Friday Night: Pizza Night!!

It's Friday again! Yeah! And in our family it's a double YEAH because Friday night is pizza night - our favorite! This is a tradition that my family had in our home growing up. The last few years, I've tried to adopt it as a tradition in our family as well. At first it was hard because all the dough recipes we had made too many pizzas. We have a small family so we would eat pizza leftovers all week. That make it difficult to want to make pizza again the next Friday. But we've done a lot of experimenting. Brandon actually is the discoverer of this dough recipe. I just adapted it to be whole-wheat. This is a VERY Easy, VERY Healthy, VERY Delicious recipe. 

The secret to good pizza is cooking it on a pizza stone. It makes it crispy and delicious. We leave ours in the oven all the time. I know some people who take theirs out when they are not using it because they say that it affects their other cooking. We don't want to break ours by transporting it so we leave it in and it doesn't seem to affect the other cooking we do. If anything it seems to enhance it. As a side note, cookies baked on a pizza stone are also delicious! We transport our pizza in and out of the oven on a large pizza paddle. It's a lot easier to slide on and off the stone with the paddle. Just sprinkle a little corn meal on top of the paddle for an even easier slide!

Here's our dough recipe:

Pizza Crust
Printable Recipe

*Makes 2 large pizzas

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 Cups Water
1 tsp. salt 
1 Tbsp. powdered milk
1 Tbsp. honey or brown sugar
2-1/2 – 3-1/2 Cups Freshly-ground Wheat flour
1/8 Cup Gluten Flour
1 Tbsp. instant yeast 

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 475 - 500 F (This temp will depend on how hot your oven cooks). Heat water in the microwave for 1-1/2 minutes or until hotter than 110 F. Then add water, salt, milk, and sugar in Bosch mixer. Add 1-1/2 Cup wheat flour and gluten flour. Then add the yeast on top. Set mixer at 2nd speed and mix adding more wheat flour until dough barely begins to pull from sides (you may not need all of it). Mix to let gluten work in for about 6 min. Cover dough and let rise for about 15-20 minutes.

Sprinkle counter with olive oil. Coat rolling pin in oil. Divide dough into two pieces and roll out each into a large circle (10 - 12” diameter) and place each on parchment paper. Let raise for 5-10 min. Add sauce and cheese and other toppings as desired. Bake on preheated 475 - 500 F pizza stone, for 6-10 min or until crispy and cheese is bubbly. 

*Note: If you're making bread sticks, use the same steps and instead of rolling out the dough on olive oil just form the bread sticks. Brush tops with melted butter, and sprinkle with any topping such as garlic or onion salt, parmesan cheese, sesame or poppy seeds, or seasoned salt. Allow to rise 15-20 minutes (although change in size is not evident). Bake at 400 degrees about 10-15 minutes. They are great dipped or spread with butter as you eat them. Yield: About 24 bread sticks.

Basic Pizza Sauce

Our basic pizza sauce is very easy (sometimes I add blended vegetables to this). 
Simmer Together:
1 8-oz. can tomato sauce
1 tsp. pizza seasoning

This make enough sauce for 1-2 large pizzas.

You can also use alfredo sauce instead of this red sauce and it's also very tasty.

Our favorite toppings include:

• Canadian bacon, sliced pineapple and roasted almonds (My #1 favorite)
• Pepperoni w/ black olives, green peppers
• Chopped tomatoes, green peppers, onions, black olives, other veggies

Here are some similar topics I've blogged about earlier:

• Bread-Making Tips and Tools
• Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Here are some great tools that we use in making pizza: