Homemade Pizza

I've been hoarding food.

With three kids on three different Little League teams, I'm doing some preliminary stressing out over how we can have healthful, quick family meals on the upcoming busy evenings. In the last several weeks, I've made one or two extra casseroles every time I've prepared one for dinner. Now, keep in mind I've purchased no disposable casserole pans so I'll have to be done with the advance food prep when I'm down to a sauce pan and the omelet skillet.

With all this planning ahead, you may ask, whatever will you have today for supper? The answer, Gentle Reader, is, "I have no clue." My macro-planning is second to none. My micro-planning... not so much. Twice this week, on days that were free from scheduled events, my first thought of dinner-planning was at approximately 4:17 PM. One such day I made hamburger gravy and fried potatoes. Another day we had homemade pizza.

Do you have a pizza crust recipe from which you'll never stray? Not me. I like a thin crust. Thin like a cracker. This week I tried this recipe from Robbie's Recipe Collection online.

.25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
3/4 cup 110 degree water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt

-Dissolve yeast and sugar in water; allow to rest for 8 minutes.
-In a separate bowl, combine flour and salt.
-Pour yeast mixture over flour mixture and mix well with a heavy spoon.
-Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for 2 minutes.
-Working from the edges to the center, press dough into a 12" circle. We've also found that holding the dough up, off the counter and stretching it works well, too (keep rotating the dough circle as you stretch to keep an even circle forming).
-Place dough on a lightly greased pizza pan and stretch dough to edges.
-Spread sauce over crust and top with cheese and desired toppings.
-Bake in a 500 degree oven for 8-12 minutes, or until edges are golden.


I used black olives, sliced mushrooms and mozzarella cheese. Nothing too adventurous. An additional topping that I would like to share, however, was mini pepperoni. I saw it at the supermarket and thought it seemed sensible. My teeth never manage to bite completely through a full-sized pepperoni, and the partially bitten pepperoni tends to pull most of the cheese off the slice when I take my bite. I suppose the tiny pepperoni solved part of the problem, but the rest of the problem is the cheese itself so we still ate some naked crusts.



I still don't know if this is THE crust recipe that I'll stick with. But it was a quick meal that everyone gobbled up without complaint. Mission accomplished.