Homemade Pizza, Sauce and Crust

Monday night, Tommy and I made some homemade pizza and sauce together. It turned out really well.  Here's a picture of our finished masterpiece.  Wanna know more?  Read on...

(Note: There aren't any missing ingredients. I keep getting spaces between my ingredients and can't figure out how to remove them.  When I go to edit, they're not there, grrrrr!)


Crust Ingredients:
3/4C + 2T Water                                                     
3/4t Salt                                                                  
2T Crisco*                                                           
2 1/2C A/P Flour                                                                                            
2t Sugar                                                                 
2t Active Dry Yeast                                                    
Cornmeal for dusting pan (not pictured)                                                                                   

Place Water, Salt and Crisco in your Bread Machine pan. 

 Add Flour, Sugar and Yeast.  Shut lid and select Dough 

option on your machine and press Start.

NOTE: You do not have to let it go through the whole cycle 

that takes an hour and a half.  

By the time you complete your sauce, your dough should be ready.

Now is where you'll start your incredibly simple, awesomely cheap sauce! 

 Sauce Ingredients:
1- 8oz Can Tomato Sauce

1t Garlic Powder                                                          

1 1/2t Sugar                                                        

1/4t Onion Powder                                                                                                                       

3/4t Italian Seasoning                                            
1t Paprika                                                                                  

1/8t Salt                                                                                 

1/8t Black Pepper 

Now, these next few instructions are incredibly difficult, 

so please pay attention, ha ha ha...

Dump your sauce into a bowl and place your spices on top.  

Oooohh, this is a lot of work, no?

Next, mix them together....oh, the agony...

So, back to our dough... 

What?!  That's it?!  The sauce is done?  Yes, ma'am!  It is!  

I don't have to cook it?!  No, ma'am, you don't!

But it can't possibly be that easy!  Yes, ma'am it is, now shut your mouth!
~

As I stated earlier, your dough should be done by the time you finish your sauce.

You should have a lovely little dough ball like this.  

And because we used Crisco,

you can easily pick it up and work with it and it won't stick to your fingers!  

Ahhh, beautiful Crisco!

 

Next, I just stretched the dough a bit in my hands, then laid it on my sheet pan 

(lined with parch and dusted with corn meal).  

Forgot to take a pic of the cornmeal dusting.  Sorry 'bout that.  

I then took a small rolling pin and flattened the dough out a bit.  

Didn't even care that it didn't get into the corners. I just go with the flow...

Next, take a fork and dock your dough.  This will help to avoid large bubbles,

which I actually like now that I think about it, so maybe I'll skip this step next time.

Now you can slather on as little or as much of that inexpensive, 

incredibly tasty** sauce you made in two minutes!

Then, add the toppings of your choice!  

On the left, we have Tommy's choices, which are Bacon and Black Olives.

On the right, Mommy chose Hamburger*** and Onion.

(Please take a moment to note that my beef is not really gray, merely frozen)

Then add your cheese of choice.  Sorry, I have to sing it...

"Cheese, Glorious Cheese!  So wonderfully Scrumptious!"

Put that baby in the oven at 350 on the bottom rack 

so the crust cooks all the way through 

(unless your oven runs too hot).  I cooked this for

about 15 minutes.  Please note your oven may vary.

 If you have alittle one like I do,
transfer it to a cooling rack for about 10 minutes.  

Awesome homemade pizza (and sauce) for

a fraction of the price of take out/delivery!

Notes and Things I learned:

*I used Crisco instead of Olive Oil, which is what the recipe called for.  I did this because I was thinking it would come out crispy, perhaps, which is what we love.  Well, it didn't come out crispy, but it was decent.  I think if I had a bigger sheet pan, perhaps it may have.  Or, you could do two smaller pizzas. 

**The sauce does NOT taste good before it's been baked on the pizza, so please don't let that deter you from using it.  I only used less than half the sauce and put the rest in the fridge for the next pizza.  I love that it doesn't have to be cooked beforehand.  That saves a lot of time.  I also think that's why a lot of people don't make their own, because it usually takes so long or that they perceive it to be difficult.  It's not!

***I usually buy a 3 to 5# tube of ground beef  each time.  I season and cook at least two pounds of it right away.  I drain it off and let it cool for a few minutes. I then put it in a large (gallon) zip top bag and lay it flat in my freezer.  Once frozen, I bend/knead the bag and break up the frozen chunks into little bits.  Usually, I can get it to break up just like it looked before I froze it, essentially creating a bag of hamburger crumbles.  When I need hamburger for a recipe, I just grab a handful/cup full out of the bag.  I can't tell you how much easier this makes dinnertime.  It's almost like having your own convenience food.  Not to mention the better price of buying a larger tube.

I always buy block cheese because it's (usually) more economical and is so much fresher.  I hate that
white "keep it from going bad too soon" powder that comes on the pre-shredded stuff! Makes ya wonder what you're really eating.

If you look closely at the pizza, you might notice that the cheese has little flecks of orange in it.  That is because I only had about 1C of Mozzarella left.  We covered the rest with what we had, which was Muenster.  It was REALLY good!  If it wasn't so expensive, I would use it all the time. 

This whole pizza cost probably less than $5, which I do not consider to be too terribly cheap for being homemade, but the Muenster cranked that price up a bit.  Otherwise, I'd estimate it to be around $3. 

Overall, we were very happy with this pizza.  If you've ever been to Big Freds in Omaha, it ALMOST tasted like that, sans the totally awesome, crackery crust they have.  Still have to figure that one out.  Not sure if it's how I seasoned the beef (which was a little heavier than normal) or if it was the muenster or the sauce.  Either way, it was really good!

We had the leftovers last night.  I always reheat my pizza up in a frying pan with a lid on LOW.  It takes about 15 minutes or so, but it's soooo good and the cheese melts slowly and returns to its 'just out of the oven' form, believe it or not!  The key is the lid! It helps if it's see-through, then you don't have to keep checking it and losing your heat/moisture.  Once our cheese looks melty, it's done! I think we actually enjoyed the pizza more the 2nd day because the crust got all crunchy and golden brown in the pan...kinda like I was hoping for it to be the first time around!  So good!

If you give this pizza a try, let me know how it turns out for you! Thanks for stopping by!

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