scratch pizza

I love making pizza from scratch, but I don’t do it terribly often as it is a lot of work. My latest foray, however, I believe was my best effort since leaving behind my convection oven in Gilroy.

I have developed a set of steps for making pizza, which I adapted from the instructions that came with a Chicago Metallic pizza pan. This is just about right for a 12-inch pan.

Scratch Pizza

Ingredients

• ⅝ cups warm water (105° to 115°)
• 2 cups flour
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 ½ tsp (1 packet) yeast

Procedure

1. Mix ingredients in a stand mixer (KitchenAid, of course).
2. Let rise 1 to 1 ½ hours, punch down.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
4. Grease pizza pan with olive oil, roll out dough.
5. Bake for 5 minutes on middle rack.
6. Add sauce and toppings.
7. Bake 15 minutes on lowest rack.

For the sauce I use a Spicy Pizza Sauce recipe from Cooking Light. I drained the canned tomatoes and (roughly) doubled the tomato paste which made for a thicker sauce without the liquid that I had experienced previously. I like a smooth sauce so I blended it using my immersion blender.

I used Provolone for the cheese and topped the pizza with bulk sausage from the service meat department, fresh white mushrooms, and sliced black olives.

Delicious!