We like making homemade pizza, as it lets us put whatever we want on it. My husband and I like way different things on our pizza, so usually I cave to what he wants :), which will always be some sort of meat and cheese. I'm more into the "unique" pizzas and would prefer goat cheese and arugula, but it's easier to make one, so that's what we do.
The great thing with homemade pizza, you can put whatever you want on it, so it usually works out pretty well.
We decided to use quite a few ingredients we already had, only having to purchase three things to complete our pizza making. We already had chicken andouille sausage (from Trader Joe's, it's delicious), pizza crust, and pizza sauce. Cheese and a red pepper were purchased at our amazing local market we share an alley with, Vincent's. Usually non-shredded cheese makes the pizza taste better, so we always buy the big ball of mozzarella cheese and the slices of provolone.
chopped and ready to go....
Vincent's is a family-owned market that one of my husband's friend's family owns, it's really convenient for us considering we share an alley with them. It is so nice to have a market like that for any last minute things we may need for dinner; it is especially nice when we are hungover and can scoot on over there for a soda and unhealthy snacks.
Anyways, back to the pizza...
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
After chopping all the ingredients, I prepare the pizza crust. I always utilize a mix, it's a lot easier than making everything homemade. I've used quite a few different pizzas crusts including Betty Crocker and the Boloba (the crust that comes full-size already), but I really like the Jiffy pizza crust. When it's on sale it's about $1.50, so I usually buy two. It only requires hot water and the mix, and you've got pizza dough.
bowl, mix, and 1/2 cup of hot, tap water.
Once the pizza dough is ready, make sure to use flour to flatten it out; otherwise the pizza dough will get stuck to your fingers. I learned this the hard way, and have had to buy new pizza crust mix because it got so stuck to my fingers that the crust was only enough for one person. Since then, I use flour to get the dough out of the bowl.
Flatten the dough out into the shape you want it; I usually cannot get it into a perfect circle, but that's what makes it homemade. We usually put it on tin foil (if you put it on tin foil put some oil down before flattening out the dough on it) and then on a pan to put in the oven, but that is not necessary.
After the dough is spread to the size you want, drizzle a little bit of extra virgin olive oil on the dough and then spread the pizza sauce all over it. A thin to medium layer of the sauce is really all you need, unless you like more sauce.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
sauced.
Once you have put the amount of sauce you want and spread it out, it's time for you to put all the toppings on. I always start with the large slices of provolone, put the sausage on top of that, and then place the smaller slices of mozzarella in places that I think need more cheese. I always put a little more sauce on top of the provolone slices and then sprinkle the red peppers all over the pizza (in this case 1/2 of the pizza).
pizza before placed in the oven.
(lots of meat)
Cook the pizza for about 15-20 minutes; I would say watch it pretty carefully and take it out when you are happy with the brownness of your cheese. We usually cook ours about 17 minutes or so.
And then enjoy...
yum-yum
This is how we always make our pizza, with the chicken andouille sausage, cheese, and peppers, but again any variation of ingredients will give you the same result.
Makes you feel like you are a professional pizza maker with not a whole of effort.
The people you are sharing it with will sound like that Little Caesar's guy; "Pizza! Pizza!"
No comments:
Post a Comment