If you’re looking at this picture and thinking to yourself: “My my, but that looks good”, I would like to inform you that you are not wrong. It was good. A little too good.
Why too good, you ask? Well, because, I am now in possession of some dangerous information: I now know how to make pizza dough. I have the easiest-ever recipe bookmarked, I own bread flour, I have a few packages of instant yeast lying around – and honey, you better come save me from myself. If you only knew how much I love pizza…
Conveniently, this is a “bread-like” recipe, which means I’m a quarter done my bread-baking resolution! But I have a feeling that thanks to lots of inspiration and this initial success, I’ll be baking more than 4 breads this year.
Wanna know how to make it yourself? That’s a rhetorical question, obviously.
I used this recipe from Shutterbean, and it worked beautifully. It’s very simple – no kneading! Did you hear me? No kneading. So pizza is well within your grasp.
You’ll need bread flour, instant yeast, salt sugar and water. Told you it was easy.
Ingredients
Original recipe here
- 3 3/4 cups bread flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast
- 3/4 teaspoon table salt
- 3/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1 1/3 cups water
Stir together the dry ingredients. Add the water, and using your hands mix together until it forms a “shaggy” ball. Try your best to incorporate all the flour, it will try to stay on the bottom of the bowl!
Cover with plastic wrap or a dish towel and let rise at room temperature for 2 hours. Remove, split into two balls. Let them sit wrapped in a damp towel for half an hour. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. [We baked 2 pizzas at once, so the bottom one got a little charred at this temperature, though the top one was perfect. Adjust the temperature at your discretion.]
Oil a cookie sheet. Stretch the dough out until it is roughly the size of the sheet. [I found this was best accomplished by stretching it out in mid-air, rather than on the pan, and letting gravity gently stretch it.]
Pile with your favourite toppings! Bake for 20-25 minutes.
___________
We had a pizza party, which meant we asked everyone who came to bring some toppings. We made a few really great pizzas, including:
- Veggie: peppers, onions, olives, mushrooms, corn (sounds weird, but tasty!)
- Many Cheeses: asiago, mozzarella, cheddar, Boursin, goat cheese (crowd favourite!)
- Pepperoni: veggies, pepperoni, cheese
You get the picture. It was a really fun idea for a party and everyone loved the pizza!
Happy pizza-making! (Just don’t get too carried away…)
