Saturday night dinners have sort of defaulted to pizza every week *ahem*... and sometimes mid-week. There are definitely cheap alternatives out there to grab a pizza and bring it home. For instance, Little Caesar's has a $5.00 hot and ready pepperoni every evening. However, I am against it for two main reasons:
1) Each slice is nearly 300 calories and fattening as all holy Hades.
2) Even when we do splurge and get one we need 2 larges to feed us all because we never feel full. And finally when we think we are satisfied... we are hungry again an hour later. That to me is a red flag for empty, EMPTY calories.
I am including two go-to recipes in this post. Our fail-proof pizza dough and homemade pizza sauce.
Lots of people don't know that pizza dough is easily made ahead and frozen for future use. Just because you want to make a homemade pizza doesn't mean you need to take 3 hours preparing the dough, letting it rise, rolling it out then baking. I will make dough and freeze ahead. On pizza day you simply pull the ball of dough from the freezer in the morning, put in an oiled bowl, cover with damp cloth and let it sit the day to thaw and rise... ready by dinner to roll out and put on your toppings. Easy peasy!
The pizza sauce is just as easy to make ahead a freeze then thaw the day of for use. I love to put the pizza sauce into my silicone muffin mold and freeze. Then wrap the individual frozen sauce pucks in cling wrap and put them all in one freezer bag. Thaw each sauce disk in a microwave safe bowl and spread onto your dough. Super duper easy peasy!
Mama Woody's Fail-Proof Pizza Dough (Seriously hard to mess this up!)
Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
2 and 1/4 tsp (or a pkt) active dry yeast
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil (or canola oil)
3 cups bread flour (give or take 1/2 cup depending on heat & humidity)
Put the warm water in the mixing bowl. Add yeast and sugar. Let sit a few minutes until the yeast activates and starts to foam like this:
Then add the oil, salt and about 2 cups of the bread flour. Use dough hook to mix until well incorporated. Then slowly add the last cup of flour while mixing until you can touch the dough without leaving a bunch of the dough stuck to your finger. Then set the mixer on medium and let the dough hook knead for 6 minutes... no less! If you do not have a mixer with a dough hook - you will need to knead the dough by hand which might take up to 15 minutes depending on your experience with kneading dough. The dough is done when smooth and soft to the touch. You should be able to poke it with your finger and have it spring back at you. When it does this then it is successfully kneaded!
Drizzle a little bit of olive oil to the sides of the bowl and roll the dough ball around in it so it is nicely coated. Now it needs to rise for 1-2 hours until it doubles in size.
This is how I successfully get a rise out of my dough. I start the oven to preheat 350 degrees but after only 60 seconds I switch it off. Dough rises best in a warm draft free area and a slightly warmed oven is perfect! I also run a clean cloth under hot water and ring out to lay over the top of the bowl. This keeps the top of the dough from drying out. If the top of the dough dries out then it will not rise properly.
Once the dough has risen, punch it down and pull it from the bowl. From this point you can use the whole ball to make one X-Large thicker crust pizza or you can cut it in half to make two medium-large pizzas. I do pizza a little differently. Since I am watching calories... and everyone loves having their own personal size pizza... I divide the dough into 8 small dough balls. It's like having your own big slice made into a personal size pizza! This way I know that my pizza has 200 calories worth of dough without worrying about if I cut my slice too big!
If I am preparing the dough ahead of time (which if I'm dividing into 8 balls I always have leftovers to freeze for later!), I then wrap the dough balls individually in cling wrap and then place all wrapped dough balls in one freezer bag and into the freezer they go! With smaller balls of dough it only takes a few hours to thaw and rise the day of... also saving time!
Now you are ready to make your pizza! Roll out the dough to desired thickness and top with sauce and desired yumminess atop it. Once your pizza is successfully topped - Bake at 425 degrees for about 12 minutes for individual pizzas and 16-18 minutes for family size pizzas!
Mama Woody's Ridiculously Easy (and Tasty!) Pizza Sauce
Ingredients:
6 oz can tomato paste (the tiny can!)
4-6 oz tap water (to desired sauce thickness)
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
pinch of dried basil
1/2 tsp italian seasoning
1/4 tsp ground red pepper
1/4 tsp salt
dash of Tabasco or hot sauce of choice
Mix well and let chill in the refrigerator at least one hour before use.
We all know with pizza toppings the possibilities are endless. This evening in particular I decided to go with mild turkey sausage, bell peppers, onions and mozzarella cheese. Try and pretend that you don't want to devour that!
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