Last night was pizza night in my household. So, like any good Midwestern girl would do, I made enough pizza for the whole neighborhood. Like literally, I made four pizzas. For THREE people. THREE. Tonight I will be sharing a foolproof recipe for homemade pizza dough! Now I know some of you at home reading this at home are saying things like:
"I can't make homemade pizza dough"
"My dough never rises"
"But I'm not experienced enough to make homemade bread or pizza dough"
Rest assured, my fellow foodies, cast your worries aside. Cassie is here and she will help you through it. (I feel like I should start a cooking/baking therapy hotline. Like oh it's Valentine's Day and you are trying to impress your boyfriend by making him a nice dinner and you need a killer dessert to make? Try making heart-shaped cookies or an ice cream pie! You have in-laws coming over and you just burnt the chicken in the oven and now it is basically chewy leather? Call me up and I will be your shoulder to cry on while you are sitting in the corner of your pantry with a glass of wine in your hand googling four star restaurants in the area because your chicken is now *gulp* jerky. (I feel your pain, girl, I feel your pain!) We've all had our fair share of kitchen eff-ups, mistakes, messes, etc...Whatever you want to call them, we have all dealt with them. Whether we are by ourselves trying out a recipe for the first time or entertaining a crowd of 20, sh*t happens, kids. And that is okay!
Enough of my rambling, let's get to the "dough" of this post! ;)
If at any point, you are internally panicking about making this pizza dough through the whole process, send me a comment below, and I'll help get you through your mid-dough crisis! (Which hopefully doesn't occur because this recipe is foolproof!)
This pizza just screams "Gimme some oven!"
Amiright?
Foolproof Pizza Crust:
Ingredients:
1 tsp. or 1/2 packet active dry yeast
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling (any kind of oil would work here)
Instructions:
1. Pour one and a half cups warm water into a bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over the water. Water should be anywhere from 100 degrees F to 115 degrees F. It should be warm but not screaming hot. If you have trouble deciphering the temperature, buy a kitchen thermometer so you are 100% sure :)
2. Combine the flour and salt in a mixing bowl.
3. With an electric mixer on low speed using the dough hook, drizzle in the olive oil until just incorporated.
4. In a separate bowl, gently stir the yeast/water mixture.
5. Drizzle in the yeast/water mixture into the flour/oil mixture. Mix until the dough forms a ball. (You can also mix this just using a spoon and your hands until the dough comes together.)
6. Drizzle a little olive oil into a clean bowl (I just used my mixing bowl that I used to make the dough in, it was spotless!). Toss the ball of dough in the bowl and turn over to coat it in oil.
7. Cover the bowl with a moist kitchen towel and set in a warm place for an hour or two, or cover with plastic wrap and store in the fridge for up to two days.
8. To prepare the pizza, heat your oven to a high temperature such as 425 F. (This is the temperature I used and it worked out great! Feel free to experiment with temperatures, the recipe states 500 F, so if you are feeling like a dare devil, do it. I dare you!)
9. Time to roll out the dough: I divided this pizza dough into for balls and made four extra thin crust pizzas. If you like your crusts a little thicker, you could make two pizzas out of this or even one, it just depends on how thick you like your pizza.
10. I sprinkled a little flour out on my clean counter top and rolled my dough out to fit the size of the pizza pan. (Note: This is a fun time to get the kids involved! Give them little pieces of dough to roll out and then they can cut out the dough with cookie cutters to make cute little shaped pizzas! Fun family activity, get the kiddos involved. They will be more likely to eat something that they helped make. But like, who doesn't love pizza?)
11. Lay your desired sauce on the dough along with toppings and you are ready for oven time! My super thin crusted pizzas were baking for about 15 minutes in a 425 F oven and it was perfect. If you have your oven set to 500 F, it will only take around 8-10 minutes. Just watch until the cheese is starting to get a nice golden color on it or until the crust is golden brown.
12. Erase the local pizza joint's phone number out of your phone because once you get a taste for homemade pizza, you will never go back to take-out :)
So there you have it, folks. Pizza crust made easy! I hope you didn't find the recipe to be too long, I really wanted to be thorough because while I don't have a cooking/baking therapy hotline up yet, I have a blog so I wanted it to feel as if I was actually making the dough and cooking the pizza with you:) And remember, if you burn your pizza...forgo step 12 and give them a call because your family is probably hungry ;) Just kidding! But seriously...don't walk away from the oven.
In Pizza We Crust!
*So....get in your kitchen, put your apron on, and let's get Cookin' with Cassie!*
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