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6.20.2012

Food Firsts (4)

On Sunday, Mr. Lovely and I had pizza. I made the dough (my first attempt) and it didn't even suck!

The recipe was adapted from here.

4 1/2 cups  whole wheat flour
1 3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil (optional)
1 3/4 cups water, ice cold (40°F)
Semolina flour OR cornmeal for dusting

I am not going to go into the making of the dough in detail; if you want more information, you can go to the original site. Basically, add together all the dry ingredients. Then add the oil and water and stir, using a metal spoon kept cold, or your hands, which you should keep dipping in ice water. Once the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl (about 5 mins), split it into 6 equal portions. Each portion should make about a 9 inch pizza.

I kept two portions in the fridge and put the rest in the freezer to pull out later. When you are ready to use the dough, take it out of the fridge about 2 hours beforehand. Flatten out the ball and cover loosely with a piece of saran wrap until it's time to cook. When you are ready with all your toppings, you can throw the crust or you can just roll it with a pie roller. I put cornmeal on my baking sheet and placed my crust on it, then poked holes in it with a knife to keep it from rising.  Put your toppings on and then cook on your oven's highest setting (mine is 550) for about 6-10 minutes (mine took 7).

The Topping Bar

Serve and enjoy! We had a ton of fun and this is a great idea for if you are having people over, because each person can make their own pizza with whatever they want on it!  As you can see, some people like to heap stuff on theirs and some people take a more simple approach. You can try to guess whose is whose.




Do you ever make your own crust? Or add your own toppings? What is your favorite pizza topping?

15 comments:

  1. Kyria..love "Mr. Lovely"...anyway, I'm a big pizza fan but never made my own. "My Capt" and I look for pizza places to try. We really should write a book, because we have been to MANY!! My favorite toppings are spinach and broccoli. Like the bar graphs!! Hmmmm...maybe I need to learn how to do that? LOL. You have a great blog!!

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  2. Yum! Those look delicious. I have never made my own pizza, but my brother does it all the time as my nephews love to pick out their own toppings and eat their own little pizzas. I was going to attempt to make a GF crust once but the directions said to beat the batter to a cake like consistency and then poor onto a pizza pan and that just did not sound like something that would make a great crust. ;)

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  3. I love making pizza dough. It seems to be one of the few bread/yeast items I can make that usually doesn't suck. Even better when you grill the pizzas!! Yum!

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  4. I do love pizza dough! I usually make a quadruple recipe and throw three balls of dough into a ziploc in the freezer. I put it in the fridge overnight to defrost, and I find that the pre-frozen dough actually makes a better pizza. The first batch often tends to be too yeasty and bread-y because I'm too lazy to knead and stretch enough. The freezer kills off enough yeast to relax the dough and get that nice, stretchy pizza texture. So in this case really the leftovers are better!
    I also like to make my pizza in the morning and stick it in the fridge so I can just pop it in the oven when I get home. The sauce sitting on the dough creates that particular soft texture that restaurant pizza has under the cheese and is hard to recreate at home.

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  5. I loooooooooove Kelley's homemade pizzas. She's been through several different dough recipes and has finally settled on the best one. It's fluffy and crusty at the same time.

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  6. Yum! I love pizza. Love it! Yours looks awesome. I have made my own crust a few times, but it's been a while. YUM!!!

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  7. Once I finally figured out the best recipe for me, we have pizza all the time because it's so easy! Plus you can make it super healthy or just the way you like it, and everyone can customize their own. Love it :)

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  8. I have never made pizza dough myself. My sister does though and now you! So I had better get on it!

    I usually just use a whole wheat torilla and then load it up when I make a pizza for myself.

    Thanks for sharing... and I am guessing yours is the top one!

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  9. Nice job- those look awesome! We always make our own dough- it's usually enough for 3 pizzas, and so I freeze two and so far we can get by on splitting one, but as L gets older that's gonna change. :) Ironically, I'm making pizza today! It's a good recipe for cleaning out the fridge when we're running low and need to get groceries.

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  10. I always used to make my own dough. I was all old school and would let it rise for 24 hours like my grandma did.

    And then I had four kids and never cooked again.

    Not really. We all just really like thin crust/flatbread pizza. So instead of making our own crust, we now eat Matzo pizzas. Basically, take a matzo, spread sauce, sprinkle with cheese and add whatever toppings. Let the cheese melt. 6 minutes and dinner is done.

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  11. I love making my own pizza, but I've never tried making my own crust. I usually buy the pre-made stuff from Fresh & Easy, which is pretty yummy. But I might be willing to give this one a try!

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  12. I've never made my own dough and only made my own pizza once. You guys did a great job with your pizzas!

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  13. We make our own pizza so often that even my two-year-old can do it. Lately we've been doing tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil, and feta cheese. Mmm, maybe we'll make pizza tonight!

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  14. I love my own crust. My favorite is Jenna's (not sure if it's hers) from Eat Live Run and I always add a little rosemary in the dough. I hardly make it however because I never have time to let the dough rise. So usually it's a local bakery's dough or Trader Joe's. But I love making pizza at home. It just tastes better and has the perfect amount of cheese.

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  15. Yum! I've never made my own crust but I use the premade from Whole Foods and add my favorite (or family favorite) toppings. The family enjoys pizza night that is sometimes everyone making their own. I've also done this for dinner parties outside. Everyone makes their own and we grill the pizzas.

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