Making your OWN homemade pizza

Sorry, I couldn't figure out the blogger option to make this into a scratch-n-sniff sticker. 

This here is homemade combination pizza with one side being the fantastic green bell pepper, LOADS of sliced fresh mushrooms, shredded mozzarella and pepperoni slices side, and the other side being Gabbers friendly - no mushrooms, no bell peppers. 

How do you make sure you don't accidentally throw off the balance of the universe and egads! serve your Gabbers bell peppers and mushrooms? 

You put one sliced mushroom on the mushroom side and one sliced olive on the olive side (both being on top the pepperoni) to identify it correctly.  

Time to make your own homemade pizza.  First of all, start with a decent dough.  This dough is what we use.  We like it.  It works great.  It's pretty inexpensive. 

You can even prepare the dry ingredients weeks and weeks ahead of time and save in the freezer in quart containers. This will make pizza night prep even easier.

Now you need a good sauce.  Please do not use a jar of spaghetti sauce-- unless you want it to taste like the pizza in elementary school.  Use Mom's recipe. 

Sauce:

one 8-ounce can tomato sauce

one 6-ounce can tomato paste

1 tablespoon olive oil (optional)

1 teaspoon oregano or 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed

1/8 teaspoon crushed dried hot red chili peppers (optional)

Warm all ingredients together in a covered saucepan over lowest heat about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Keep warm until ready to use.  Makes enough sauce for 2 to 3 pizzas.

It's easy, it's frugal, and freezes well.

I like to make a big batch and freeze it for future use. This way I only take the time to make it once, but use it on a dozen pizzas.

Assembling Pizza:

1.  Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

2.  Divide dough in half.

3.  Roll each piece of dough on a very lightly floured surface until it is about 12 to 14 inches in diameter (about the size of your pizza pan).  (NOTE:  Do not make dough too thin in the middle.)

4.  Pick up dough carefully, folding it over your arm.  Gently place dough onto pizza pan, being careful not to press dough into pan.  Form crust by rolling edge of dough, again being careful not to press dough into pizza pan.

5.  Spread sauce onto dough very carefully.  (NOTE:  Too much sauce will allow cheese to slide off after pizza is cooked.)  Evenly spread shredded (or thinly sliced) mozzarella cheese (6 ounces maximum per pizza) onto pizza.  If desired, sprinkle parmesan cheese over mozzarella.

Now add your favorite toppings!  Try not to use thick-sliced pepperoni; it makes for a greasy pizza.  Make sure if you do use pepperoni, it's on the top layer. 

Our favorite toppings:

sliced mushrooms- I prefer fresh but will used canned versus none at all

sliced black olives

sweet onions

pepperoni

green bell peppers

mozzarella

Jimmy Dean sausage (browned and crumbled first)

Bake for about 7 to 15 minutes or when crust starts browning and cheese in the middle of the pizza is bubbly. 

Remove pizza from oven, slide pizza from pan onto serving pan or large cutting board.  Slice and serve.

TIP:  Pizza pans with holes in the bottom will allow crust to have a better texture and not be soggy.  I'm not a fan of using pizza stones.    

 What's on YOUR pizza?

This post is linked at:  LifeasMom's Frugal Friday and Frugalicious Friday