Skip to main content

Pizza!

While my nephew is visiting this week I taught him how to make the homemade NY style pizza that I've come up with over the last six months, and he loved it as much as my guy. This will also help him save money when he goes home, as it costs only about $5.00 to make (less if you get the ingredients on sale.) Since he gave the recipe a thumbs-up I've decided to share it online.

Valerean's Homemade Pizza

For the dough:

2/3 cup warm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast (I use Fleischmann’s in the jar; keep in the fridge)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Mix yeast, sugar and olive oil in the warm water. Add flour and salt, and mix by hand or in mixer with dough hook for 5 minutes.

Spray a medium bowl with PAM or other oil spray. Place dough in bowl, spray with top with oil and cover with plastic wrap. Place bowl of dough in larger bowl half-filled with hot water, cover everything with kitchen towel. Let the dough sit and rise for 1 hour (after 30 minutes change the water in the big bowl with hot water, and preheat your oven to 475F.)

For the pizza sauce:

14.5 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1-1/2 teaspoons of dry basil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Three shakes of pepper
Three shakes of salt
Mix together and let stand while the dough is rising so the herbs infuse the tomatoes. (Note: one 14.5 oz. can of crushed tomatoes plus the herbs makes enough sauce for three pizzas. Freeze the leftover sauce in two containers for future use.)

For the topping:

½ lb. whole milk mozzarella shredded (I buy the Great Value 1 lb. block at Wal-Mart and use it for two pizzas.)
Pepperoni, veggies, sausage, or whatever pizza toppings you like

Assembling the pizza:
Spray your pizza pan with PAM or cooking oil spray
Roll your dough into a ball and place in the center of the pan
Using your fist, spread the dough out by mashing it down and working it out toward the edges of the pan in a circular motion.
Once the crust is shaped, add one ladle of pizza sauce (or 1/2 cup) and spread over crust in a circular motion. It won’t look like enough but it is.
Top your pizza sauce with the shredded mozzarella
Top your mozzarella with your other toppings.
Spray a little olive oil on top if desired

Bake your pizza at 475F for 12 minutes. Enjoy!

Comments

Maria Zannini said…
They look fantastic! I love a thick crust.

I wonder if I could make smaller pizzas from each portion of dough. Greg always wants a ton of meat on his and I prefer veggie pizzas.

Do you suppose the cooking time would be the same for smaller pizzas?
Definitely trying this next week. Thanks!
the author said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
the author said…
I think the cooking time would be the same as the dimensions are what you're changing, not the thickness of the pizza. Thinner pizza = less cooking time. To get the thicker crust, let the pizza sit for about ten minutes after you assemble it so the dough can rise a little more. Good luck and hope you like it. :)

Popular posts from this blog

Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Wild Ride

Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds is an epic, dazzling film that hurls you into the Korean version of the afterlife while showcasing some of the most impressive special effects I've ever seen in any movie. The story begins with the death of firefighter Kim Ja-Hong (Cha Tae-hyun) who jumps out of a burning building with a child in his arms. The kid lives, but he dies at the scene. Two strangers inform him that he has passed away right on schedule, and toss him into a vortex that takes him to the world of the afterlife, where he meets his three guardians: Gang-rim (Ha Jung-woo), Haewonmak (Ju Ji-hoon) and Lee Deok-choon (Kim Hyang-gi). At the gates of the afterlife Ja-Hong learns that he is considered a paragon (an exemplary person who lived a noble and self-sacrificing life) and is eligible to be reincarnated -- but there's a catch. First he has 49 days to make it through seven hells in which he will be judged on his sins. His three guardians will help and defend...