Date Night Pizza

Greetings, and welcome to my first post! I finally have enough of a kitchen in place that I feel like I can contribute a little, starting with this super easy pizza that E and I just made for date night. Also, this is the first time I've written about recipes, so bear with me if it takes me awhile to write about them effectively.

First, this wasn't the recipe I was planning to use for the dough. By the time E got done with all of his work, it was late enough that I didn't want to let the pizza dough rise (because we were starving) so I called up my friend Carly and got her quick pizza dough recipe. This recipe is good and quick, but if you choose not to let it rise, the pizza dough comes out a little chewy, though still tasty. If that's not your cup o' tea, plan ahead.

Another side note: I was told that you should let the pizza stone heat with the oven as it preheats, so we had some fun times transferring the pizza around with our cutting boards. You can also use parchment paper to roll out and prepare the pizza, and then you can put it directly on the pizza stone, which would also make cleanup easier. We just didn't have any and didn't want to wait.

Carly's Customizable, No-Rise-Necessary Pizza Dough


Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 Tbs active dry yeast
1 Tbs sugar
4-5 cups flour
1/4 cup oil
salt, pepper, or seasonings to taste

This is about half of the dough. The recipe makes enough for two pizzas.

Preheat your oven to 400.

Mix the water, yeast and sugar, and let sit for approximately 5 minutes. The mixture should be a little foamy. (I let it sit while I was seasoning my brand new pizza stone with a little olive oil and cornmeal.)

Add flour 1 cup at a time and mix. On Carly's advice, I added two cups of flour, then added the olive oil, then the rest of the flour. For me, it worked with just a little more than 4 cups, but depending on your climate, it could be 5. keep adding until it seems doughy, but not too sticky.

If desired, add salt, pepper, or other seasonings to your crust. I added a little Italian seasoning, and it was divine.

Divide the dough in half and form it into two balls. Stretch and flatten each ball with your hands until it's nice and flat. 

From here, go ahead and put on your sauce and cheese and other toppings and bake for 10-15 minutes at 400. We used regular old tomato sauce and mozzarella for the base, and on one one the pizzas, we just stuck it in the oven like that and threw the rest of the ingredients on 5 minutes before it came out of the oven. 

Other toppings we tried that were awesome: 

Green apples  - they bake up and are SO yummy

Fried mushrooms (instructions and pictures below)

Bacon

Fresh tomatoes

Feta (put it on a few minutes before the pizza comes out or it will burn)

I kid you not. The green apples are incredible. I want to try them again with walnuts.

E's Fried Mushrooms

Breadcrumbs or flour

1-2 eggs

fresh mushrooms

Oil for frying

Dip mushrooms in egg, then in breadcrumbs or flour. We did some of each, and they're both good, although I prefer bread crumbs if you have any on hand. Fry them in hot oil in a frying pan, turning with a fork halfway through. Allow to dry on a paper towel and eat or put on pizza. Delicious. 

Don't be afraid to get messy. 

Mmmm. 

You might want to fry a few extra to eat sans pizza.

We put them on both of our pizzas because they were so good, but like the feta, they burn if you put them on too early. We threw them on just before the pizza came out and baked a little feta on top. 

Apple, fried mushrooms and feta.

Fresh tomato, fried mushrooms, bacon, feta. Also, note that my pizza stone will probably be stained with feta forever because of a little spill. Sigh.

We had a blast experimenting with ingredients and making the pizza together, but it would also make a fun and easy dinner any time.