyone is happy because the whole family loves homemade pizza.  The girls especially enjoy rolling out their own dough to the size and thickness they prefer.  We love experimenting with different sauces, and the girls love customizing their personal pizzas with their favorite toppings.

We make this just about every week, and I love that  is very simple to make, it costs a fraction of the price of ordering out, I don’t have to worry about what we’re going to have for dinner on Friday’s, and everyone is happy (a rare occurrence at dinnertime in our house)!  Once you have the ingredients on hand, it really is very simple to make and takes very little time of actual preparation.  It has become a part of my regular Friday routine to take 10 minutes to put the dough ingredients into the bread maker and start it just before the girls get home from school.  Around 4:30, it is ready to roll out and each family member is able to customize their creation and bake it.  By 5:00, we are all eating our hot, cheesy pizza creations loaded with our favorite toppings.

This is one of our favorite family traditions!  When the girls are grown, I hope they have fond memories of Friday night pizza nights. 🙂  Here is our recipe:

Homemade Pizza

• Pizza dough (see our favorite recipe below)
• Pizza sauce
• Freshly shredded mozzarella cheese
• Toppings you like (pepperoni, meatball, onions, peppers, pineapple, etc.)

Dough Ingredients

• 1 cup warm water (between 95°F and 115°F…use a thermometer to test)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 Tablespoons honey
• 3 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 – 2 Tablespoons yeast (or 2 packets)

Instructions

1. Add dough ingredients in order listed above to bread machine. Plug in bread machine, select dough setting, and press start.
2. When bread machine beeps (mine takes 1 ½ hours), take the dough out and put on a floured surface. Form dough into a ball. Cut off 1/3 of the dough.  I divide the 1/3 dough into 3 equal pieces and give it to my 3 girls to make their own individual pizza creations.
3. Take the 2/3 dough and roll into a ball.  Flatten into a greased 12” round pizza pan, pushing down and spreading it so the dough is distributed evenly throughout the pan. Take a fork and put puncture holes all over the dough to prevent bubbles.
4. Add about 1 cup pizza sauce and spread evenly over center of pizza, stopping about 1″ from the outer crust of the pizza.
5. Sprinkle about 1-1 ½ cups mozzarella cheese evenly over sauce, covering entire pizza.
6. Add any additional toppings you desire.
7. Cook in 400° oven on the 3^rd rack for approximately 12 minutes.

Here are a few of the different creations my daughters came up with.  One of my daughters likes to fold the dough and make it into a calzone; my youngest likes to make it into a big fat roll with just a dab of sauce and lots of cheese on top; and my 10-year-old just likes to roll it flat and make a regular pizza out of it.  The best part of all is that they are all happy! 🙂  We love Friday night pizza night!