Pizza

Home made pizza is kind of a staple in this house. Making the dough is therapy for me, and I love to experiment with what I have on hand. Our pizza is seldom, "normal" if you will. Pizza and Quiche are the two things I consider my "leftover" dinners. I basically put in them any veggies I have on hand, and whatever sounds good at the time. In the summer we tend to make spinach, zucchini, squash, tomato, and fresh basil type of pizzas, and winter tends to have more meat.  (If you think that's weird, you should have seen the ones I made when I was pregnant with Grace!)

Anyways, since my dough recipe is my favorite it in the whole world I'll go ahead and share it. As with most other recipes it is a guide, it isn't the 10 commandments, you have to just go with it. Water and oil measurements will vary based on the flour you use, and your elevation so a good rule of thumb is to just add it till the dough is sticky and soft, but forms into a dough. Now for the recipe

3 C. Flour

1 TB. Yeast

1 tsp. Salt

3 TB. Parmesan Cheese

2-4 TB. Olive Oil (2 for white crust, 4 for whole wheat)

1 to 2 TB. Sugar

1 1/2 C. REALLY warm water

 (This is a half wheat flour, half white recipe)

Grace wanted a turn at reading the recipe

And I have no explanation for the bottom one except she just decided to kiss the recipe! She REALLY likes helping. Looks like the goof ball will be good at yoga, eh? 

Let it rise in a warm oven, with a wet cloth over it for an hour, or until about doubled, and then punch it down, roll it out and coat it with your garlic butter. I used sauteed garlic, oregano, basil, butter, a pizza blend I have, and a couple more I forget...Sorry! But use what you have on hand! Fresh is awesome, 

But I won't have any of that probably till it gets a little warmer or I buy some indoor plants. (Fyi, basil is SUPER hard to kill in a pot in the window sill, and tastes awesome!)

I decided as per usual to do one with ingredients that appeal to my husband, and one with ingredients that appeal to me. Gracie was going to make her own pizza, but she decided that her dough was best worn as a, "hat momma, hat!" 

So for my pizza I first spread half with pesto. Now fresh is SO the way to go with pesto, but I can never justify paying 14-20 dollars for pine nuts! So Classico is good too. ;) Then I dumped on all the fresh spinach I had in the house, some artichokes and olives, and I should mention for the sauce I made home made alfredo sauce. I didn't use tomato sauce for either pizzas this time.

(seemed to have failed to get a picture with the olives and artichokes)

Next was Craig's pizza, I just put some shredded chicken and BBQ sauce in a bowl, mixed it together and added sliced onion to the top.

Then I put cheese on both of them, and decided to add pepperoni to mine. (I told you, ya just go with the mood. lol)

Now let's talk about the gross yellowness going on here. I just used cheddar cheese on these, with some low end Parmesan on the top. NORMALLY, what you want for the pizza are mozzarella and blue cheese on the BBQ, and Gorgonzola, fresh Parmesan, and mozzarella on the pesto one. However, this was all I had on hand, and when I pictured in my mind going to the store for the good stuff it was accompanied by visions of my dear sweet husband saying, "you randomly went to the store out of the designated budget and spent HOW much on cheese?!" and so I decided to be frugal. (but the other kind is better, just sayin) 

So then I popped them in the oven and....

TADA! These aren't the greatest finished product photos, but the pizza was actually really yummy!

As a side note, for those of you who thought my spinach, artichoke, pesto, Alfredo concoction sounded weird, my carnivorous husband stole all of mine, and then took the leftovers to work the next day. We both liked it better than the BBQ, although that was good too.

And as for Gracie...

She thought making pizza was lots of fun, but she definitely came out of the process less clean...

Enjoy!